Palm will exhibit its Tungsten hand-helds in Hong Kong next Friday, an event eagerly awaited by Palm fans.
Tungsten is Palm's new brand of high-end hand-helds; Zire is the new lower-cost line.
Perpetually late for its own party, the Tungsten T is the second Palm OS 5.0 device to hit the market after Sony's recent Clie Peg-NX70V. As Palm's answer to the Microsoft Pocket PC challenge, it is understandable there is a lot of media buzz around the T.
The second Tungsten, the W, is a General Packet Radio Services hand-held phone aimed at taking on Research In Motion's BlackBerry and is similar to Handspring's Treo 270. The W has a more attractive casing and display but, if lined up side by side, they look alike.
I would like to give more details but Palm will not reveal any information about pricing, availability or why the wireless Tungsten W is still not on the company's Web site. So are they worth buying? If you are a Palm fan, I think the answer is yes.
If not, you might want to look at what else is available on the market in the same price range. At US$499 and US$549, respectively, the T and W are not cheap considering the number of Pocket PCs available at lower prices.
While the T and W feature better colour screens at 320x320 pixels, Pocket PCs and Sony's Clie series have superior liquid crystal displays at higher resolutions.