Reviews
Palm
Tungsten E2
Freshening up a sweet bestseller
Palm's
Tungsten E is the company's top selling model, and for the year
and a half up to January, 2005, the E claimed a whopping 26% of
the USA handheld market, making it far and away the best-selling
PDA in the country. With a range of products from the entry-level
Zire 21 at $99 to the spectacular Treo 650 at $599, Palm's Tungsten
models fill the mid-range gap with feature-rich, stylish technology
for those who have about $250 to $400 to spend. If the Treo 650
was a Lexus, and a Zire was a Corolla, the Tungsten E would be
Palm's Camry÷comfortably in the middle, affordable to most, looks
good, performs well, and there are so many of them out there,
there's a boatload of third party support, software, and accessories.
Although
I only had a few days to play with a new E2 before deadline, I
was pleased to see that palmOne did some important and needed
upgrades to the E, while its attractive brushed aluminum-looking
casework is virtually identical to its older brother. If you own
a Tungsten E, I think you'll be as happy as I was with the improvements
and changes of the E2.
The
Tour
The Tungsten E2 is practically a clone of the original E. The
hard buttons surrounding the five way nav pad are identical on
both. So are the screen size, silk-screened Graffiti panes, the
SD/SDIO/MMC card slot, IR beaming port, headphone jack, power
button, stylus and its silo÷all look and feel the same, and are
in the same place. Around back are a few tiny changes. The mono
speaker's grille has been moved down a bit, the reset hole now
accommodates the stylus tip instead of requiring a paperclip,
and the new guy has the same recessed rail on the left side to
attach the bundled flip lid, but its not until you look at the
bottom of the E2 that you notice something really different. Gone
is the tiny round power jack and mini-USB port, replaced with
palmOne's new ãmulti-connectorä ÷ the same used on the T5 and
the Treo 650.
In
the E2's box are palmOne's new square-tipped AC charger, and a
separate two-pronged sync cable. If you're going to upgrade from
an E to an E2, know that your E's power and sync cables are not
going to work with the E2 model at all.
Outwardly,
the E2 is an evolutionary, not revolutionary, upgrade. The E2
and the E are exactly the same height and width, but the E2 is
9/100ths of an inch thicker, and 1/10th of an ounce heavier. Their
screens are the same 320x320, 16 bit (65,000+) color resolution,
and same size. Adequate, but not spectacular.
Palm
claims the E2's screen is about 30% brighter and has 40% better
color saturation than the E. This is difficult to quantify, and
it depends on ambient lighting conditions. Indoors in a normally-lit
or darkish room, with screen brightness cranked up full on both
PDAs, to me, the E2 definitely looked brighter, and showing the
same JPEG images on both, I'd give a slight edge to the E2 for
more realistic colors, and a punchier display. Outdoors, in bright
sunlight, it still washed out, and I had to cup my hand around
the screen to shade it so I could see what I was doing.
The
Guts
Inside, it's a whole Înuther story. Let's take a look at the basic
specs: The Tungsten E2 uses PalmOS Garnet V5.4, has an Intel XScale
CPU @ 200 MHz and 32MB storage (26MB actual). The Tungsten E ran
PalmOS V5.2.1, had a T.I. ARM CPU @ 126 MHz and also 32MB storage
(28.3 actual). But new to the E2 is the wonder of non-volatile
flash memory. Like the T5 and the Treo 650, if your battery conks
out, you won't lose your data. And just like them, you could put
an E2 in a drawer for a year, turn it back on, charge it up, and
all of your RAM-stored data would still be there. With the E,
forget it. You'd have to re-sync or re-install while wiping away
the tears; without flash RAM, when the battery goes bye-bye, so
does your data. Palm also claims the E2 has a beefier battery,
with longer life between charges, and using an E and an E2 side
by side for a few hours straight, I'll validate that.
Totally
new to the E2 is Bluetooth 1.1. This low power, short-range radio
technology lets you ãpairä the E2 with a suitably equipped computer
for wireless HotSyncing, or use other Bluetooth-enabled devices
like keyboards. If you own a Bluetooth-enabled GSM cell phone,
you can pair the E2 with it and use it as a wireless modem for
email and Web browsing. The E2 has a built-in Bluetooth device
setup wizard to make it as painless as possible, but since my
only cell phone is a Treo 650 on SprintPCS' CDMA network, I couldn't
try this feature (never mind that it would be ridiculous for a
Treo 650 owner to use the smart phone as a modem for a Tungsten
E2 anyway, since the Treo already HAS full Internet abilities
built into it) but the capability is there if your phone meets
the requirements.
New
interface: T5 Junior
The Tungsten E2, besides sporting the familiar icon apps interface
that Palm owners have been using since day one, has inherited
the attractive new ãFavoritesä interface, which, except for the
smaller screen size, is identical the one on its big brother,
the Tungsten T5. The ãstarä icon on the Graffiti area has been
remapped to switch between apps/icon view and Favorites view,
although you can remap it and/or the hard buttons to launch any
other program, as you'd expect.
Favorites
lets you quickly see and open files and programs that you use
most often, even links to the Web. Some items are included in
Favorites by default, but you can rearrange their order, move
them to lesser-used pages, and even use a JPEG with variable transparency
as a backdrop. Switching from Favorites to apps view is as easy
as tapping the star icon again.
This
upgraded version of PalmOS in the E2 makes all system alerts and
requesters prettier, and also puts a blue halo around active screen
buttons in most programs, making it trivial to navigate around
using the five way pad, then just punch its center button to do
whatever feature is haloed. Easier, faster, more visually intuitive
than having to drag out the stylus and tap dance all over the
place.
Software,
and lots of it
The E2 comes out of the box with a robust and powerful bundle
of software, with more on the included Palm Desktop CD, ready
to install. With the included DataZiz Documents to Go you can
view and edit native Microsoft Word docs, Excel sheets, PowerPoint
presentations, and Adobe Acrobat files through a simple conversion
process. The Blazer Web browser's on board, so web links in documents
become active. VersaMail's there too, along with the PalmOS RealPlayer
ö just shove in an SD card full of MP3 files and enjoy. The E2's
built in speaker sounds like an old transistor radio, as you'd
expect from one so tiny, but that's why there's a headphone jack,
or buy a third party FM transmitter and broadcast your tunes to
your car or home stereo.
The
E2 doesn't have built-in WiFi, but by the time you read this,
Palm will have released a driver for their SDIO WiFi card.
A
fine upgrade at a good price
At its price point, and with all these new features and improvements,
I'm just plain impressed by the new Tungsten E2. A handsome and
capable little machine made even better. Palm did a fine job improving
the best-selling personal digital assistant on the market.
--Harv Laser
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