PDA Reviews

PalmOne Tungsten T5

For the past couple of years, is trying to bring up some new features on their each new release. Palmone tungsten T3 might have impressed you, but the new PalmOne Tungsten T5 has a lot more in store for you designed at ease without taking away anything that the user is already comfortable with.

Design:
The PalmOne Tungsten T5 PDA Phone has a stylish sleek look which has made it a style icon. The plastic casing and a light grey brushed finish makes it look even more gorgeous. The display screen covers the 95% if its area, whereas the shortcut and the navigation keys cover only a minimal area. The tungsten T5 has inherited its properties from both T3 and tungsten E. Avoiding the formers slider and adopting the latter’s case design was the best decision taken by palmones’s designers. T5 might look like a stretched version of E, those who are familiar with E. The 320 x 480 pix screen is vibrant. Though the resolution is same as that of the previous tungsten, T5’s colour visibility is better. The display is capable of displaying 65,536 colours.

Buttons:
The bottom part of the screen which is used for text input can be removed by tapping an icon in the bottom of the right display and now you can use the entire screen for viewing your current application.
The one-touch pivot button located at the bottom of the display toggles from portrait to landscape viewing modes. The other shortcut icons include shortcuts to Bluetooth, home button, search button, a remainder icon, menu button, digital clock and a graffiti panel. By pressing the home button repeatedly, in the previous versions of palmone, it would cycle through the application categories. But now it flips between the launcher and favourites (the new comer to palmone). There are four pages for each of eight favourites and hence there is plenty of scope there too.

There is a file manager that puts the familiar visual interface on the device which allows performing move, copy, delete and beam with ease.

Browser:
The blazed web browser is far ahead when compared to the other browsers in hand held devices. The versamail email client is very simple to setup and use. It comes with a dialer application that allows PDA to instruct you phone to dial a phone number via IR or Bluetooth. Mobile phone with an IR port can also be used as a modem for the PDA. It has a potential SMS tool that allows you to send messages via your Bluetooth connected mobile phone.

Memory:
This PDA Phone has 256MB memory out of which 55MB is RAM and a separate 160MB storage space. The rest 41MB acts as T5’s ROM. Palmone Tungsten T5 smartphone is equipped with flash memory in order to ensure that no data is wiped off when power is lost. Hence all the memory is non-volatile. Unlike the usage of hard drive, a hard reset will erase its RAM and also the 160MB flash. But it has been observed that with the use of flash, the application access time is slower. How long the flash would last is is also an issue that must be taken into consideration. This depends on how many writes it can stand. T5 is good for about 100,000 writes.

Media:
The photo and video content is handled by palmone’s media application which provides tools to annotate pictures. The play back capability of Tungsten T5 is impressive. T5 does not have the voice recording facility and also the vibrating alarms. T5’s new multi-connector replaces the former universal connector, which adds the audio out facility. The T5 does not come with a cradle. So you have to plug the sync cable directly into the unit for syncing and you have to plug the charges directly into the PDA or into the sync cable in order to charge it.

The Hot sync can be initiated by either selecting the hot sync on the palm or by pressing the button on the end of the sync cable that plugs into the PDA.

Connectivity:
For connectivity, the palmone tungsten T5 is integrated with Bluetooth. The absence of Wi-Fi can be felt. The tungsten T5 runs on palm OS 5.4.5, which is an enhanced version which includes a file system browser and has the ability to mount the T5’s 160 meg memory as USB removable drive on your pc. The Tungsten T5 has 416MHz Intel Processor. It has a removable flip cover and an SD slot that supports SDIO.

Battery:
The palmone tungsten T5 phone uses a 1300 mAh lithium ion battery. The battery is not user replaceable. It does not have a charging LED indicator. Battery life has increased but not so significantly.

PalmOne tungsten T5 is good to use for those who are less technically minded. It is mainly designed for official purpose but the general users have something for them too.

PalmOne Tungsten T5 PDA Smartphone - Technical Specification Table

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