Thursday, July 11, 2002
Is "Oslo" the next Palm hardware design?
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THE COMPETITION" @ 10:27 AM
Here's a secret for you: deep down, I'm a hardware geek. Operating systems come and go, but beautiful hardware lasts forever. That's why I couldn't pass up the opportunity to share this photo with you - it looks like a new hardware design coming from Palm, but I don't know that I'd call it beautiful. 
The sender asked to remain anonymous, but it certainly looks legit. No Photoshopped-in screens here. What do you think? Will this be enough to steal Sony's thunder and stave off the Pocket PC?
[ORIGINAL IMAGE REMOVED]
Interesting design they chose - similar to the Sharp Zaurus with it's "hidden" keyboard. With this thing closed, this Palm would certainly be the "shortest" PDA on the market. My bet is that this hardware design will be coming out within 60 days, and it will have OS 5.0 on it. There's a high resolution version in the forums.
And here you have the high-res version of the image I was sent. I blurred the serial number off the front, cropped it a little, and brightened it, but otherwise this is unedited.
[ORIGINAL IMAGE REMOVED]
UPDATE: I received a phone call this afternoon from Matthew Archibald, Palm's Director of Global Information Security. We had a nice enough chat, but he asked me to pull the images and turn over the source image with the unedited serial number. They could have had their lawyers call me, so I'm returning the favour by cooperating and pulling the images. I'm not going to turn over the original image with the serial number unless the person who sent it to me tells me I can. Hopefully this won't get TOO ugly, but we'll see...I'll keep you all up to date on how this unfolds.
The sender asked to remain anonymous, but it certainly looks legit. No Photoshopped-in screens here. What do you think? Will this be enough to steal Sony's thunder and stave off the Pocket PC?[ORIGINAL IMAGE REMOVED]
Interesting design they chose - similar to the Sharp Zaurus with it's "hidden" keyboard. With this thing closed, this Palm would certainly be the "shortest" PDA on the market. My bet is that this hardware design will be coming out within 60 days, and it will have OS 5.0 on it. There's a high resolution version in the forums.
And here you have the high-res version of the image I was sent. I blurred the serial number off the front, cropped it a little, and brightened it, but otherwise this is unedited.
[ORIGINAL IMAGE REMOVED]
UPDATE: I received a phone call this afternoon from Matthew Archibald, Palm's Director of Global Information Security. We had a nice enough chat, but he asked me to pull the images and turn over the source image with the unedited serial number. They could have had their lawyers call me, so I'm returning the favour by cooperating and pulling the images. I'm not going to turn over the original image with the serial number unless the person who sent it to me tells me I can. Hopefully this won't get TOO ugly, but we'll see...I'll keep you all up to date on how this unfolds.
