Good morning, internet friends. PalmOne announced the Tungsten T5 this morning, and while it’s definitely got some interesting features, it is sort of disappointing on the whole. The new T5 ditches the slider form factor of the T3 for a more traditional tablet, simply because sales of the non-slider Tungsten E have been better—their best-selling model last quarter, in fact. I think we can deal without it.
The T5 comes with 256MB of memory standard, 55MB of which will act like the regular Palm memory you’ve known and loved, while the remaining 160MB can contain almost anything, including files in formats that PalmOS doesn’t recognize. That means the T5 can be used as a flash memory drive and will show up as a mountable mass storage device by most any modern operating system. Even better, any mounted SD card will show up the same.
Now the bad news (after the jump).
The new OS, Cobalt, is a no-show. PalmOne blames the long lead time on product development, which I can buy, and that they felt they “could incorporate all the features [they] wanted to into the T5 without Cobalt,” which I can’t buy. Obviously if Cobalt were ready, they’d go with it. The 416MHz Xscale processor inside is probably reflective of this decision, too.
There’s no built-in Wi-Fi, although Bluetooth is standard, and the T5 can use the recently-released PalmOne Wi-Fi SD card.
Also, they killed the Universal Connector for a new “Multi-connector,” presumably so that they could add the USB flash drive-like features that we will hopefully see in all Palm devices from here on out. I don’t get as plotzed as some about changing HotSync standards, but it is definitely of note.
There’s also no built-in microphone, a decision that is disappointing when you consider how handy plug-and-play storage would be along with a voice recorder.
All in all, a mixed bag—certainly a lot of good news for Palm devotes, but nothing really compelling to bring new users to the fold, and little to convince users of older devices to upgrade immediately.
The Tungsten T5 will be available November 3rd for $400.
palmOne Tungsten T5: Access Your Files in a Whole New Way [Brighthand]
Press Release [PalmOne]
Related
Palm Archives [Gizmodo]
