Palm Foleo - a Smart Phone Companion
At D5 Palm flaunted its new Palm Foleo device which is a companion for its smart phone devices. Priced at around $500, featuring a cell phone sized charger and a Thinkpad like pointer, its going to be interesting to see how far the “Foleo” really goes. As far as looks, its quite sleek however don’t be fooled, this is a smart phone companion meaning it synchronizes with your smart phone through bluetooth and then allows you to work with documents, write emails and of course browse the web on a larger more robust screen. The Foleo comes with one touch email access, an opera web browser, wifi and Word, Excel and Powerpoint editors built in, along with a PDF reader. As far as connectivity options you will have available a USB port, a video-out port, a headphone jack, and SD and CompactFlash memory card slots. Currently there is only support for Palm’s Treo models however Palm hopes to close the gap by seeing interactivity of the unit with others such as Windows Mobile, Symbian, BlackBerry, and Apple. It doesn’t function like a regular laptop and is targeted towards business individuals who are looking for a little more functionality with portability in mind. Although the $500 price tag is in the range of some rather low-end laptops, it seems a little unplanned to me. The reason people purchase the Treo is because of its size that allows for high productivity keeping portability in mind and even though the Foleo is only 2.5lbs in weight, the reason for carrying around a smart phone companion seems likely an unlikely combination. Its a fantastic concept however it would be more likely that an individual who uses their Smart phone frequently for emails, editing and web browsing would find a need for the Foleo. It would be more interesting to see the Foleo as a standalone product such as NEC’s MobilePro as the Foleo does seem like it has a lot going for it.
Here are some more pictures of the Foleo courtesy of Cnet:
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