Is There Still Room for the PDA?

Last week’s editorial, The Evolving Treo, took a look at the transition from the traditional Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and what is rumored to be an entry level Treo to be released in the near future.  This week I look at what it would take for Palm to deliver a new PDA that will be popular with customers who don’t need an integrated solution.

Time to Freshen Up

There are currently three handhelds in Palm’s PDA line up: the Z22, the Tungsten E2, and the TX.  All three of these devices were released in 2005: the E2 was released in April and the Z22 and TX were launched a few months later in October.  This October all three devices will be two years old, and the E2 will have passed the Tungsten C as the longest available Palm device.  It is time for the Tungsten E2 to be retired.  Aside from the screen resolution and Wi-Fi radio, there are no difference between it and the TX.  The Z22, I believe, still holds a niche place as a low cost entry point for new customers who want to get their feet wet, so to speak, without a large upfront investment in hardware.  The Palm TX should be updated so it can compete with new handheld devices that will be released by Hewlett-Packard later this year.

The TX is a perfect candidate for updating.  The form factor and screen size are time tested customer favorites dating all the way back to the now classic Palm Vx.  The following are some suggestions for a “TX|2,” an updated version of today’s TX design that will appeal to existing TX owners and customers looking to upgrade from the Z22, E2 and earlier Palm OS handhelds.

Palm should start by keeping the footprint of the device the same.  This will allow customers who have been using the Tungsten T5 and TX to re-use their cases.  Palm should also continue to use the Multi-Connector for charging and synchronizing the device.  Keeping the Multi-Connector in place will allow customer to re-use other accessories such as travel chargers, cables, and cradles.  Lastly, by keeping the footprint the same, Palm can continue to use the same stylus is has been using on the Tungsten T5 and TX thereby reducing the design costs.

At the core of the new TX|2 should be a redesigned motherboard.  Battery life is a key feature for mobile devices, so I can see Palm sticking with the current 312MHz processor of the older 416MHz processor that was used in the Tungsten T5 and LifeDrive.  Anything more than that would be too large of a drain on the battery for a portable device to remain charged throughout the day.  Palm should also add more memory to the redesigned TX.  The implementation of non-volatile storage in Palm’s device was an important technical change to safeguard customer’s data.  Leaving all of the technical mumbo-jumbo out of the discussion (and admittedly over simplifying the situation) the end result was that you sometimes see an error message stating that there isn’t enough free DBCache or an application will seem to take forever to start up or close down.  Palm can help minimize the number of times you see this message by adding a larger DBCache pool.  Today that number is about 10MB and should be pushed up to 16 or 20MB.  Doing so will allow power-users to run DBCache hungry games and multimedia applications and can also help speed up business applications such as DataViz Documents To Go.  The new easy grip rubberized paint that Palm has been using on the Treo 750 and 755p will put the finishing “touch” on the redesigned TX hardware.

Since we’re having so much fun building our dream machine, let’s delve into the software.  We would all like to see the new version of Palm OS, which I refer to as “Palm OS II”, on a shipping device.  However Palm executives have flat out stated that Palm OS II won’t be ready until 2008.  To keep design costs down, Palm can continue to use Palm OS 5 to power our imaginary device and any changes to the OS should be to address things like system bugs found in the current crop of handhelds, including the annoying Find bug which can still be found in the Tungsten E2 even after this issue has been resolved on the Treo 650 and the Tungsten T5 some time ago.  Palm can also freshen up some of the graphical elements in Palm OS 5 such as the dated looking scroll bars.

Wrapping up the software updates should be things like updated versions of Palm’s VersaMail email client and the Drive Mode application (which mysteriously disappeared from the TX), and NormSoft’s Pocket Tunes 4.0.  Palm can also include a few new games in addition to Astraware’s Bejeweled.

In Conclusion

There are still a number of Palm’s customer base that still prefers handhelds over the Treo smartphone.  This past quarter’s numbers seem to indicate this with some 298,000 handheld devices shipped.  At last week’s 1SRC chat I asked various participants if they would buy a new handheld PDA if Palm released one with specifications similar to what I’ve outlined here.  All of them answered that they would.  While this survey was hardly scientific, I do believe that these folks have a point.  So how about it, Palm?  Can we have one more go around with PDA before the plane comes in for a landing?  There seems to be enough support in the existing customer base to make the TX|2 a reality.

Let us know what your thoughts are about a refresh of the Palm TX handheld in the 1SRC forums.