I carry on me every day 4 devices: my aging, and almost dead, Blackberry (cell phone, email and rudimentary internet access), my aging Palm (a Sony Clie clamshell, my PDA), my aging 60G iPod (which carries my entire music and audio collection), and my getting-older-but still-ok Canon digital camera. Of these, I need a replacement for the following functions: web access (I’ve always needed this – GPRS just doesn’t cut it for data, and the Blackberry’s web browser is barely worthy of the classification), and PDA functions including calendar, ebook reader, note-taking, and various odds-and-ends utilities. The phone works ok for me, thanks to bluetooth, where I usually don’t have to touch the actual phone, and while my iPod could go at any time, it does exactly what I need it to do.

However, the rumours of the new iPhone suggests that I might be able to replace 2, if not all 4 of these devices. Not to say I believe the rumours – I have a dedicated shaker set aside just for these things (and I do love to use it)! The more credible of these (coupled with stuff Apple has said officially) suggests that as a mobile computing platform (which is what my requirements basically boil down to), this is going to fit the bill nicely: the phone is a given – the first iPhone did this well enough for me already, as it did for email. The new firmware and the announcement of the App Store means that it looks like it will suit for those odds-and-ends utilities (without, hopefully, the need to jailbreak it. BTW, one of the apps I’m most interested in is the Palm emulator – there are a few apps on the Palm I don’t see replacements for yet.). The almost-certain 3G capability, coupled with WiFi, will provide the network access I require. As for music and audio, even if the rumoured increase in storage capacity to 32G is true, it’s still going to be half of what I need (and I’d need that just for music – forget about adding apps!), so I’m either going to still have to carry around the old iPod, or change my expectations. I’m guessing that I’ll figure out a happy medium, carrying around what I need (a rotating selection of favorites and podcasts), and the rest of the storage will be file space for other things. Finally the camera: I don’t see my giving up all of the functionality of a real camera for a cell-phone camera, no matter how much they’ve souped it up, but even so, that makes only two devices to carry (and the camera is one of the smaller ones that was available when I bought it), and that will be nice. Still, the prospect of having an adequate (some rumours say the chip used is capable of up to 5MP) sensor, with (rumoured) automatic, GPS-based geolocation tagging, and (almost obvious) automatic uploading to services like Flickr nudges it toward useful.

There was a certain amount of disdain for the “fan-boys” who stood in line for days to be among the first to own an iPhone. I won’t be standing in any lines, but I will order one this week if they are made available. The difference is, as far as I’m concerned, that I’ve already been waiting a year. Now I just have to wait a few hours more.

So here’s what I’ve got (so far): The Sony Clie PEG-NX70V/U, and all that comes with, the PEGA-WL100 wireless LAN card, a Lexar Media 128M memory stick, and the Boxwave minisync.

I’ll start off with what I like about it, keeping in mind I’m comparing it to my old Palm III, so mind the gap. This thing is fast. With a 200Mhz processor, it’s no wonder, but even routine operations are instantaneous. I had always kept a novel on my palm, and the refresh from one page to the next always took a noticeable amount of time. Not any more.

The screen is wonderful – lots of real estate (in 320×480 mode), and bright and easy to read. The colour adds to most apps, rather than distracting, and I love the virtual graffiti area. I’ve found that, for some reason, having the trace of the pen stroke on the screen has improved my accuracy. This could simply be because the digitizer on my old Palm was so bad, but it could also be that I can now see what works, and where I went off.

I’m a bit of pack-rat, so not only is the 11M of memory great, but having removeable media, and therefore virtually unlimited storage, means I don’t have the previously-constant memory battle.

Briefly, as for the rest, the camera is a nifty novelty. I had originally thought: “great, if ever I want to remember something, in a store, etc. I don’t have to write it down, I can just take a picture!”. Yeah, nice rationalization. I actually have used it for that once or twice, but mostly it’s a great novelty, and a great conversation piece (it’s fun to watch people’s faces when they find out there’s a camera on your handheld!). I like having the wireless card, although I wish there were more apps (see cons, below), and the keyboard is nice to have.

A Few Cons

OK, so there’s a few things that bug me, but the main one isn’t even a problem with the design. We’ll get to that in a minute. First off, the application (memo, schedule, etc) and scroll buttons are almost useless. I usually have it in tablet mode (clamshell open & screen roatated and folded down), and yes, I have OKey installed (still waiting for the silkscreen plugins), but here’s the problem: when you’re playing games, where do they usually map the controls? Yup, the hardware buttons. Even when you’re not in tablet mode, the size and position of the buttons make it hard to play. I guess Sony already knows about this, given that you can buy a game controller that plugs into the cradle port. I don’t play that many games, so I can’t decide if I should invest in it, and then there’s yet another thing to lug around…

I have two major problems overall. The first is well known to NX owners: Sony’s propriatary nature. This mostly comes in the form of a lack of drivers for compact flash cards. The only card that works in the slot is currently Sony’s wireless card. I should mention that Sony never claimed in their marketing that it was a compact flash slot, merely that it was for “wireless expansion”. I don’t mind buying memory sticks, but if Sony changes the form factor with their “next-generation” memory sticks such as to make them incompatible with the Clie, then drivers for compact flash media would be useful. The other problem is a seeming lack of API disclosure to developers for things like the audio subsystem and other things that are unique to Sony and the NX series.

Now, I realise that this is a new processor, running a new OS, and Sony was in a hurry to get to market with these units, so maybe all we need is a little time to let things catch up. I hope that’s all it is.

My final beef really has nothing to do with Sony or the unit (actually, it’s probably partly my own fault for buying a bleeding-edge device), but mostly with the developer community. I should preface this by saying I have absolutely no problem with people writing software and selling it. If that’s how they make their living, then they have every right to charge what they think their creativity and time is worth. But (and I’m coming from the Linux community, where there’s a lot of quality software that’s free) why is so much of even the mediocre Palm software either shareware or commercial? And this seems to be a fairly recent thing, as even software packages that I had on my old Palm IIIx seem to now be asking for money. Oh, I’m aware of freewarepalm.com, and others, but in a lot of cases, the quality just isn’t there. The most frustrating thing was all of the software included on the Clie CD suddenly expired without warning. Um, Sony? I just shelled out $600+ for this thing. You think you could include some unrestricted software titles?

Anyway, hopefully as PalmOS 5 catches on, there will be more quality, useful freeware released. Oh, and I’m not just complaining. I’m going to try my hand at some of this. I’m not really a C++ guy, and it’s been awhile since I’ve written any C code, but I grabbed the SDK, and I’m reading the docs, so hopefully I’ll be able to do something useful. And I’ll even give it away.

Well, that’s my $0.02 worth for now. Feel free to post comments.