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Palm Foleo - first impressions

May 31, 2007 › Sandy McMurray | comment

Palm introduces Foleo mobile companion Some thoughts about the Palm Foleo, which was announced Wednesday at D5. I had a chance to see one at a press event in Toronto.

What it's not
Palm describes Foleo as a "mobile companion" - a brand new product category. Foleo is not a notebook computer (or a subnotebook or a notebook replacement). It doesn't have a hard drive or a CD/DVD drive.

Foleo will have a full-featured Opera web browser, but Palm says YouTube videos will stutter and mp3 files may not play well. Foleo is not a media player.

The good stuff
The main feature of Foleo is wireless e-mail synchronization with Treo smartphones, but there's much more to it than that.

Foleo has a smooth textured surface that's designed to be held. It's small enough to fit on an airplane tray table but it has a 10-inch screen and full-size keyboard (ISO standard 18mm pitch). There's a thumb wheel for scrolling, and dedicated Next/Previous buttons below the space bar for navigating in e-mail. (These buttons also serve as Back/Forward buttons while web browsing).

Foleo turns on and off instantly with no boot time (no sleep or hibernate needed). When you hit the off button, your work is preserved in flash memory so you can resume instantly just by turning Foleo on.

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless are built in. Foleo is password-protected when the matching smartphone is not in Bluetooth range. Palm promises five hours of battery life, even with Wi-Fi turned on.

Palm says Foleo's system software is based on Linux, which is an interesting and exciting development. (It's not Palm OS but it's not Windows Mobile either.)

All in all, there's a lot to like in Foleo.

Unanswered questions
Palm has released quite a bit of information about Foleo, but some specific details were missing. What processor is under the hood? What flavour of Linux? How much Flash memory?

And then there are the questions Palm can't answer - will RIM (BlackBerry) and Apple (iPhone) support Foleo or try to compete with it? (Or both?)

The price
Palm announced a price for the Foleo, but there are at least two gotchas. The basic unit will cost $499 US after some sort of rebate, and it will not have any add-on memory. (Specifically, the Compact Flash slot will be empty in the $499 configuration.) Users will want a CF card. It's like posting the price of a car before tax, shipping and freight.

Is the price too high? Probably not. At launch, Palm should be able to sell as many as they can make. The target audience (rich Treo users and early adopters) has money to spend, and this is both new and exciting.

The form factor may also make the Foleo attractive to Linux hackers (assuming it's possible to wipe the system clean and use it as a cheap subnotebook). I haven't read the threads on Slashdot, but I suspect some geeks are drooling.

The bad stuff
The VGA out connector is proprietary (i.e. non-standard, made by Palm). It's obviously not standard Linux, so existing apps probably won't work right away. The ship date is not clear. Not much else to complain about, unless you think the price is too high.

Will Palm get its groove back?
In the launch webcast, Jeff Hawkins reminded viewers of the "Zen of Palm" that was present in the first PalmPilot. Simplicity, hotsync, and instant on were killer features back then, and they're still compelling today.

Hawkins obviously hopes that the Linux-based Foleo "platform" will attract software developers. I remember the glory days of the Palm OS, when there were literally thousands of independent programs available for Palm handhelds. (Palm says the software development kit will be available when the first Foleos ship.)

In summary, it may not be a home run, but it's worth watching. I'm interested and I don't even own a cell phone.

May 31, 2007 › Sandy McMurray | comment on this item