ive had an i500 since they came out, and before that i had an i330, and before that an i300....

every year i wait for the new Palm pilots to come out and then they release something that is for all intents and purposes exactly the same as the device they released the previous year. the 755p had the huge ground breaking innovation of an internal antenna.... and the new centro that everyone has been so excited about looks to me to be almost exactly the same as the treos, except it comes in red.

is someone at Palm just waiting and hoping that microsoft will buy them out? i mean treos even come with windows mobile on them now.

there was a time years ago when Palm had the mobile computing market completely cornered.... but it seems to me that they havent invested a cent in research and development since then. in every other aspect of technology things get smaller and lighter as time goes on. so then why is the Palm device i bought almost 5 years ago half the size of anything that is available today?

i dont really expect anyone here to be able to answer my questions... but it would be nice to hear what other people think about why Palm refuses to make a smaller pocket sized device (it's obviously possible.. samsung did it in 2003) Sony makes a complete computer now that measures 3.74" long x 5.91" wide that weighs 1.2lbs (Vaio VGN-UX390N) 2 centros next to each other are bigger and heavier then that.

ive never seen a company that plans on continuing into the future stagnate like this. it just blows my mind. if im missing something in this situation id love to hear about it.

Well...Palm might but they don't have the exclusive on the OS anyway. As far as form factor, Palm isn't a cellphone company. They make PDA's that can make phone calls. The real question is why (given their DNA) they continue with the QWERTY keyboard instead of going the iPhone route (they could have done it years ago, only talking form factor here not capabilities).

You have to remember that our phone was manufactured by a diversified electronics company that has the capital to try new things (Palm can't even get their "best idea Hawkins ever had" into production).

Having said all that...there was a rumor in the Kyocera 7135 (Verizon) forum that they might be bringing out a successor to that phone in Palm OS. The 7135 is approximately the same generation as our phone except it had an SD slot and I think the ability to use MP3 ringtones? My understanding was it is a little bigger and thicker and possibly less stable than the i500 but if Kyocera really is going to bring out a new Palm phone on Verizon, it may be worth checking out unless you are married to Sprint (and let's face it, Sprint has almost as much chance of going out of business as Palm does right now)

why would you want to go the iPhone route? I don't know one person that has one that can type on it nearly as fast as I can with a physical keyboard. I play with one about once a week, and I still can't type efficiently on it, maybe half as well as I can with a physical keyboard. Just doesn't feel natural.

And the 7135 was a beast compared to the i500.

actually, at this point, do we really care if Palm as a company goes under? Garnet is as far along as it's going to be. There is nothing new Palm can do at this point except to release the linux based OS. It'll have legacy support for Garnet. So what if another company releases the same thing? You don't need Palm's permission to have Garnet support. And if that's all Palm was bringing to the table, then we don't need them anymore. Let ALP or whoever else wants to develop a slicker Palm like interface in Linux and take it from there. Then we can say bye bye to Palm and their ineptness.

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