The PalmOS Is Being De-Fronded With Foleo - UPDATED

Palm's Foleo mobile companion in action – Image Credit: Linux Devices

The PalmOS Is Being De-Fronded With Foleo

The PalmOS ship is being jumped sooner than anyone thought.

Ditched is the Palm operating system with the introduction of the latest mobil form factor device from Palm which features an exciting Linux operating system that the company founder proudly touted saying, "Press a button, it's on. Press it again, it's off. There are no other modes."

The initial Foleo model introduced will be designed for use with Palm's PalmOS - and Windows Mobile-based Treo smartphones. The Foleo will connect to the phone via Bluetooth, and sync up email, email attachments, and contacts with the phone.

Jeff Hawkins (the company founder) said, "This is the smallest device ever with a full-size keyboard. It's got WiFi, Bluetooth, five-hour battery life. People are going to write all kinds of things for this. Mobile email is just the entry point, like the organizer was for the Palm Pilot."

Palm has been working on the Foleo since 2005.

Further, Palm has been awarded several patents that may relate to the device, including "Accessory module for handheld devices".

Excerpts from Ziff-Davis’ Linux Devices -

Palm unveils Linux-based "mobile companion"
Linux Devices (Ziff-Davis) - May 30, 2007 [Updated 5:00 PM PDT]

Palm has used Linux to build a "new class" of mobile device. The Foleo aims to expand the email, Internet, and productivity application capabilities of mobile phones such as the Palm Treo, by adding a full-size keyboard and a larger screen.

Palm introduces the Foleo that features the new Linux OS. Palm has been working on the Foleo since 2005. Image Credit: Linux Devices

Very few details about the Foleo are known at this point. Opera, which supplied its Opera 9 browser for the device, has confirmed the Foleo to be based on Linux. For its part, Palm has published a few photos and brief videos of the device, while promising to release more details tomorrow.

In one video, Palm Founder Jeff Hawkins said Palm plans to ship a complete line Foleo devices supporting a wide variety of mobile phones. He predicts that the Foleo will be more successful than Palm's original Palm Pilot, which he designed, and more successful than its current Treo smartphones, which he helped design.

Hawkins emphasized that initial Foleo models will be focused on expanding the email capabilities of Palm's Treo smartphones. A physical button on the device opens an email client that keeps itself synchronized with the email client on the user's smartphone. Similar capabilities for office documents are also planned.
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Given its advanced power management, and use of Opera's Opera 9 for Devices browser, it's no surpise that the Foleo is based on an ARM processor. Palm would not say which one, however. One possibility is Intel's Xscale processors, which Palm uses in Treo smartphones. Another is Freescale's ARM11-based i.MX31, which recently gained an Opera 9 port.

The Foleo weighs 2.4 pounds, according to reports, and sports a "full-size" keyboard with an 18mm keypitch, as speculated in ISO standards, Hawkins said. Navigation is done via a TrackPoint nub in the keyboard, while a roller wheel below the keyboard offers fast scrolling.

The Foleo's bright 10.2-inch color screen has a resolution of 1024x600, while the device's video out port runs at 1024x768 (SXGA) resolution, to accommodate standard projectors during PowerPoint presentations.
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User storage will be expandable via a CompactFlash slot beneath the battery, as well as via a removable SD card. I/O includes USB, Bluetooth, and Wifi.

Claimed battery life is five hours, "even while using WiFi the entire time," according to PC Magazine coverage available here.
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Marketing VP Paul Cousineau commented, "Some things that are easy to do in Palm OS are hard to do in Linux. Like instant app switching and long battery life, which are inherent in Palm OS."

In addition to the Opera 9 browser, the Foleo's software stack will include DataViz's DocumentsToGo application, aimed at letting users edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.
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Concurrent with device availability, Palm plans to release an open SDK (software development kit) aimed at helping build a developer community around Foleo hardware.
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Availability

Palm expects to ship the first Foleo devices this summer, priced at $500 after a $100 rebate.
Reference Here>>

For the executive on-the-go, this Foleo may be just the handy enterprize mobility device for quick infromation access.

UPDATE - Friday 9-7-2007:

Not so fast. Put the fronds back on the PALM tree!

At the end of the day, Tuesday, the CEO of Palm, in a posting on the company's official weblog, announced that Palm would be terminating the Foleo as a product effective immediately.

Excerpted from C|NET News -

Palm cancels first-generation Foleo
Posted by Tom Krazit - September 4, 2007 2:32 PM PDT

Faced with biting criticism of the Foleo, a Linux-based psuedo-laptop gadget, Palm has decided to cancel the first generation of the device.

Palm CEO Ed Colligan broke the news (ed.) Tuesday after the close of the stock market.

Just last week, a financial analyst predicted that Palm would have to delay the Foleo's launch until September or October because of serious software-related bugs, but Colligan decided to kill the entire project instead.

"In the course of the past several months, it has become clear that the right path for Palm is to offer a single, consistent user experience around this new platform design and a single focus for our platform development efforts. To that end, and after careful deliberation, I have decided to cancel the Foleo mobile companion product in its current configuration and focus all of our energies on delivering out next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market," Colligan wrote on Palm's blog. Calls to Palm representatives were not immediately returned.

Palm unveiled the Foleo at the D: All Things Digital conference in May to widespread skepticism, despite the fact that Palm founder Jeff Hawkins considered it "the best idea I've ever had." The Foleo is basically an underpowered laptop that's designed to give Treo users a break from typing e-mails on a small phone keyboard. However, few could figure out why smart phone users--who ostensibly own a laptop already--would want to buy a separate $499 device that could do little more than send e-mails.

Colligan said that Palm is still working on Foleo II in conjunction with Hawkins. But Palm has to focus on updating the Treo and getting the newest version of Palm OS--now based on Linux--to market before tackling a new category like the Foleo. Palm will take a $10 million charge associated with the cancellation of the product, he wrote.
Reference Here>>

Mobility Device Gives Palm OS A New, Robust Life

Banner Ad photo from Janam Technologies website. Image Credit: Janam Technologies LLC

Mobility Device Gives Palm OS A New, Robust Life

Last week, on the floor of the National Retail Federation's "Big Show 2007", a company was displaying a new mobility data collection device designed to bring the next version of the Palm OS operating system into the retail marketplace in an upgraded, more robust way.

What makes this noteworthy is that there have been a few changes in the data collection market niche and these changes had put the Palm OS operating system in jeopardy of being orphaned or even left behind. The original company that had developed the Palm Pilot and Palm operating system software was sold to another company in Japan and one of the largest manufacturers of data collectors, Symbol Technologies, did not have its licensing agreement to use the Palm OS software extended or renewed. To complicate matters, Symbol Technologies was also purchased by one of the largest manufacturers of communications equipment and phones in the world, Motorola.

Symbol Technologies was having to walk away from a market that they had established through first placing pedestrian PDA technology in data collection environments, then making the PDA with its Palm OS more robust and capable to handle a greater number of tasks. A massive number of these devices were placed in the field without a plan to continue to improve or integrate technologies as they became available.

A couple of former Symbol employees recognized that this niche, the Palm OS PDA-based data collector niche, might end up on the side of the road with a bunch of satisfied customers not having a place to go to find a current "next version". Enter Janam Technologies LLC - a new start-up company that announces "Migration is now as easy as it was meant to be".

Close-up of XP30 Series QVGA Color screen. Image Credit: Janam Technologies LLC

Excerpts from a news item found at PDAsNEWS -

Janam Technologies and PalmSource Announce Five-Year Agreement
By Dimitris S. - Published on 11/9/2006

Janam Technologies LLC, a provider of rugged mobile computers that scan barcodes, and ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc., a member of the ACCESS CO., LTD., group of companies, today announced a licensing agreement that enables Janam to develop and sell application-specific mobile computers based on the latest version of ACCESS' Palm OS Garnet until 2011. In addition, Janam today announced its rugged, barcode-scanning, PDA-format mobile computers that will offer all the winning features of Palm OS Garnet, while still supporting barcode-scanning applications written for earlier versions of Palm OS. More than 40 million Palm Powered mobile phones, handhelds, and other mobile devices have been sold worldwide. With over 29,000 Palm OS application software titles available today, the Palm OS platform offers one of the largest third-party software catalogs to enable users to customize their Palm Powered smart mobile devices to fit particular needs.

"This is a story of investment protection," said Harry B. Lerner, Co-CEO of Janam. "Value-added resellers and their customers who have invested millions of dollars over the last 10 years in barcode-scanning applications for the durable Palm OS platform will now have cutting-edge hardware to which they can migrate their existing applications effortlessly, while adding newer functionality that further extends their solutions."
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Janam’s XP Series rugged mobile computers combine the benefits of the Palm OS® Garnet™, including long battery life, a simple development environment and overall system stability, with the advanced technical features found in typical industrial mobile computers that run on alternative operating systems, in a much smaller and lighter package - all for up to half the list price.

XP20 Series features a Monotone screen, 266MHz CPU, PDA and Numeric keyboards, Batch or WLAN, 1D symbology scanner only. Image Credit: Janam Technologies LLC

The XP20 Series features a custom, "bright white", 160 x 160, monochrome display that was developed to provide continuity with today’s Palm OS® industrial mobile computers.

XP30 Series features a QVGA Color screen, 266MHz CPU, PDA and Numeric keyboards, Batch or WLAN, choice of 1D scanner or 2D imager scanner. Image Credit: Janam Technologies LLC

The XP30 Series adds a color, quarter-VGA display and Bluetooth as standard.

Hand Held Products' tiny 5000 series image engine is a revolutionary combination of a digital camera, illumination optics, and aiming optics. Devices powered by Adaptus Imaging allow you to capture signatures, take photos, read virtually all bar codes - even damaged codes - and so much more. Best of all, it allows you to tackle emerging applications with confidence - protecting your investment well into the future. Image Credit: Hand Held Products

All XP Series products offer a 2D barcode scanning option [not supported by distributor documentation - All XP20 Series products are offered with 1D scanner only / All XP30 Series products are offered with a choice of 1D or 2D scan engines], meet IP54 sealing requirements, withstand drops to concrete from 4'/1.2m and weigh less than 10 ounces. The XP Series will be the world's first, rugged, mobile computer that combines Palm OS Garnet (version 5.4), numeric keypad option, user-accessible memory, NAND flash memory backup, USB connectivity, double capacity battery option and, in WLAN versions, WiFi Protected Access (WPA) wireless security.

With easy management of accessories in mind, Janam will also offer a single-slot charging/synching cradle, four-slot charging/synching cradle, USB synching/charging cable and attachable magnetic stripe reader (MSR) that works with all XP Series mobile computers.

Read All>>

Also, these excerpts and reflections from VARBusiness -

Symbol Bids Adieu To Palm, Start-up Seeks To Fill Void
By Shelley Solheim, VARBusiness - From the November 27, 2006 VARBusiness

Partners who have tested out the new devices say they think the products will fill a market need.

"The Palm OS base is shrinking, but there definitely remains strong demand from customers who need an aggressive barcode scanner with a simple application at a low price point -- something that Palm OS excels at," says Brad Horn, Portable Technology Solutions, a provider of mobile barcode enabled data collection solutions. "These customers cannot afford and do not need the higher end features bundled in with the Windows Mobile and CE.Net Terminals. The Janam terminal is a great fit for these price sensitive customers."

"There is still a Palm market out there. We found some customers were pretty upset with the end-of-life with Symbol's program," says Tom Moxley, president of Next Level Solutions, in Scottsdale, Ariz. "This will give the Palm user a good window to convert so he can do it on his timetable not with his back to the wall."

There is another small provider of rugged Palm-based devices based out of New Zealand, called Aceeca, although its devices are based on an older version of the Palm OS.
Read All>>

At the time of this post, the first production units are expected to ship out in the first half of Q1. List pricing of the XP Series devices is expected to range from $995.00 to $1,545.00 depending on how the XP Series device is configured.

The renewed focus, improvements, and upgrades of this OS developmental effort may translate into greater functionality of the PALM OS in general.