Palm Tungsten T3 review

Only a matter of weeks after launching the Tungsten T2, Palm has shipped its successor, the T3.

And unlike its Schwarzenegger movie namesake, this T3 really is worth writing home about. Among its improvements are two features that make it significantly more useable; a soft Graffiti area, and a screen that can display in both portrait and landscape aspects.

The soft Graffiti area, where the writing portion of the screen is displayed in software rather than hard-wired, allows the screen-size to be increased by 50% to 320 x 480 pixels when the Grafitti input method is not in use. It's a feature that Sony Clie users have enjoyed for some time, but this is the first time it's made it onto a Palm device. As with the T2, the T3 requires input to be in the new Graffiti 2 format.

The ability to switch to landscape mode at the touch of a button is particularly useful for viewing spreadsheets and charts. It can also be used for viewing pictures, using the built-in photo viewing software, and viewing Web pages using the supplied Palm Web Pro browser.

Harder, faster

Other hardware changes in the Tungsten T3 include a faster processor - a 400MHz Intel XScale - a doubling in the amount of memory to 64Mb (52Mb available for use), and a re-designed five-way navigator. The change to the navigator brings all the buttons on the front face closer together and turns the navigator into an oval rather than a circle, but it's questionable whether this makes it easier to use.

The new status bar makes accessing key functions simpler. It's shown along the bottom of the screen or down the right hand side, depending on how the screen is oriented. On it are icons for input (which shows and hides the Graffiti area), rotate screen, toggle full-screen write, fast Bluetooth access, clock, menu, find and home. Using this status bar soon becomes second nature, and the ability to quickly check battery life and memory usage, or set volume and brightness levels from the clock button, is particularly useful.

The major software changes are to the basic PIM functions which have been needing an overhaul for some time. The Contacts section has been beefed up with the ability to add multiple addresses for a single contact, additional contact fields and larger Notes and Memos areas.

Calender now picks up memorable dates, such as birthdays, from a Contact entry and displays them. Events can now span midnight and be shown on both days. And the new Agenda function allows you to display events, tasks, and email on one screen.Being able to clearly and easily see everything that relates to a given day is very useful, and possibly the PIM software's biggest enhancement.

There's a new version of Documents to Go (version 6) on the included CD. This provides support for the increased screen-size and landscape viewing on the T3. Other improvements are support for native Word and Excel files, which can now be sent and received via either infrared or Bluetooth. Files can also be attached to email mesages in Versa Mail - the T3's pre-installed email package. And you can now choose which files to sync and whether to sync them to the Palm's main memory or to a memory expansion card.

Slide show

The best features from the previous two Tungsten models remain. The sliding bottom portion isn't to everyone's taste, but it does allow the T3 to have a large screen without increasing its size. And at least the space covered by the sliding cover is not just solely used as the Graffiti area. The voice memo buttons and built-in mic enable you to record audio notes at the touch of a button, and the stereo headphone socket allows you to use the T3 as a music player with its bundled RealOne Player software and support for MP3 and and WMA formats.