Who Are They Kidding?
Sometimes I wonder how some products make it out to the market.
It seems that Palm has once again missed the mark with their latest product, the Foleo. This device is dubbed a “mobile companion” and will connect to a Palm-based smartphone such as the Treo 680 or 700wx. It comes with a 10″ screen, a full sized keyboard, and has apparently been in development for the last five years.
I wish Palm would take a hint from the automotive sector and not release all of their concept devices. This thing makes the Edsel look like a Mustang Shelby.
It’s Palm’s hope to bridge the gap between a notebook and a PDA. But considering the size of the Foleo, I doubt anyone will seriously drop between six and seven hundred dollars on the unit. When I first heard that Palm had a new device out that was between a notebook and a smartphone I was kind of excited. I envisioned something akin to HTC’s Advantage X7501 device with a 5″ screen, WCDMA and GSM capabilities, and a great battery life. Instead, we get what’s shown in the image above. A quazi-laptop computer running a stripped down verison of Linux that doesn’t even have the same software capabilities of the smaller Treo.
So what the heck are we supposed to do with this? Looking at the specs, the only good thing that comes with device is the Opera web browser.
Palm has cautioned users that the unit has not been tested with all smart phones, and can’t guarantee that the Foleo would work with any specific device other than those made by Palm. You know how tight deadlines can be for those 5 year projects. Breaking from form, this unit does actually come with a WiFi connection in addition to Bluetooth, so this will allow people to use hotspots. Of course, if an executive that reads and writes lots of lengthy emails is at a location with a hotspot, they would likely have a real computer to use.
Currently, Palm is trying to work something out with other vendors such as RIM, Symbian and Apple (should they ever open their platform).
Early adopters have also been warned that the Foleo will not be able to immediately view video clips, or work with high-end multimedia like you’d find at HomestarRunner or YouTube. There is no video viewer planned for this release, or MP3 capabilities, either. However, the company suggested that users who require these functions can find them on the Treo smartphones.
So to summarize, Palm is releasing a mobile-companion that has fewer capabilities than the $100 notebook to a very narrow market segment that uses the Treo over RIM’s BlackBerry or other vendor solutions and expecting that, over time, us consumers will write the software and functionality into the platform much like we did for the first Palm devices 10 years ago. The biggest selling feature for this unit is the 5 hours of actual usage, though anyone who would need to read or write emails for more than 4 hours a day probably doesn’t use smartphones or wannabe hardware devices.
Final Result on the Foleo: No Dice.