Tungsten Handheld
Encyclopedia
The Tungsten series was Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc., was a smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that was responsible for products such as the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones. Previous product lines include the PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Zire and Tungsten. While their older...

's line of business-class Palm OS
Palm OS
Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...

-based PDA
Personal digital assistant
A personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...

s. With the purchase of the Palm name from PalmSource
PalmSource
ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. is a subsidiary of ACCESS which develops the Palm OS PDA operating system and its successor, the Access Linux Platform, as well as BeOS...

, Palm has dropped the Tungsten name from its newer offerings. , only the Tungsten E2 continues to use the Tungsten name. Palm's other business-class model continuing the Tungsten line, but without the Tungsten name, is the Palm TX
TX (handheld)
The Palm TX was a personal digital assistant which was produced by Palm, Inc. It was announced and released as part of Palm's October 2005 product cycle, and was in production until March 2009....

.

Details

The Tungsten
Tungsten
Tungsten , also known as wolfram , is a chemical element with the chemical symbol W and atomic number 74.A hard, rare metal under standard conditions when uncombined, tungsten is found naturally on Earth only in chemical compounds. It was identified as a new element in 1781, and first isolated as...

 series, first introduced in Fall of 2002 with the Tungsten T, was part of Palm, Inc.'s move away from arcane model numbers, Palm OS 4, and aging Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...

 processors. While the Zire
Zire Handheld
The Zire Series was Palm, Inc's "consumer-grade" brand of Personal Digital Assistant.-Background/Overview:The lower-end models emphasize price — Palm's original Zire model was the first PDA under $100 from a major manufacturer — and the higher-end models emphasize multimedia capacity, including...

 was the same old PDA in a white plastic case, the Tungsten T was the first to run Palm OS 5, bringing the Palm line more up to date to compete with increasingly popular and powerful Sony Clie and Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft that was used in smartphones and Pocket PCs, but by 2011 was rarely supplied on new phones. The last version is "Windows Mobile 6.5.5"; it is superseded by Windows Phone, which does not run Windows Mobile software.Windows Mobile is...

 competitors. Since then, the Tungsten line has been Palm's "prosumer" line, aimed at business users and hobbyists wanting a higher performance Palm PDA.

All of the Tungsten PDAs have a few attributes in common, like a:
  • 65,536 color LCD touch screen with a minimum 320 x 320 pixel resolution
  • metal or metal-toned enclosure
  • flip cover to protect the screen
  • Secure Digital (SD) card
    Secure Digital card
    Secure Digital is a non-volatile memory card format developed by the SD Card Association for use in portable devices. The SD technology is used by more than 400 brands across dozens of product categories and more than 8,000 models, and is considered the de-facto industry standard.Secure Digital...

     slot with SDIO for memory cards and accessories


All models except the Tungsten C, W, and E have Bluetooth
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a proprietary open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks with high levels of security...

. The Tungsten C has Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...

 and it is optional on the E2, T3, and T5 via the Palm Wi-Fi Card placed in their SD card slot).

All Tungstens, with the exception of the Tungsten W, run under Palm OS
Palm OS
Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...

 5 "Garnet" on an ARM
ARM architecture
ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...

 processor and have non-user-replaceable lithium-ion batteries. Some users replace battery packs with third-party units. The T3, for example, is shipped with a 900 mAh capacity battery but third-party 1100 mAh or 1150 mAh LI-poly batteries of the same physical dimensions are available. Tungsten models use a five-way navigator pad, in the shape of a rounded rectangle, circle, or oval and have four buttons for built-in applications
Application software
Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...

.

Palm Universal Connector
Palm Universal Connector
The Universal Connector was a standard port fitted to the bottom of many Palm PDA's from 2001 to 2004 and on units from other manufacturers that licensed Palm technology, including Garmin....

 was used by the Tungsten T, Tungsten T2, Tungsten T3, Tungsten C, Tungsten W, for cradles and accessories. The Tungsten E used a mini-USB connection. The Tungsten T5, Tungsten E2 and TX used an Athena Connector also known as the multi-connector.

All Tungsten handhelds include Dataviz's Documents To Go office suite and some version of Kinoma Player, with the exception of the Tungsten W.

Tungsten handhelds have never had a built-in camera.

Tungsten handhelds cost between US$199 and $399.

Tungsten E

Palm's Tungsten E was the cheapest of the Tungsten series, and as such, has been one of the most successful. It has 32 megabytes of memory, a Texas Instruments OMAP (ARM) 126 MHz processor, a 2 1/8 x 2 1/8 inch (54 x 54  mm) transreflective TFT screen, and runs Palm OS
Palm OS
Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...

 5.2.1. It is 4.5 by 3.1 by 0.5 inches (114 by 79 by 12 mm), and weighs 4.6 ounces (131 g).

It has a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack and a speaker in back. It uses a mini USB connector not supported by most dock accessories. At introduction, it was US$199.

The Tungsten E, released in October 2003, was intended to replace the aging Palm m515, one of the last holdouts from Palm's old product line. The Tungsten E, though, did not include a vibrating alarm and indicator light like the Palm m500 series
Palm m500 series
The Palm m500 series of handheld personal digital assistants consisted of three devices: the Palm m500, Palm m505, and Palm m515. The series was a follow-up to the popular Palm V series with a similar, though slightly shorter, footprint and form factor....

 had.

Since it was released at the same time as the Tungsten T3, it includes the newer PIM apps and the enhanced "agenda view" for quick viewing of to-do items and upcoming calendar items. The Tungsten E has been one of Palm's strongest sellers since its introduction, to the point where its simple slate form factor prevailed over the Tungsten T series' previous slider form factor in the development of the Tungsten T5 and the TX.

It was superseded in April 2005, when palmOne released the Tungsten E2.

Tungsten E2

The Tungsten E2, introduced on April 13, 2005 replaced the similarly named Tungsten E, has 32 MB of memory (29.7 available), a 200 MHz Intel XScale
XScale
The XScale, a microprocessor core, is Intel's and Marvell's implementation of the ARMv5 architecture, and consists of several distinct families: IXP, IXC, IOP, PXA and CE . Intel sold the PXA family to Marvell Technology Group in June 2006....

 processor, 320x320 Transflective TFT
TFT LCD
Thin film transistor liquid crystal display is a variant of liquid crystal display which uses thin-film transistor technology to improve image quality . TFT LCD is one type of Active matrix LCD, though all LCD-screens are based on TFT active matrix addressing...

 color display, and runs Palm OS
Palm OS
Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...

 Garnet v5.4.7. It is 4.5 tall by 3.1 wide by .59 inches thick (114 x 79 x 15 mm) and weighs 4.7 ounces (133 g). It has a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack, a longer lasting battery than the Tungsten E, has Bluetooth
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a proprietary open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks with high levels of security...

 capability, and a single speaker on the back.

Much like the Tungsten T5 and Treo 650
Treo 650
The Palm Treo 650 is a Palm OS based smartphone that was officially announced on October 24, 2004 as the successor to Palm's Treo 600. It began shipping in November 2004, but has since been discontinued...

, it uses non-volatile flash memory, this time in the form of Non-Volatile File System, meaning that the data will be preserved if the battery runs out. It uses standard SD memory cards and is also compatible with the Palm Wi-Fi Card (sold separately). It uses a standard Athena Connector port supported only by some new accessories.

When it was released, its retail price was US$249. In October 2005, the price was reduced to US$199.

Unlike other models, the Find function is limited to only the first eight matches, and the calculator incorrectly finds percentages at half their actual value, though this was fixed in units shipping after April 2006.

The Tungsten E2 has the ability to use WiFi, but only as an add-on SDIO card made by PalmOne (now Palm). Palm's WiFi card is manufactured by SyChip. Encryption is restricted to WEP
Wired Equivalent Privacy
Wired Equivalent Privacy is a weak security algorithm for IEEE 802.11 wireless networks. Introduced as part of the original 802.11 standard ratified in September 1999, its intention was to provide data confidentiality comparable to that of a traditional wired network...

, the E2 does not offer WPA
Wi-Fi Protected Access
Wi-Fi Protected Access and Wi-Fi Protected Access II are two security protocols and security certification programs developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance to secure wireless computer networks...

 or WPA2.

The maximum size SD card supported on the Tungsten E2 is 1 GB due to a software limitation. In order to read larger SD and SDHC cards an upgraded driver is required. The previous model (Tungsten E) has been reported to be capable of using 2 GB SD cards.

Tungsten T

The second Tungsten, the Tungsten T, introduced in November 2002 and known during development as the M550, was the first model to use Palm OS
Palm OS
Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...

 5. The Tungsten T was designed by Palm engineers based in Arlington Heights
Arlington Heights, Illinois
Arlington Heights is a village in Cook and Lake counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. A suburb of Chicago, it lies about 25 miles northwest of the city's downtown. The population was 75,101 at the 2010 census....

, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

.

It has:
  • 16 megabytes of memory,
  • Texas Instruments OMAP (ARM) 144 MHz processor,
  • built-in microphone for voice memos,
  • dedicated voice memo button,
  • vibrating alarms,
  • standard 3.5 mm headphone jack,
  • one front-facing speaker,
  • indicator light,
  • runs Palm OS
    Palm OS
    Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...

     5.0, and
  • is otherwise a standard Tungsten; see above.


It is 4.0 inches (102 mm) tall, 4.8 inches (121 mm) tall with the slider extended, by 3.0 inches (78 mm) wide by 0.6 inches (15 mm) thick, and weighs 5.6 ounces (146 g).

It sets itself apart from other PDAs physically by having a sliding lower portion; the bottom third of the casing can be slid up and down to cover or reveal the touch-sensitive Graffiti
Graffiti (Palm OS)
Graffiti is an essentially single-stroke shorthand handwriting recognition system used in PDAs based on the Palm OS. Graffiti was originally written by Palm, Inc...

 writing area. At introduction, it was US$499.

Many of the features in the Tungsten T are Palm firsts. It was the first Palm PDA to use a version of Palm OS 5 and an ARM
ARM architecture
ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...

 processor, which meant that it had the software and processing power for high-quality real-time video playback and MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

 playback.

It was also the first Palm PDA with a:
  • 320 × 320 resolution screen
  • Bluetooth
    Bluetooth
    Bluetooth is a proprietary open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks with high levels of security...

     wireless communications radio built-in
  • microphone with a dedicated voice memo button
  • front facing speaker instead of rear facing
  • telescoping stylus
  • bigger reset hole that can be reset with the stylus tip instead of a pin


The slider feature was unique. When open, the Tungsten T looked like a normal slate-shaped PDA, but the bottom portion, with the five-way controller and four buttons, could slide closed, covering up the Graffiti writing area. This made it the smallest Palm PDA in height.

Palm's reasoning behind the slider was people spend more time viewing data rather than entering data. Thus, they chose to hide the data entry medium while not in use to make a more compact device.

The slider caused two problems with the Tungsten T. One drawback was that the Tungsten T was notorious for needing frequent manual recalibration
Calibration
Calibration is a comparison between measurements – one of known magnitude or correctness made or set with one device and another measurement made in as similar a way as possible with a second device....

 of the digitizer after about one year of use. A software patch issued by Palm has helped with this problem. The other problem was that the ribbon cable between the mainboard and the digitizer connectors that would change their resistance over time. The only way to (temporarily) correct this problem was to disassemble the PDA and remove and reinstall these connectors.

The Tungsten T was succeeded by the Tungsten T2.

Tungsten T2

The Tungsten T2, introduced in July 2003 for US$399, was simply a minor update to the Tungsten T, and had exactly the same form factor. (Save for the label and the T|T2's slightly lighter case color, they are superficially identical.) The memory was increased to 32 megabytes, the screen was replaced with a superior TFT LCD of the same size and resolution, Palm OS upgraded to 5.2.1, Graffiti replaced with Graffiti2. Since it is much like the Tungsten T model, PalmOne did not deliver this model to some markets, such as mainland China
Mainland China
Mainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...

 or Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

.

The Tungsten T2 was discontinued in April 2004, having been succeeded by the Tungsten T3.

Tungsten T3

The Tungsten T3 was the third T-Class Tungsten device. It has 64 MB of memory (52 MB usable), a 400 MHz Intel PXA261 processor, a new 3.7" 320x480 transflective TFT LCD
TFT LCD
Thin film transistor liquid crystal display is a variant of liquid crystal display which uses thin-film transistor technology to improve image quality . TFT LCD is one type of Active matrix LCD, though all LCD-screens are based on TFT active matrix addressing...

 touch-screen, and runs Palm OS
Palm OS
Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...

 version 5.2.1. It was the last product designed by the Palm engineers in Arlington Heights.

The T3 included Active Input Technology with Virtual Graffiti 2
Graffiti 2
Graffiti 2 is a version of the Palm OS handwriting system, Graffiti, that was introduced in 2003. In January of that year PalmSource announced the change, and explained that Graffiti 2 was based on Jot by Communication Intelligence Corporation , and would replace the original version of Graffiti...

, a Virtual keyboard
Virtual keyboard
A virtual keyboard is a software component that allows a user to enter characters. A virtual keyboard can usually be operated with multiple input devices, which may include a touchscreen, an actual keyboard and a computer mouse.- Types :...

, and the typical Tungsten line slider. With many other additional features, the T3 was released with the same $399 retail price tag as the Tungsten T2 until the release of the Tungsten T5, when it was reduced to $349.

Like the Tungsten T and T2, the T3 still has a front-facing speaker, microphone, vibrating alarm, indicator light, and all of their other features.

Like the Tungsten E, the Tungsten T3 came with an enhanced PIM
Personal information manager
A personal information manager is a type of application software that functions as a personal organizer. The acronym PIM is now, more commonly, used in reference to Personal information management as a field of study...

 Suite which categorized all appointments and tasks on the Calendar (formerly Date Book) screen. The Enhanced PIM Software also has an improved Task suite (formerly To Do List) which can categorize Tasks by either urgency, category, etc., and an improved Contacts (formerly Address) application with picture support and more fields.

Furthermore, a new status bar always appears at the bottom of screen, giving quick access to the time, system information, home, find, menu access, alerts, Bluetooth, full-screen writing, screen rotation, and what is shown in the input area.

The Tungsten T3 comes with Real Player for Palm OS Handhelds (called RealOne Player for Palm OS Handhelds at the time of its release) in addition to a 3.5 mm Stereo Jack, making it a digital music player when used with a Secure Digital
Secure Digital
Secure Digital is a non-volatile memory card format developed by the SD Card Association for use in portable devices. The SD technology is used by more than 400 brands across dozens of product categories and more than 8,000 models, and is considered the de-facto industry standard.Secure Digital...

 (SD) flash memory card.

The T3 has a bigger, non-round, 5-way navigation pad with the four application buttons placed around it in a circular fashion instead of in a row, breaking Palm's traditional application button layout. Palm went back to its more traditional layout in the Tungsten T5 and Palm TX
TX (handheld)
The Palm TX was a personal digital assistant which was produced by Palm, Inc. It was announced and released as part of Palm's October 2005 product cycle, and was in production until March 2009....

.

The T3 has a Green/Red LED
LEd
LEd is a TeX/LaTeX editing software working under Microsoft Windows. It is a freeware product....

, but for some reason Palm only decided to use the green LED. Red can be used with certain programs and libraries.

The T3 also has the Palm Universal Connector
Palm Universal Connector
The Universal Connector was a standard port fitted to the bottom of many Palm PDA's from 2001 to 2004 and on units from other manufacturers that licensed Palm technology, including Garmin....

 and an included USB cradle. The cradle is used for both charging and synchronizing the Palm's data to a PC (software is included for Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 and Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

, but with the pilot-link
Pilot-link
pilot-link is a library of utilities for connecting to and synchronising with Palm OS-based PDAs on Unix and Unix-based operating systems. It uses a set of 'conduits' for the exchange of information from different Palm applications....

 software, the unit synchronizes perfectly with a Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 operating system).

Early criticisms of the Tungsten T3 include it electronically damaging SD cards
Secure Digital card
Secure Digital is a non-volatile memory card format developed by the SD Card Association for use in portable devices. The SD technology is used by more than 400 brands across dozens of product categories and more than 8,000 models, and is considered the de-facto industry standard.Secure Digital...

and its battery life (900 mA·h battery). Palm addressed the Secure Digital Card
Secure Digital card
Secure Digital is a non-volatile memory card format developed by the SD Card Association for use in portable devices. The SD technology is used by more than 400 brands across dozens of product categories and more than 8,000 models, and is considered the de-facto industry standard.Secure Digital...

 problem by releasing a Firmware Update. After the "SD Card Patch" was applied in early (by the user via a firmware patch) and later (at the manufacturing stage) releases of the Tungsten T3, no other criticisms were known to have risen from the Tungsten T3's use.

Shortly following the early 2005 release of the Tungsten T5, the Tungsten T3 was discontinued. Since the Tungsten T3 was discontinued, no Palm handhelds have included a vibrating alarm, a slider to make the device smaller, or the Palm Universal Connector
Palm Universal Connector
The Universal Connector was a standard port fitted to the bottom of many Palm PDA's from 2001 to 2004 and on units from other manufacturers that licensed Palm technology, including Garmin....

.

Tungsten T5

The Tungsten T5, introduced in October 2004 and now discontinued, is a combination of the Tungsten E and Tungsten T3. It is the first and only Tungsten to use a 416 MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor. It has a 320x480 TFT 16-bit Color Screen with a virtual input area like the Tungsten T3 instead of a 320x320 Color Screen with a fixed input area used in the Tungsten E, E2, T, and T2. It retained the shape of the Tungsten E, but is slightly thicker, instead of the shape of Tungsten T series, where its name comes from.

The Tungsten T5 is the first Palm PDA to have a 320x480 pixel screen that is all revealed instead of the "slider" used in the Tungsten T3, T2, and T, though other brands have had sliderless HVGA displays for years. It is also the first to have 256 MB of memory
Computer storage
Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, refers to computer components and recording media that retain digital data. Data storage is one of the core functions and fundamental components of computers....

 (versus 64 MB in the Tungsten T3), with 161.2 MB configured as a Flash Drive, 63.8 MB available for applications, and 31 MB reserved for the OS. This can result in some confusion since the memory is not equally usable as in the previous Palm PDAs.

While the Tungsten T5 was meant to be a replacement for the Tungsten T3, it is missing several features from the Tungsten T3 such as a charge-indicator LED, vibrating alarm, included HotSync cradle, and built in microphone for voice memos. Furthermore, its speaker became rear-facing instead of front-facing and it uses the Athena Connector instead of the Palm Universal Connector
Palm Universal Connector
The Universal Connector was a standard port fitted to the bottom of many Palm PDA's from 2001 to 2004 and on units from other manufacturers that licensed Palm technology, including Garmin....

.

Power users also criticize the Tungsten T5 for its Tungsten E-derived form factor. The speed of the Bluetooth connection can only be set to a maximum of 128 kbit/s.

At the time of its release, the Tungsten T5 (along with the Treo 650
Treo 650
The Palm Treo 650 is a Palm OS based smartphone that was officially announced on October 24, 2004 as the successor to Palm's Treo 600. It began shipping in November 2004, but has since been discontinued...

) was plagued with memory inefficiency problems, third-party application issues, and device driver crashes, due to the new Non-Volatile File System.

Tungsten T5 owners are urged to check out the Tungsten T5 1.1 Update, which addresses the memory inefficiency issues alongside other operating system-level problems.

Issues/problems with the power-on switch have also been discovered, where it will not switch on unless a menu button is pressed or sometimes an SD card needs to be inserted. This is a known issue at Palm, but no fix is forthcoming. The best recommendation is to download a freeware program which can re-map the power button to one of the more reliable hardware buttons.

In some countries, including Australia, the Tungsten T5 was withdrawn early since the Palm TX
TX (handheld)
The Palm TX was a personal digital assistant which was produced by Palm, Inc. It was announced and released as part of Palm's October 2005 product cycle, and was in production until March 2009....

 offered the highly desirable WiFi built-in, instead of having to use the optional Palm Wi-Fi Card in its one and only SD slot. Many non-Palm PDAs on the market at the time came standard with built-in WiFi.

Tungsten W

The Tungsten W (known as the i710 during its development period, and X420 at the prototype stage), introduced in February 2003. The only smartphone
Smartphone
A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...

 (PDA/cellphone hybrid) in the Tungsten series, instead of running Palm OS
Palm OS
Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...

 5 on an ARM
ARM architecture
ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...

-compatible processor, it used Palm OS
Palm OS
Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...

 4 with a low-power Motorola DragonBall processor, to increase the battery life. The combination of using a highly advanced lithium polymer battery and energy conserving electronics yielded longer battery life.

Likewise, it had a thumb-sized keyboard, more like the Treo 600
Treo 600
Treo 600 was a smartphone developed by Handspring, and offered under the palmOne brand after the merger of the two companies. It has a number of integrated features and it is possible to check the calendar while talking on the phone, dial directly from contacts list, take pictures or send emails...

 than the flagship Tungsten T (This form factor would be reused in the Tungsten C).

The Tungsten W focused more on its PDA half as opposed to its cellular telephony half, the focus of the succession of the Palm i705
Palm i705
The Palm i705 was an upgrade from the last series of Palm PDAs to use the now discontinued Palm.net service to access the World Wide Web from Palm devices. It featured 8MB of onboard memory and SD/MMC slots...

 and Palm VII
Palm VII
The Palm VII was a personal digital assistant made by the Palm Computing division of 3Com. The device featured an antenna used for wireless data communication, a first for a Palm device. Connectivity was provided through the Mobitex network, under the now defunct Palm.net service...

. Unlike either the Palm i705 and the Palm VII (which both could only make data connections over the Mobitex
Mobitex
Mobitex is an OSI based open standard, national public access wireless packet-switched data network. Mobitex puts great emphasis on safety and reliability with its use by military, police, firefighters and ambulance services. Mobitex was developed in the beginning of the 1980s by the Swedish...

 pager
Pager
A pager is a simple personal telecommunications device for short messages. A one-way numeric pager can only receive a message consisting of a few digits, typically a phone number that the user is then requested to call...

 network), downloads and uploads were done using comparatively-fast GPRS connections. It didn't have a microphone and the speaker couldn't be used for phone calls; instead, an included ear bud and microphone loopset was used for voice calls.

A flip cover was released that allowed the user to hold the handheld like a normal phone and talk on it, although it did obscure the screen. (In the US, it was sold exclusively by AT&T Wireless
AT&T Wireless
AT&T Wireless Services, Inc., founded in 1987 as McCaw Cellular Communications, Inc., and now legally known as New Cingular Wireless Services, Inc., formerly part of AT&T Corp., is a wireless telephone carrier in the United States, based in Redmond, Washington, and later traded on the New York...

, and all Tungsten W handsets sold in the US were locked to AT&T Wireless
AT&T Wireless
AT&T Wireless Services, Inc., founded in 1987 as McCaw Cellular Communications, Inc., and now legally known as New Cingular Wireless Services, Inc., formerly part of AT&T Corp., is a wireless telephone carrier in the United States, based in Redmond, Washington, and later traded on the New York...

's service. Note, however, that Canadian W's are not locked to any service provider and can operate with T-Mobile SIM cards).

The Tungsten W doesn't qualify for the Smartphone Classification since you can't hold the Tungsten W like you would with a telephone device.

It has 16 megabytes of memory, a Motorola DragonBall 33 MHz processor, a built-in microphone, vibrating alarms, indicator light, and runs Palm OS
Palm OS
Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...

 4.1.1 (upgrade to 4.1.2 is available) with special enhancements for its hi-res display. It is 4.8 inches (121 mm) tall by 3.1 inches (79 mm) wide by 0.7 inches (18 mm) thick, and weighs 6.4 ounces (181 g). It has a standard 2.5 mm cellphone loopset jack, and a single speaker.

The bottom half is a thumb-sized keyboard for typing, and it has no silkscreened Graffiti input area. (It is otherwise a standard Tungsten; see above.) At introduction, it was US$419 before service provider subsidies.

The Tungsten W was succeeded by the Treo 600
Treo 600
Treo 600 was a smartphone developed by Handspring, and offered under the palmOne brand after the merger of the two companies. It has a number of integrated features and it is possible to check the calendar while talking on the phone, dial directly from contacts list, take pictures or send emails...

 after Palm purchased Handspring and became palmOne.

Tungsten C

The Tungsten C introduced in April 2003 was, at the time of its release, palmOne's only handheld that allows the user to access the internet wirelessly through 802.11b Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...

 without the use of a card or other external device. It has no Flash support. It lacks support for the WPA
Wi-Fi Protected Access
Wi-Fi Protected Access and Wi-Fi Protected Access II are two security protocols and security certification programs developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance to secure wireless computer networks...

 encryption standard. It does, however, have built in PPTP VPN for a secure connection to a VPN server.

The web browser is PalmSource Web Browser 2.0. Novarra Web Pro 3.0 can be purchased as an upgrade.

Other details are its 400 MHz Intel PXA255 processor, 64 MiB
MIB
MIB may refer to any of several concepts:* Master of International Business, a postgraduate business degree* Melayu Islam Beraja, the adopted national philosophy of Brunei* Motion induced blindness, a visual illusion in peripheral vision...

 of memory (51 MiB
MIB
MIB may refer to any of several concepts:* Master of International Business, a postgraduate business degree* Melayu Islam Beraja, the adopted national philosophy of Brunei* Motion induced blindness, a visual illusion in peripheral vision...

 available for programs + 12 MiB
MIB
MIB may refer to any of several concepts:* Master of International Business, a postgraduate business degree* Melayu Islam Beraja, the adopted national philosophy of Brunei* Motion induced blindness, a visual illusion in peripheral vision...

 heap), built-in thumb keyboard, a "five-way navigator," a Secure Digital
Secure Digital
Secure Digital is a non-volatile memory card format developed by the SD Card Association for use in portable devices. The SD technology is used by more than 400 brands across dozens of product categories and more than 8,000 models, and is considered the de-facto industry standard.Secure Digital...

/SDIO/MultiMediaCard
MultiMediaCard
The MultiMediaCard is a flash memory memory card standard. Unveiled in 1997 by Siemens AG and SanDisk, it is based on Toshiba's NAND-based flash memory, and is therefore much smaller than earlier systems based on Intel NOR-based memory such as CompactFlash. MMC is about the size of a postage...

 slot, vibrating alarms, indicator light, and a 2.5 mm headset jack, capable of voice recording and monaural sound output with a proprietary earbud headset (sold separately). A cell phone headset with the same type connector has been tested to work.

There have also been third-party applications and hardware that work around the Tungsten C's monaural audio. For instance, a special adapter can be purchased from PPC Techs to convert to a standard 3.5 mm jack that splits the mono output into left and right channels.

The Tungsten C is no longer in production — it is superseded by the LifeDrive Mobile Manager
LifeDrive
The LifeDrive was a Palm OS-based handheld personal digital assistant device that was produced by PalmOne, a former incarnation of Palm, Inc. The device was PalmOne's first and only foray into the "Mobile Manager" device category...

, the Palm TX
TX (handheld)
The Palm TX was a personal digital assistant which was produced by Palm, Inc. It was announced and released as part of Palm's October 2005 product cycle, and was in production until March 2009....

, and the Treo series.

See also

  • Palm, Inc.
    Palm, Inc.
    Palm, Inc., was a smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that was responsible for products such as the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones. Previous product lines include the PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Zire and Tungsten. While their older...

  • Palm Pilot
  • Palm TX
    TX (handheld)
    The Palm TX was a personal digital assistant which was produced by Palm, Inc. It was announced and released as part of Palm's October 2005 product cycle, and was in production until March 2009....

     - The first business-oriented Palm-branded handheld without the Tungsten moniker.
  • Zire Series
    Zire Handheld
    The Zire Series was Palm, Inc's "consumer-grade" brand of Personal Digital Assistant.-Background/Overview:The lower-end models emphasize price — Palm's original Zire model was the first PDA under $100 from a major manufacturer — and the higher-end models emphasize multimedia capacity, including...

     - Palm's band of Consumer-Grade Handhelds
  • Treo Series - Palm's band of Smartphone
    Smartphone
    A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...

    s
  • LifeDrive
    LifeDrive
    The LifeDrive was a Palm OS-based handheld personal digital assistant device that was produced by PalmOne, a former incarnation of Palm, Inc. The device was PalmOne's first and only foray into the "Mobile Manager" device category...

     - Palm's brand of Professional-Class Mobile Managers
  • m500 Series
    Palm m500 series
    The Palm m500 series of handheld personal digital assistants consisted of three devices: the Palm m500, Palm m505, and Palm m515. The series was a follow-up to the popular Palm V series with a similar, though slightly shorter, footprint and form factor....

  • Personal digital assistant
    Personal digital assistant
    A personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...

  • Palm Handheld Modifications
    Palm Handheld Modifications
    Several Palm enthusiasts have successfully documented internal and external Handheld Battery modifications to allow longer charge times for their handheld device. Rapidly advancing battery technology allows smaller and longer lasting batteries to be placed into the space of the original batteries...

     to increase battery life

Competitors and contemporaries

  • Dell Axim
    Dell Axim
    The Dell Axim family of personal digital assistants was Dell's line of Windows Mobile-powered Pocket PC Devices. The first model, the Axim X5, was introduced in 2002, while the final model, the Axim X51, was discontinued on April 9, 2007....

  • iPAQ
    IPAQ
    iPAQ presently refers to a Pocket PC and personal digital assistant first unveiled by Compaq in April 2000; the name was borrowed from Compaq's earlier iPAQ Desktop Personal Computers. Since Hewlett-Packard's acquisition of Compaq, the product has been marketed by HP. The devices use a Windows...

  • Sony CLIÉ
  • Tapwave Zodiac
    Tapwave Zodiac
    The Zodiac is a mobile entertainment console, launched on 5 May 2003, and released in October 2003 by Tapwave, a former private company that was based in Mountain View, California....

  • iPod touch
    IPod touch
    The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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