Palm’s operating system is moving forward in two directions. These next generation versions, expected to appear on devices that will ship later this year, should make the popular OS more powerful than ever and capable of supporting a wider range of hardware.
The upcoming releases — the mainstream Palm OS Garnet and business-orientated Palm OS Cobalt — will correspond to
versions 5.4 and 6, respectively, of the Palm OS. PalmSource, corporate steward of the operating system, hopes that avoiding version numbers will prevent prospective Garnet customers
from thinking they’re getting an old or outdated product; still, the bulk of the innovation clearly is going into Palm OS Cobalt.
New features appearing in Cobalt
will include improved graphics and multimedia support;
a customisable status bar that owners of recent Tungsten handheld computers should find familiar; a more robust contact manager that has room for more data and for a tabbed layout; and improved support for various types of connectivity, including simultaneous voice and data sessions. Under the hood, Cobalt will support much more memory — up to a total of 256Mbyte each in RAM and ROM — and improved security features. Cobalt’s features are also intended to encourage the development of new Palm-based services, such as smartphones, tablet computers, book readers and handheld game decks.
Palm OS Garnet adds support for higher screen resolutions (including 240 by 320 dots per inch), a software-based Graffiti input area that can vanish as required (a feature also seen in Tungsten T3s), and enhanced tools for finding and using Bluetooth wireless networks. Garnet retains OS 5.4’s memory limits of 128Mbyte in RAM and 16Mbyte in ROM.
13/04/04
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