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Last summer Sony began dropping hints that it was working on a PDA that would use the Palm operating system. Expectations were high. After all, this was the company whose Vaio range of laptop PCs had revolutionised the notebook market.
So there was a palpable sense of disappointment when its debut model, the Clie PEG S300E, arrived in Japan and the US at the tail end of last year. Sure, it had plenty going for it, but it was essentially little more than a Palm with a Sony logo. It was not the groundbreaking product Sonyphiles were hoping for. By the time the PDA reached the UK few punters seemed genuinely interested in it.
This may have a great deal to do with the fact that Sony had already unveiled its second Clie, the PEG-N700 as it became known in Japan, or the PEG-N710 in the US, which is on test here.
Physically there isn't a great deal to separate the new Clie from the original. They are both roughly the same length and thickness. The major cosmetic difference is that the 710 is finished in a very striking satin silver as opposed to the PEG S300E's odd purpley-blue.
When you switch on the 710, the most significant difference becomes apparent. The new model sports a superb colour screen. With just 256 colours it has significantly fewer shades than the 65,000 offered by the Handspring Visor and Palm m505. However, with 320 x 320 pixels in its 3.1in screen it has 150pixels/in; that's higher than all its colour screen PDA rivals.
The only other PDA that comes close in terms of clarity is Compaq's iPaq H3670 probably because, unlike their rivals, both models have reflective TFT screens that are lit from the front.
You can see the colour screen at its best using Clie's onboard PictureGear software that allows you to view photos you've transferred from your PC. They look amazing. Roll on the day when Sony launches its Memory Stick digital camera attachment for the Clie.
Another enormous leap over the original Clie is the inclusion of an MP3/ATRAC 3 music player, bringing it in line with Pocket PC OS-based handhelds that tout Windows Media Audio (WMA) players. The sound quality from the ATRAC 3 files has the edge over MP3 and WMA recordings in terms of detail.
The player is enhanced by a quality pair of curious-looking clip-on-earphones.
The Hold switch, which enables the user to turn off the LCD screen while listening to music, is a thoughtful touch. Of course, the 8Mb Memory Stick supplied with the 710 only stores a handful of MP3 tunes. So, for the music player to really earn, you'll have to add a further £100 or so to the cost to secure a 64Mb white MagicGate Memory Stick which can also store ATRAC3 files.
Sony has also opted for Motorola's 33Mhz DragonBall VZ processor, which brings the unit in line in terms of speed with both the Handspring Visor Prism and the Palm m505. The original Clie used just a 20Mhz processor.
It also has 8Mb of Ram and 4Mb of Flash memory for the operating system. The US and Japanese units use version 3.5 of Palm's OS, although we expect the European model to feature v4.0 as found on the Palm m505.
Sony has included a very impressive selection of applications. Although it is not definite which software the European version will be bundled with, expect to see the full complement of Palm organiser facilities, Sony's PictureGear image viewer, AvantGo (which enables the user to download web pages and read them offline), g-Movie (movie playback), Vindigo (city guides) and games such as Race Fever and AcidSolitaire.
CONTACT: Sony
0990 111 999
www.sonystyle.com
See also:
A great all-round PDA with loads of style and plenty of excellent software. 13 Jun 2002
All Palm PDAs
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