Palm handhelds were Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) which ran the Palm OS. Palm devices have evolved from handhelds to smartphones which run Palm OS, WebOS, and Windows Mobile. This page describes the range of Palm devices, from the first generation of Palm machines known as the Pilot through to the latest models currently produced by Palm, Inc including their new Palm Pre line of consumer smartphones.
On 28 April 2010 it was announced that Hewlett-Packard would acquire Palm for around US$1.2bn.[1] Although HP kept the Palm brand initially, all new PDA devices announced at press announcement on February 9, 2011, were branded as HP devices, not as Palm devices.
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Pilot was the name of the first generation of personal digital assistants manufactured by Palm Computing in 1996 (then a division of U.S. Robotics).
The prototype for the first Palm Connected Organizer was called "Palm Taxi". The first two generations of PDAs from Palm were referred to as "Palm-Pilots". Due to a trademark infringement lawsuit brought by the Pilot Pen Corporation, since 1998 [2] handheld devices from Palm have been known as Palm Connected Organizers or more commonly as "Palms". "Palm-Pilot" has entered the vernacular as a synonym for PDAs, regardless of the brand.
The inventors of the Pilot were Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan, who founded Palm Computing. The original purpose of this company was to create handwriting recognition software for other devices, named Graffiti, but their research convinced them they could create better hardware as well. Before starting development of the Pilot, Hawkins said he carried a block of wood, the size of the potential Pilot, in his pocket for a week.[3] Palm was widely perceived to have benefited from the notable if ill-fated earlier attempts to create a popular handheld computing platform by Go Corporation and Apple Computer.
The first Palms, the Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000, had no infrared port, backlight, or flash memory, but did have a serial communications port. Their RAM size was 128 kB and 512 kB respectively, and they used version 1 of Palm OS. Later, it became possible to upgrade the Pilot 1000 or 5000's internals to up to 1 MB of internal RAM. This was done with the purchase of an upgrade module sold by Palm, and the replacement of some internal hardware components. Originally, it was conceived that all Palm PDAs were to be hardware-upgradeable to an extent, but ultimately, this capability gave way to external memory slots and firmware-upgradeable flash memory after the Palm III series.
The next couple of Palms, the PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot Professional, had backlit screens, but no infrared port or flash memory. Their RAM size was 512 kB and 1024 kB respectively. They used version 2 of the Palm OS.
Palm III, and all the following Palms, did not have the word "Pilot" in their name due to legal disputes. ("Pilot" was, and still is, a registered trademark for pens.) The Palm III had an IR port, backlight, and flash memory. The latter allowed to upgrade Palm OS, or, with some external applications, to store programs or data in flash memory. It ran on two standard AAA batteries. It was able to retain enough energy for 10–15 minutes to prevent data loss during battery replacement. It had 2 Megabytes of memory, large at the time, and used Palm OS 3. (Palm also produced an upgrade card for the Pilot series, which made them functionally equivalent to a Palm III.)
Meanwhile, with Palm Computing now a subsidiary of 3Com, the founders felt they had insufficient control over the development of the Palm product. As a result, they left 3Com and founded Handspring in June 1998. When they left Palm, Hawkins secured a license for the Palm OS for Handspring, and the company became the first Palm OS licensee. Handspring went on to produce the Handspring Visor, a clone of the Palm handhelds that included a hardware expansion slot (early Palm devices also had a hardware expansion slot, however this was for device upgrade purposes, not peripherals) and used slightly modified software.
The next versions of Palm used Palm OS 3.1. These included Palm IIIx with 4 Megabytes of memory, Palm IIIe without flash memory or hardware expansion slot (and available for cheaper price), Palm V with 2 Megabytes of memory, and, Palm Vx with 8 Megabytes of memory.
Palm VII had wireless connection to some Internet services, but this connection worked only within the USA. It used Palm OS 3.2. Palm IIIc was the first Palm handheld with a color screen. It used Palm OS 3.5 which provided extensive tools for writing color applications.
Some of these newer handhelds, for example Palm V, used internal rechargeable batteries. Later this feature became standard for all Palms.
Palm handhelds initially ran on the popular DragonBall processors, a Motorola 68000 derivate. More recent models use a variation of the popular ARM architecture (usually referred to by the Intel Xscale brand name). This is a class of RISC microprocessors that is widely used in mobile devices and embedded systems, and its design was influenced strongly by a popular 1970s/1980s CPU, the MOS Technology 6502.
Palm Computing was spun off into its own company (called Palm Incorporated) in 2000. Handspring later merged with Palm to form palmOne in 2003 when Palm Inc. split into companies based upon selling hardware (palmOne) and the software (PalmSource). In 2005, palmOne acquired the full rights to the Palm name by purchasing the shared rights PalmSource owned and changed names back to Palm again. PalmSource was acquired by ACCESS Systems in 2005, which subsequently sold the Palm OS source code back to Palm, Inc. in December, 2006.
Palm handhelds continued to advance, including the ability to access computer hard drives via USB cables, and began to merge with smartphones. The "Treo 700w" was one of the later offerings that combined a Palm handheld with mobile phone, e-mail, MMS, and instant messaging (SMS) technology. It was also the first Palm-branded device to use Windows Mobile instead of Palm OS. It became widely expected that Palm handhelds as a PDA-only device would disappear as multifunction handhelds like the Treo 650 declined in price. Multifunction handhelds generally include a wider range of abilities traditionally found in separate devices, for example: an MP3 player, mobile phone, camera, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The Treo 650+ was a series of smartphones that included a camera, mp3 player, Bluetooth, and a mobile phone. The Zire 71 and 72 series also had these additional features. In 2007, Palm released the Palm Centro, a smartphone running Palm OS. Different in overall appearance from the Treo, it was most notably thinner. The Centro was a somewhat successful smartphone, combining many features with a decreased price. Palm later released the Palm Treo 500v, a device similar to the Centro which ran Windows Mobile 6.0.
Palm's focus following the Zire and Tungsten PDA lines shifted exclusively to smartphones, where the Palm OS operating system as used on the Treo's was becoming dated with both the Palm OS and the Window Mobile versions making minor impact in market share when compared to those of RIM (Blackberry) and Apple (iPhone). In order to try to change this trend Palm had been working on a new web-based operating system (webOS) which was an embedded Linux operating system that hosts a custom user interface built on standard web browser technology and offered genuine multi-tasking capabilities through a card based concept where each application ran as a card and the use of gestures to navigate between cards and perform actions. This platform won much respect from its peers (including praise from Steve Jobs the noted entrepreneur and founder of Apple) but was compromised by some of the shortcuts taken in the hardware for the initial webOS, and indeed Palm's final device offerings, the Palm Pre, and Palm Pixi.[4]
Palm released improved versions of both the Pre and Pixi as the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus which contained improved memory capacity or processor updates but did not significantly address some of the limitations of the hardware (e.g. the screen, and CPU) in comparison to other smartphones on the market at the time.
With the acquisition of Palm by HP the next device to market was the Pre2 which did address the screen and processor issues, these were followed in 2011 by the HP Veer and the HP Pre3, the former being a compact form factor (the world's smallest smartphone not much bigger than a credit card on release) and the latter showing the hardware potential to compete in the demanding smartphone market, that had expanded to include Google's Android, before Leo Apotheker, then HP CEO, abruptly pulled the plug on webOS in August 2011, which caused a dip in HP share value and ultimately cost him his job.
Palm T/X ML handheld bundle pack
| Discontinued Model | Replacement model |
| Pilot 1000 | PalmPilot Personal |
| Pilot 5000 | Palm Pilot Professional |
| PalmPilot Personal | Palm III |
| PalmPilot Professional | Palm IIIx |
| Palm III | m100 |
| Palm IIIe | m100 |
| Palm IIIx | m105 |
| Palm IIIxe | m125 |
| Palm IIIc | m130 |
| Handspring Visor | Zire 31 |
| Palm V | Palm m500 |
| Palm Vx | m500 |
| Palm VII | VIIx |
| Palm VIIx | i705 |
| Palm m100 | m105 |
| Palm m105 | Zire |
| Palm m125 | Zire 31 |
| Palm m130 | Zire 71 |
| Palm m500 | Tungsten E2 |
| Palm m505 | m515 |
| Palm m515 | Tungsten E2 |
| Palm i705 | Treo 650 |
| Tungsten E | Tungsten E2 |
| Tungsten T | Tungsten T2 |
| Tungsten T2 | Tungsten T3 |
| Tungsten T3 | Tungsten T5 |
| Tungsten T5 | TX |
| Tungsten W | Treo 600 |
| Tungsten C | TX |
| Zire | Zire 21 |
| Zire 21 | Z22 |
| Zire 31 | none |
| Zire 71 | Zire 72 |
| Zire 72 | none |
| Handspring Treo 90|Treo 90 | none, last Handspring PDA |
| Handspring Treo 180 | Treo 270 |
| Handspring Treo 180g | Treo 270 |
| Handspring Treo 270 | Treo 600 |
| Handspring Treo 300 | Treo 600 |
| Treo 600 | Treo 650 |
| Treo 650 | Treo 680, Treo 700p, Treo 755p |
| Treo 700w | Treo 700wx |
| Treo 680 | Centro |
| LifeDrive | none |
| TX | none |
| TE2 | none |
| Z-22 | none |