The End Of Samsung Palm OS Phones Is Here: SPH-i500 Has Been Discontinued.
The i500 was pulled earlier today from the business section of sprintpcs.com, and although it still appears on the consumer side, it has been confirmed as sold-out and discontinued.
The death of the i500 marks the end of Palm OS phones from Samsung, as they have reportedly closed their R&D Department for Palm OS Phones after Sprint failed to carry the i550.
Samsung pioneered the PdaPhone concept with the Palm OS powered i300, the original full-color PdaPhone back in 2001.
However long delays in releasing a 1xrtt (Vision) phone for sprint allowed the Treo 300 to snap up significant market share before the i330 even had a chance.
The i500 was revolutionary with its small size and clamshell form factor, which earned it an editor’s choice rating from cnet.com, in their words, "The compact i500 is one of the most civil marriages of a phone and a PDA." It also earned "Top Of The Class" status in the 09/04 issue of Consumer Reports as the top Pdaphone due to its' "ease of use and ample talk time." However extremely long delays led to the summer 2003 release of an OS 4.1 i500 going head on against the OS 5 and memory expandable Treo 600.
The i550 was to be Samsung's answer to the Treo series with the clamshell form factor together with OS 5, flash memory, sdi/o slot, oled screen, virtual transparent graffiti pad, and a 1.3 MP camera, among many other features, however ridiculously long delays coupled with pricing disputes pushed sprint not to carry the 1xrtt phone so close to the launch of their new Ev-do data speeds. The death of the i550 seemed to be enough to convince Samsung to disband their Palm OS team, and to focus on Windows OS in future PDA Phones.
The loss of Samsung in the Palm OS will surely be felt by all who appreciated a truly pocketable and phone-like PdaPhone.
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My Palm phone evolution:
i330>i500>i550>755p>Centro.
I am having issues with my i500. Does this mean that I will not be able to get a replacement i500 and will have to switch to something like the i600 or the Treo 650? That will really suck.
I held an sph-i550 in my hand at the Samsung showcase store in NYC... and noticed bugs in the prerelease software like the music stopping when you brought up the calendar.
After I smashed my pocketed sph-i330's screen onto a piece of furniture, I won't buy anything but a clamshell. The sph-i500 is/was a damn fine piece of equipment for its niche, I'm happy with mine though I want a cameraphone too.
So what's out there that has an SD memory slot, a camera, an integrated music player, and basic PDA functionality? And is it a clamshell?
do we know/imagine/speculate that this is the end of all Palm OS phones? This bums me out. I really have grown to LOOOVE my i500 (the "magic box" as my SO calls it).
If I am able to buy an extra one to put in storage for when my current one dies out, is it possible that Sprint will no longer allow me to use it at some point in the future?
Originally posted by Clarknt67 do we know/imagine/speculate that this is the end of all Palm OS phones? This bums me out. I really have grown to LOOOVE my i500 (the "magic box" as my SO calls it).
If I am able to buy an extra one to put in storage for when my current one dies out, is it possible that Sprint will no longer allow me to use it at some point in the future?
Not to belabor the obvious, but the Treo 650 is a Palm OS phone. (Or a PDA with phone functionality).
As for future Palm phones OTHER than the Treo, we can only hope that LG's development deal with Palm (announced July 2005) bears fruit someday.
Originally posted by Clarknt67 do we know/imagine/speculate that this is the end of all Palm OS phones? This bums me out.
Treo of course, but it's not a clamshell aka flip phone. And they seem to have preannounced a Windows Mobile version.
LG announced a deal with Palm but no phones yet.
And as mentioned in the "Well, I tried the i730, 650, 6600... and nothing tops my i500" thread on the Samsung SPH-i500 forum, the Group Sense Xplore M98 Palm looks pretty slick.
One thing that sold me on the i500 (and I know I"m in the small minority here) but I like using Graphitti for text input. I'm pretty good at it, and it's fast and my fingers are apparently too sausage-like to navigate the mini-keyboards that are all the rage.
But I have a feeling I'm going to have to adjust.
Or is there a contingent out there that would prefer their devices keyboard-less?
I travel a lot on business, and love the i500. Just yesterday: checking in at the airport, needed my flight number. Flip open the i500, thumb the calendar button, poke the flight entry and details / notes and voila. The flight entry was there because I loaded it to Outlook from a travel site.
Yes, I can theoretically do that with a Treo, but I hate candybar phones. And it's bigger than the i500, which is really the max I wan to carry around in my pocket.
The i550 was so close!
Now if we could only get them to do a Treo flip-phone!
Alas, with Treo signing up for Windows and Palm software selling itself... I'm not even sure if there will be Palm-based follow-ons to the Treo 650.
I do the same thing when I travel, I paste my Expedia Itinerarry into a note in my Palm Calendar, then I can pull the info up easily when I'm travelling.
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