PDA OR SMARTPHONE? A Palm apology

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Every lexical and/or grammatical mistakes are intentional, just with educational purposes.

What is a PDA A PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) is a pocket computer. They were

created for business environments but over the years they were evolving including more functions. The original concept includes: Calendar Memos Notepad Clock Calculator

In hardware terms includes: Touch screen Memory expansion slot Text input (full keyboard, digital keyboard or Graffiti zone) Computer connection for hotsync

Internet connection and multimedia functions were added with the years.

Palm inc.

•Created in 1995 from US Robotics•The responsible for the success of PDA’s• From Pilot 1000 (1995) to Palm Centro (2007) they used the Palm OS operating system•Palm products includes:

• Pilot 1000• Pilot 5000• PalmPilot Personal• PalmPilot Professional• Palm III• Palm IIIe• Palm IIIx• Palm IIIxe• Palm IIIc• Palm V• Palm Vx• Palm VII• Palm VIIx• Palm m100• Palm m105• Palm m125• Palm m130• Palm m500• Palm m505• Palm m515• Palm i705• Tungsten T• Tungsten T2• Tungsten T3• Tungsten T5• Tungsten W• Tungsten E• Tungsten E2• TX• Zire• Zire 21• Z22 Zire 31• Zire 71• Zire 72• LifeDrive

(Palm Smartphones were omitted)

What is and what is not a Palm? Characteristics of Palm OS:

Simply Easy to use Versatile Powerful Billions of free and paid software

Things you can do with a Palm OS PDA: Agenda functions Gaming Internet surfing (from PalmOS 1.0 to Palm OS 5 Garnet)

Watch movies Hear music Take, watch, and edit pictures Read eBooks Read and edit MS Office documents Remote control your computer and cell phone GPS functions Scientific, binary and engineering calculator Medicine powerful tool

(Here is where you say “Ohhhhh, it’s amasing”)

Palm PDA vs. Apple iPhone

Pilot 1000 PDA Apple iPhone

Released in March, 1996 Touch screen Computer connectivity Internal memory Non multitasking Background running Agenda:

Calendar Calculator Memos Notepad

Autonomy up to over a month

January 7, 2007 Touch screen Computer connectivity Internal memory Non multitasking Non background running Agenda:

Calendar Calculator Memos

Autonomy up to 36 hours

Why a Palm PDA and not a Pocket PC?Wait! First what is a Pocket pc? Windows Mobile (now Windows Phone Basic) based PDA such as

HP iPaq, Dell Axim, etc. Multitasking support Outlook sync

Ok, so let’s continue. Pocket PCs are more expensive than Palms Palm PDAs have better compatibility with computers including

Windows, Mac OS and GNU/Linux. Pocket PCs have only MS Outlook sync capability

Why a Palm PDA and not a Smartphone? The main reason to have a PDA and a cellphone instead of a

Smartphone is battery duration. Easy to use. Carrying convenience. It’s more cheap. Connectivity makes it unnecessary. It’s more cool. Even if Palm inc dies the software will stay, and if not you can do it

easily with free tools.

The Palm OS’s “hello world”#include <palmos.h>

UInt32 PilotMain(UInt16 cmd, void *cmdPBP, UInt16 launchFlags)

{

EventType event;

if (cmd == sysAppLaunchCmdNormalLaunch) {

// Mostrar una cadena

WinDrawChars( "Hola PalmOS", 13, 55, 60 ); (Palm OS programming with Codewarrior)

// Loop Main event (Palm OS programming with Codewarrior)

do {

// Terminar hasta que haga falta

EvtGetEvent( &event, evtWaitForever );

SysHandleEvent( &event );

} while (event.eType != appStopEvent);

}

return;

} (Palm OS programming with prc-tools on MAC OS)

And obviously…. Java IBM’s WebSphere Everyplace Micro Environment. SuperWaba as free replacement. Eclipse integration with EclipseME for J2ME and SuperWaba. SuperWaba IDE project. NetBeans J2ME MIDP Development plugin and SuperWaba

integration. Palm OS emulator for computers for depuration purposes.

(Arkanoid and Calculator made with SuperWaba)

Sources http://www.pdatungsteno.com/2006/11/07/programar-para-palmos-e

n-java-utilizando-herramientas-libres/

http://www.pdatungsteno.com/2006/07/02/programar-para-palmos-con-herramientas-libres/

http://www.pdatungsteno.com/2006/01/16/que-es-y-que-no-es-una-palm/

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_OS http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDA My experience