The new Clies from Sony continue the company's tradition of churning out good-looking, sexy electronic gear, and might tempt even non-PDA users.
The new Clie PEG-TH55, which comes with a transparent plastic flip cover like the older TG50, runs Palm OS 5.2.1, has a 65K colour display of 320x480 pixels, built-in Wi-fi and a 0.3-megapixel VGA digital camera on the back with a retractable lens cover. It does not have Bluetooth but comes with an infrared port, stereo headphone output jack and a Memory Stick Pro slot.
The attractively designed TH55 has 32 megabytes of Ram, with the full 32MB available to the user.
The device is powered by a rechargeable lithium ion polymer battery.
It weighs about 200 grams with the cover, which is detachable.
The TH55's predecessor, the UX50, was the first Clie to run Sony's own PDA processor, called the Sony Handheld engine. The Sony-made custom chipset is an ARM926-based processor, a DSP (Digital Signal Processor), and a CXD2230GA graphics accelerator. The processor speed ranges from eight megahertz to 123MHz to prolong the battery and vary the speed, depending on demand.
The TH55 comes with a new Personal Information Management (PIM) suite called the Clie organiser, which builds on the basic Palm OS PIM functionality with new multimedia and organisational features. The new Clie TJ37, an upgrade from the TJ35H, is even sleeker in design. Round-edged and slim with a matte silver finish, it comes in colours including orange, blue and classic and weighs in at 145 grams. It is powered by a rechargeable lithium ion polymer battery. Like the TH55, the 65K colour display has a 320x320 pixel resolution and a built-in 0.3-megapixel VGA camera on the back. It runs on a 200MHz Motorola i.MXL Dragonball ARM processor and has 32MB of Ram, of which 23MB are user accessible.