August 11th, 2007
15 minutes of hands-on time with the Palm Foleo, still not quite sold on it yet
I posted about the Palm Foleo announcement on 30 May. A few days later after digesting some more information I posted some more extensive thoughts on the Foleo and stated I was going to wait to pass any final judgement on it until I actually had a chance to try it out. Well, while at Gnomedex 7 these last couple of days I was able to play with the Foleo a few times at the Palm table and put together the short video walkthrough you see below. I was filming and operating the Foleo at the same time and see that my video is of to the right a bit, so sorry about that. I should be getting a Foleo to evaluate for 30 days in a bit and will be able to post many details photos and usage experiences at that time.
So after spending probably 15 minutes total with the Palm Foleo I still it may be a tough sell for Palm. The Palm Treo market is good, but still small compared to all mobile phones that are out there and now you have a device that you have to convince only Treo users (at this time) they need. There does seem to be a lot of 3rd party support being announced lately so it will be interesting to see the full functionality that the device has when it is eventually released. I do see the merit in having a device that serves as a sort of companion, but when most Treo business users probably already have a laptop I just don’t think the need is there. At US$599, I would rather pay another US$250 for something like the HTC Advantage that is coat-pocketable, has a 3.5G HSDPA radio, and can be used as a stand alone device. I’ll give the Foleo a final look if I get a review unit in the near future.
Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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