2 for PalmOne in ’04

PalmOne recently updated its best-selling Zire consumer line of PDAs (personal digital assistants). The Zire line, which debuted in 2002, was a low-cost organizer for users who did not need multimedia features and a lot of memory. The Zire has been PalmOne’s most successful product because of its affordable cost.

Two For The Road

For 2004, the PDA and smartphone maker has introduced a color screen in its low-end Zire 31 as well as updated multimedia features in its new Zire 72 model, a PDA with a built-in 1.2-megapixel digital video camera.

The rubber-finished Zire 72 runs PalmOne’s latest OS 5.2.8 and features a number of software improvements. For starters, it has tied the Zire 72’s camera functionality into a broader range of apps.

Pictures taken by the PDA can now be grabbed from Contacts to add a snap of the individual concerned to a database entry. Photos can now be used as backdrops to app launcher categories, a long-standing feature of PalmOne’s rival PDA operating system, Microsoft’s PocketPC.

Bluetooth Makes It To The Midrange

The Zire 72 comes with a new messaging app called Messages, which integrates text and multimedia messaging. The Zire 71, which was the only camera-capable PDA from PalmOne, suffered from the lack of Bluetooth.

This is addressed in the Zire 72, allowing messages to be sent via a paired mobile phone – an ideal feature for the now growing connectivity between PDAs and cellphones for MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) applications.

The Zire 72 also provides a combined still and video player called Media, which replaced the old Photos app and the bundled Kinoma Player.

It continues to bundle RealOne Player for MP3 playback. IBM’s Java J2ME Virtual Machine is included for video games.

The Zire 72 features a faster, 312MHz Intel XScale CPU, backed up by 32MB of RAM (24MB accessible to the user). With an expansion MultiMedia Card or Secure Digital Card to store video and MP3 files, users have a veritable multimedia PDA with the features and powers of PalmOne’s higher-end Tungsten models. The Zire 72’s SRP is estimated at P17,500.

High-Value, Low-Cost Color Model

The updated low-end model, the Zire 31, adds even more surprises. It now sports a blue hue surrounding its 160 x 160 color display and new five-way navigator control.

The Zire 31 boasts of an updated CPU, this time a quick 200MHz Intel Xscale processor. It also runs Palm OS 5.2, and offers 16MB of RAM (14MB accessible to the user), double the RAM of its monochrome predecessor, the Zire 21.

PalmOne has added an SD IO card slot, primarily to allow it to bundle RealOne Player for MP3 playback. RealOne requires a memory card in order to serve as a music player. PalmOne has also equipped the Zire 31 with a headphone jack.

With the same expansion capabilities as more expensive models and with the feisty new processor, the Zire 31, which sells for P9,500, can be considered a relatively affordable MP3 player with advanced color PDA functions in a lightweight package.

The Zire 31 uses an older color screen similar to earlier models, the Palm IIIC and the hugely popular Palm M130.