More First Impressions

[Peter]

I'm at work so can't install the Tapwave Palm Desktop to sync to my Zodiac and install software from the CD, but I am charging it and played with it some. Let me offer up my impressions (be aware that I bought the Zodiac primarily as a PDA, with the idea of having a good gaming device or MP3 player for traveling being secondary):

Form factor: It's great. The cold metal case feels very solidly constructed, and the ergonomics are spot-on -- when you hold it, your forefingers automatically move to the shoulder-buttons, and your thumbs to the analog controller and D-pad. The flip cover is fine. It's thinner than an original Tungsten T, about the same size as an open Tungsten T3. The stylus attachment mechanism takes a little getting used to, but is fine.

Screen: Really good, it looks very similar to the Tungsten T3 screen. Mine has one bad subpixel and another defect, like a big piece of dust that appears to be in front of the backlight but behind the pixel grid. Irritating, but not so much so that I'll return it.

Out of box software: Loaded on the handheld out-of-the-box is AcidSolitaire, InkStorm (a Bluetooth whiteboard), Kinoma Player, PalmReader, powerOne Graph calculator, and Wordsmith w/spellchecker and thesaurus. Interestingly these apps all appear in RAM (112.2M of 116M free); I'm not sure if they disappear when you hard-reset, or if they come back out of the ROM.

Bluetooth: The Bluetooth button has two blue LEDs under it. When you press it once, the LEDs turn on and a window tells you that your device is discoverable for 3 minutes. When you hold it down, the LEDs turn off (and presumably the Bluetooth radio does too). I had no problem Sending memos or applications between the Zodiac and a Tungsten T via Bluetooth; aside from the button and lights, it seems to be a pretty standard Palm OS Bluetooth implementation.

Performance: It feels pretty snappy. yCPUBench benchmarks the CPU about where you'd expect on the integer and floating point benchmarks (I'm comparing to a 144mhz Tungsten T and a 400mhz Tungsten C). Memory read and write throughput exceeds both the Tungsten T and C. I ran VFSmark on a 64MB Sandisk card (interestingly, a flyer in the box states that "SD card performance can vary singificantly by brand of card" and specifically recommends Panasonic, Memorex, and Viking cards) and got a 202, compared to 103 on a Tungsten T and 137 on a Tungsten C.

Tapwave touches: The Tapwave OS sounds are pleasant. The new launcher is really intuitive to use. There is a RAMdisk on the handheld for holding images, MP3s, etc. even when no cards are inserted (the four sample photos that come with the device are on this RAMdisk). My impression from using the device is that Tapwave is in touch with the "Zen of Palm."

So far I'm well-pleased and am excited to get it home, install the rest of the software on the CD, and explore some more.

Any questions?

[Scott]

Peter, thanks a lot for the comments. It's great to hear some new stuff, like the benchmarks. I'll try to post a blurb about those on the front page. Can you check the web browser? If you don't have a BT phone, I'm not sure how well you'll be able to try this out). It's on the CD-ROM, so you'll have to install it. I'm interested to know if the browser has been customized for the 480x320 screen, but I'm concerned that it may be stuck at 320x320. If you have a digital camera and can take photos, all the better. Thanks again,

Scott

[Peter]

I can't install the Desktop software at work to sync, but I just realized I can copy over the .PRC using an SD card, duh! So I just did. We have a PicoBlue access point at work so I can actually reach the internet via Bluetooth without blowing through expensive GPRS kilobytes.

And yes, the browser IS optimized for the Zodiac. It works great full-width (even though the links on the home page are all to mobile-optimized sites that don't use the full width). It's kind of backwards from other apps on the device in that the ANALOG stick is used to scroll around the page. The buttons on the D pad are back/forward (left and right), goto URL (down), and home (up). The extra button (the dot button under the analog stick [oops]) is for bookmarks.

I'll try to take some pictures later tonight.

[Oliver]

Thanks, Peter! Great news on the web browser! And congrats on getting your Z2. Mine's still nowhere in sight :-(

Oliver

[Scott]

That's definitely a pleasant surprise about the web browser. After hearing that Tapwave had offered little to no Bluetooth cell phone profiles and given the fact that Tapwave's site barely makes mention of the browser, I was fully expecting to find that it was limited to 320x320.

Scott

[Oliver]

Maybe some considerate Tapwave developer thought that it would be useful for herself to have a better browsing experience

I mean, it can't be THAT difficult to implement landscape and "wide-screen" support for your app. I haven't really looked into it myself for my own app, but once the Zodiac's here, that's going to be a thing to try out for me.

Oliver

[Peter]

Here, the lighting isn't so good, but here are some pictures of the web browser in action. Somehow I got it working through my D-Link DBT-120 Bluetooth dongle at home.

[Scott]

Thanks Peter. I was just thinking about how I should have asked you to take screen shots while browsing Tapland and you went and did it, anyway. One potential bummer: I noticed that you have to scroll horizontally when browsing a "regular" web site. So there isn't any "squeeze to fit" mode like on so many other browsers?

Scott

[kingalien]

I just got mine today, haven't played much, but popped in my SD card with MP3s and at the highest sound setting, it does not seem to be as loud as the highest sound setting on the T3. The speakers are nice, but they are located on the left and right side of the unit right where you would place your hands and cover the speakers when you are using both the gaming controls.

[Peter]

If there's a setting to force pages to fit in the horizontal span of the display, I don't see it. The browser is PalmSource's Web Browser 2.02, based on NetFront technology.