Palm Tungsten T

Compact and wireless-capable, the Tungsten T has everything you want in a PDA.

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Price: £399

Manufacturer: Palm

Specifications:

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Verdict

Pros:

Fast
Great interface
Compact

Cons:
Home key blocked
Expensive for Palm

Overall:
Palm has made a significant leap towards stealing back the PDA OS crown by ramping up the processor speed and adding wireless, albeit only one version. Pocket PC devices do have more features for the same money, but Palm OS is so delicious to use we can't help but like this

Mark Walsh, Personal Computer World 06 Jan 2003

Palm's oddly named Tungsten T personal digital assistant (PDA) is the first in its new high-end range and the first Palm operating system (OS) device to offer wireless access of any sort.

The Tungsten W offers full GPRS and a Qwerty keyboard built in, whereas the T version has Bluetooth, but not 802.11, and Graffiti as opposed to a keyboard.

It's also one of the smallest Palm PDAs on the market; Sony's SJ30 is ever so slightly smaller, but lacks Bluetooth.

It's far smaller than any Pocket PC device with the same features, yet it has all the bells and whistles you could ask for from a PDA. Curiously, a sticker on the back of the device read Palm M550.

The Tungsten T is the first to use version 5 of Palm OS. In all honesty, very little has changed since version 4 when it comes to layout and features.

And why mess with success? Palm is so straightforward and simplistically laid out that changing it in its fifth revision would be purely for the sake of change.

The only real difference is that version 5 can now support the new Arm processor - Texas Instruments' Omap1510.

This chip runs at a brisk 170MHz, which is significantly faster than the 33MHz chips seen in most Palms to date.

However, it's no match on paper for Intel's 400MHz Xscale chip, though this is only used in devices using the much more demanding Pocket PC OS.

It is very difficult to gauge the speed of PDA processors, as there are currently no satisfactory benchmarks to test it. But the Tungsten T does feel very fast, and easily comparable with Xscale Pocket PCs.

It's not particularly light, but as a consequence it feels very robust.

A sliding mechanism hides away the Graffiti pad. This is both good and bad, as it protects the pad from damage (Graffiti pads can wear out through over use), but means that the Home button is hidden from normal view.

As there is no other route back to the beginning, you have to open up the device to return to the main screen - annoying, but this doesn't ruin the device.

Another worry is the sliding mechanism. These always cause concern that over time they may start to wear. However, it does feel very sturdy.

There's plenty of software on the two supplied CDs. These include Mobile DB database software, Web Browser Pro, Documents To Go (a Word, Excel and Powerpoint reader) and Versamail (a Bluetooth-specific email client).

Bluetooth was easy to activate and worked without too many hitches.

To the side, there's a shortcut key for making voice memos. This was very easy to use, and the quality of both recording and playback was surprisingly good.

A headphone socket is next to that, which is also good quality, as is the speaker.

The stylus is a chrome number with a black top to match the Tungsten's exterior.

Press once, and the stylus extends by an extra half-inch to make it just over four inches; the length of the device itself when extended. It's good and thick, and comfortable to hold.

The screen is always the most important part of a PDA, and the Tungsten T far from disappoints.

This 320 x 320 16bit panel is not quite the best screen we've ever seen (Sony's Clie PCG-625 still holds that crown in our view), but colours are bold and brilliantly even, text is well defined yet not overbearing, and it is very responsive to the touch, even with a grubby little finger.

Palm has updated its fonts and icons so that they are far more vivid than on previous versions. Text is superbly rendered, better than even the aforementioned Sony.

There's a Secure Digital (SD) card slot at the top of the device.

With 4GB SD cards expected next year (claims Panasonic), there's plenty of scope to make full use of the processing power and superbly implemented features.

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