palm
Palm launches antena-less Treo 680
Looks like Palm is still alive and kicking, with the release of the Palm Treo 680. Despite the lack of an antenna, Palm claims that the new Treo 680 has much better reception when compared against previous models, but until conclusive tests are made, we will just have to take that statement at face value. The Treo 680 is equipped with 64MB SDRAM and 64MB of user memory which should be sufficient for everyday tasks. Each purchase will come with a 1GB SD card and a free subscription to Yahoo!’s Music Service for one month. Expect the normal trappings of other smartphones these days to come with the Treo 680, including MP3 support, video and voice recording, and support for Microsoft Office and PDF documents. Pricing details are still unavailable and will be determined by the respective carriers.
The Palm Touchstone can be said to be quite the exquisite piece of consumer electronics technology, having introduced wireless charging to the failed line of Palm smartphones. Actually, when you mull over it, don’t you think it to be rather strange that HP’s Palm and webOS failed eventually, despite showing a fair bit of promise, especially with webOS’ card-type mobile operating system? Well, it seems that the Palm Touchstone that you see above is in the middle of being repurposed so that it will play nice with the Nexus 7 from Google. This is not the first time something like it has happened, as there has been previous mods made to the Palm Touchstone to have it play nice with Android smartphones, but Rod Whitby of webOS Internals fame figured out he wants something that would work with his Nexus 7.
Rod relied on a pair of standard phone Touchstone coils, and he has more or less managed to know just how the charging circuit works, with the remaining bit to be figured out being the assembly of stuff. Hopefully Rod will get the job done, and in due time!
Other than iOS and Android, the only other platform which has always looked decent is the webOS and hence a device running the same does generate a lot of interest. The latest anonymous device spotted running the webOS comes from HP and it was precentral which got lucky with some images. There is no clue regarding its dubbing as even pre central is not sure what this keyboard-less doodad is to be called. The tipster that sent PC these images claims it to be an an EVO with webOS and he says this device is yet to be announced. It bears semblance to the Verizon Palm Pre III so it could easily be a keyboard-less (touch-centric) version of the Pre III. What are your guesses people?
Small phones are generally cute and slip into pockets easily, but there are times when a phone is too small that it becomes a nuisance. You might not have noticed it before, but the tiny HP Veer was so small that it didn’t feature a microUSB port or 3.5mm headphone jack, possibly due to space constraints. In order to solve that issue and allow users to use a headset, you’ll need to attach a small low-profile magnetic five-pin connector to get the 3.5mm audio jack, and the same goes for the USB connector. Of course, this raises additional questions, such as whether the magnet is strong enough to keep the audio jack stuck to the phone while we’re walking around, and how convenient it will be to keep such a tiny accessory in our pockets without losing it.