PPP - Palm IIIx

The Palm IIIx

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.The new screen

.CPU and memory

.Cradle, RS-232 and IrDA

.Power consumption

.The new OS 3.1

.Summary

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What's really new
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Well, on the first sight, the new Palm model looks exactly like the old Palm III, just a little 'x' behind the Palm III sign identifies it. Interesting though, '3Com' and 'Palm IIIx' changed places (Palm IIIx now on the left side, 3Com on the right) ... interesting to know how that decision was made :).
Despite its similar look, inside the Palm IIIx alot has changed. As always, I will try to describe mainly the hardware related changes. But first some images, preferably in a clear case. The PIIIx 'chassis' fits perfectly the old P3 case. On the screen you can see the new OS3.1 'intro' after a hardreset - a quite nice feature for newcomers (it's the German OS 3.1).
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The new screen - Probably the best reason to get the new Palm IIIx is the new LCD screen. Although it has the same resolution of 160x160, the contrast is greatly improved. Finally you can read the screen also in dim light conditions without always having to use the backlight. The LCD module no longer comes from Optrex, so I guess 3Com finally found an LCD manufacturer with a decend display quality. The LC layer just seems to be more transparent, so you get much more ambient light back. The background is very light-gray (not as 'greenish' as the old one) and the pixels are nicely black.
It looks a bit odd when the backlight is switched on. The display seems to be trans-reflexive, that means indeed the former *black* pixels are lite. Fact is, that with the backlight, you get green pixels on a black background. I doubt that - as mentioned already - the OS is inverting the screen. Using the backlight in the dark is quite pleasant. It looks a bit odd though if used in 'half-light' conditions. You have to see it to know what I mean.
Let me add a personal opinion: I heard alot of people saying, the PIIIx had the best display ever seen on a PDA. Well, I'd say the display is great and for 'us' old Piloteers it's for sure the improvement we waited for. But frankly, if the IIIx would have been the first Palm ever released, nobody had talked about the display. Playing 'devil's advocate', one could even say that there is still no effective anti-glare (Write-Right's are still a good idea!) and the rest of the display quality is just what you expect from a few hundret $$$ unit. But if improvement counts, the PIIIx screen *is* a big improvement!
BTW, the screen is electrically 100% compatible with the old screens. In other words, if you can get a hold of a new screen you can put it in an old unit (Personal, Pro or PIII). 3Com saved however the copper shield used on the backside of the old displays.
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CPU and memory - The PIIIx comes with a new CPU, the Motorola Dragonball EZ. The core is the same, but there are some improvements regarding the peripherials. Despite any rumours, the CPU still runs exactly at the same speed - 16.58 MHz - and since the core is equal, don't expect any miracles from the CPU, it has no more muscles than the old DragonBall.
The most useful new embedded feature for the new models (the Palm V takes advantage of it too) is the new DRAM controller. Consequently the Palm IIIx comes with 4MB EDO RAM on its motherboard. BTW, DRAM is also alot cheaper than the old PSRAM, so if necessary (competition like the palm-sized PCs), 3Com could probably lower the prices even a bit more than before, since the 2 MB PSRAM of the old Palm III caused a good percentage of the production costs ...
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Of course I had to rip my IIIx apart to take some photos ... :)
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The backside of the motherboard is nearly unchanged. The power supply is the same than the one in the old PIII and there is the same RS-232 driver. Unfortunately the audio part remained also the same. There were rumours about a louder alarm ... I can hardly believe it! It's the same encapsuled piezo speaker driven by the same hardware. At least my PIIIx isn't louder, nor is it improved in any way regarding DTMF generation ... sigh ...
There seems to be also the same memory card slot, but it is empty (looks funny with the clear case <g>) and it's *not compatible* to the old memory card connector! So you can't use any old cards. The 4MB RAM and the 2MB Flash found a 'home' on the frontside of the motherboard.
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IMHO 4MB RAM is quite a bit to work with, but if you think it is not enough, TRG (now HandEra) already offers an xtra xtra board for the IIIx that expands your memory to 8MB. Unfortunately - not TRG's fault - any old XL or SPII cards are not usable in the PIIIx. The good news are, the Flash is 100% compatible with the old PIII and TRG's cards and - most important - with TRG flash tools. Be sure to take especially a close look at TRG's FlashPro, a phantastic tool to treat your free flash memory right on your Palm, no PC needed anymore. It works perfectly also on the new models!
But back to the IIIx. The new EZ CPU has a much smaller footprint than the old one, so the memory fits easily on the motherboard. In the moment it looks like the IIIx is not expandable, at least not easy. The DRAM controller in the EZ could handle higher density EDO-RAMs, but that would mean a major modification and you had to patch the OS to initalize the DRAM controller for the new RAM size. No recommendable procedure!
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Unfortunately 3Com didn't implement the soft contrast control in the IIIx and kept that wheel instead, although the EZ CPU as well as the OS 3.1 both would support it. I mention that because I think, that this contrast wheel is a particulary unfortunate design detail. You know the problem of the changing contrast when the Palm becomes colder or warmer? Well, I think it's not caused by the LCD itself or the 'electronics', but by that lousy contrast wheel! It's an ordinary carbon resistor with a lousy temperature stability together with an unfortunate range setting (the 'interesting' contrast settings are within a 20 degree turn out of 270 degrees) that changes the contrast that much when the temperatur changes. I'm really looking forward to first experiences with the new Palm V which has the software control! I might be totally wrong :) ...
UPDATE: No, I wasn't wrong ... the Palm V not only has an even further improved LCD (no 'streaking' as it can be seen on some Palm IIIx screens), the contrast of the Palm V seems to be much more stable. But meanwhile you can read the my whole Palm V rewiew!
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Cradle, RS-232 and IrDA - The cradle and the RS-232 design are 100% the same than the old one. Unfortunately also the power drain remained when you leave the IIIx in the cradle *and* have the cradle connected to any COM port, that's bad news. The good news are, you can use all peripherials you have for the Palm. If you had a Palm III already, you don't even have to unpack the cradle :).
The IrDA port is equipped with a new, smaller tranceiver. But the user doesn't feel the change. The IrDA support is still limited to OBEX, a less 'famous' (but defined) IrDA protocol the OS uses for beaning. For Hotsyncs via IR you still have to install the enhanced IR package, but without the AMX.PRC - see the details below in the OS section.
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Power consumption - Well, it's not easy to judge about the power consumption of the new model! The Palm generally uses alot of different 'tricks' to save power and the OS 3.1 together with the EZ CPU seem to have improved the power maangement alot. So let's look at the single states the Palm can be in.
I know you don't like to hear it, but the 'OFF' power consumption of the PIIIx went up! Main reason for it is the new RAM design. 4MB RAM instead of 2MB have to be supplied and retended, and - more important - true dynamic RAM instead of the old pseudo static RAM is used in the new design. Refreshing that RAM while the unit is 'off' just costs some more power. Consequently the 'off-consumption' suffered the most and went up by at least 50%, even more compared to older 1MB units. Now don't get a shock immediately :), if you use your Palm regulary, you won't feel it alot. The power consumed while the Palm is off is still little and represents only a small portion of the overall consumption anyway. In other words, if you had the chance to leave your old Palm sitting just there for 5 month without using it before it lost its data, that time now shrank to maybe 3 month . But who's not using a Palm for 3 month ...
Much more important is the power needed for normal work. In the 'idle' state (unit is on, no user or app action going on) the power consumption went up also, about by 15-20%. It's just the price you have to pay again for the 4MB of RAM. But still, it just means you have to switch off your Palm more often if you don't need it or set a shorter auto-power-off time.
Interesting though, in busy mode the power management seems to be much improved. Partly I could meassure up to 80% savings on active apps or user inputs. Graffiti action - usually causing a good portion of the consumption - became more power saving too. Generally tapping the screen causes less consumption on the IIIx than on the old Palm. But also very active apps - mostly games - benefit from the new design. My old Palm III with an TRG-XL board needs up to 80% more power in busy mode (Reptoids, Life, Missile Command).
I'm not yet sure whether the new EZ CPU or the new OS or both are responsible for that, but overall I'd say they do a good job. If you use your Palm regulary - and for what would you need a IIIx if not <g> - battery life on the IIIx should be at least as good as on the old Palm III, most likely even better. If you had a PIII with the 8MB XL board and the 4MB of the IIIx are enough for you, your battery life should even improve dramatically! But you should also keep in mind, that the old 'true static RAM' days are gone ... no current or future Palm will probably beat the battery lifetime of an old PilotPro with the TRG SP-II board :).
BTW, the power consumption of the backlight remained exactly the same. It's still quite some drain, about 150% of what the unit alone needs in idle mode (20mA idle mode, 30mA backlight, 50mA backlite idle mode). But with the new LCD, you will need to use the backlight much lesser than with the old model. Dim light conditions are no longer a reason to switch on the backlight - the biggest battery saver of all!
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The new OS 3.1 - The new OS is again no big deal when it comes to improvements for the user. The 4 (or 5 with Expense) standard PIM apps practically didn't change, there is still no possibility to cross-link any data of the different apps, nor is there any solution for the 4kB Notepad limit. And there's of course still no DTMF support. So far for the features wanted since the Pilot 1000 was out ... :).
The good news of course are, OS 3.1 is highly comaptible to all exisiting apps (except my hacks of course ... but I was warned to leave the CPU registers alone <g>) and of course your existing data. Upgrading to the new IIIx is a piece-of-cake: Use i.e. BackUpBuddy to do a full backup, put your new IIIx in the cradle and hotsync ... done ... well, nearly :) ... There were two things I had to do manually. 1) Due to an obvious flaw in the shortcuts of OS 3.0, it is a good idea to delete the Graffiti_ShortCuts.PRC file. You loose your shortcuts, but you solve a problem. 2) If you used the enhanced IrDA package on your old Palm, delete AMX.PRC in your backup folder too. As far as I found out so far, you don't need it for OS 3.1 and it messes up Beam receive on the IIIx! AMX entended the dynamic heap on OS 3.0 and it seems that OS 3.1 comes already with a bigger dynamic heap. Good anyway, since AMX was one 'nasty' file! You could get rid of it only with a hard reset (no, scroll-up reset didn't work for AMX).
Frankly, I didn't even install the new desktop that comes with the IIIx ... in fact I never installed the 3.0 desktop, I'm still on 2.1 and so far I'm happy with it :). So I dunno what's new there, but instead I know that you can sync your IIIx even with the old 2.1 desktop.
UPDATE: Calvin informed me, that I better had OS 3.1 installed, and basically he's right - I'm just lazy :). Each desktop version since 2.1 until now, improved little things here and there, and fixed also some minor bugs that might not have affected every user. So, go ahead and install it, after all you payed for it. BTW, you can even download the new desktop from 3Com's site.
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Last not least, OS 3.1 seems to be a bit faster than 3.0, but that's really only a personal opinion. Since the CPU isn't faster, I assume 3Com optimized some routines a bit here and there, which shows also in the enhanced power management. Let's see what happens when the first OS 3.1 3rd party apps appear that take advantage of the new goodies for programmers. However, OS 3.1 is a step forward, even if it's only a small one.
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UPDATE: I discovered an excellent example for an obviously *extremly* optimized OS routine in 3.1. In Econfig I use a certain API call to search for all installed apps. My code around that call has little influence on the speed of this search, and in OS 3.0 the initial search for 55 apps took about 8 seconds. OS 3.1 does the same job in 0.1 sec. or so .. hardly to time!! The same OS 3.1 routine is 80 times faster ... if that's not a nice surprise, try it out yourself. Yeah, I know, EcoHack doesn't work on OS 3.1 (not yet), but you can still install and run Econfig *without* EcoHack, just for that test!
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Summary - The Palm IIIx is definitely a nice new toy! Not too much innovation, but you get quite some improvements and you can keep your favourite apps, I think that's a big advantage. If you still use a PalmPilot and you constantly run out of memory, the IIIx is definitely a good choice. If you own a PalmIII already, the decision is harder: Take a good look at the new LCD, check your financial situation and then make up your mind :). Personally I think the 4MB are a good deal, it's really plenty of room for alot of activities, not to forget the 800kB of Flash you can use additionally with TRG's Flash tools.
Of course you might also consider to get the new Palm V, it's clearly the more 'fashionable' unit. Equipped with the same screen quality, the same OS 3.1, a software contrast control (which I really miss on the IIIx) and a very nice form factor it's a good choice for sure. IMHO the rechargeable battery which is fixed installed, is the biggest drawback. On the road you have to carry the charger instead of buying or carrying just a pair of little AAAs and you need a power source - could be a pain sometimes. I really had loved to see the same charging support for regular, changeable AAA NiMHs with the possibility to insert still regular alkalines when needed. But I would never deny the beauty of the Palm V and it'll be a hard competitor for the Palm IIIx ...
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