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Palm’s hugely anticipated, ultra secretive device, called Fooleo, oops, Foleo was finally revealed to the public. Who are the fools here? Us or Palm? Being a Palm and Treo owner like many others, I was anticipating that it would be “the device” that could bring Palm back to the top. Not terribly surprising yet again, I was extremely disappointed. And judging by the editorials from blogs, media, comments on Palm’s own blog that, I wasn’t the only one. Has Palm finally proved that they are so unbelievably out of touch with what their Palm loyalists and potential buyers want? Or, are we all so totally out of touch of whatever innovation that Jeff Hawkins has dreamt up for the past few years that we will need to be proven wrong? Either way, I sincerely hope that I am totally wrong because if this Foleo is what I am thinking that it is, then, this may be truly a major costly mistake that Palm has made. Unlike Apple, who has a marketing guru like Steve Jobs who can “wow” everyone with anything he presents, Jeff Hawkins doesn’t have the same charisma or the marketing charm to pull it off. So, we are left with a presentation that seems lacking in stirring excitement even in the diehard Palm fanatics.

Yes, there are many Palm loyalists that want a standalone PDA device, but if Palm is going to add the bulk and size similar to that of a UMPC, they’d better make it much better than what’s currently out there. Let’s see, 256MB of flash memory for storage, 128MB user accessible (oh no, I hope it’s not NVFS or we’re back to dealing with DBCache again). The interesting idea is that you can add additional SD flash cards and it does support USB so that’s good, but I’m not sure how good of a solution it can be. And to add insult to Palm loyalists, the Foleo DOES NOT have a touchscreen. What kind of Palm device is it that doesn’t have a touchscreen? Sure, it’s got a keyboard, but most Palm users rely on the touchscreen because it truly separates what a Windows PC and a portable Palm PDA device is. I personally think that this is one of the biggest mistake they’ve made with this device since having it with a touchscreen could make it so much better since it could then accept input from the screen as well as the keyboard, which is why a lot of Palm users get a portable keyboard; to have access to full sized keyboard plus being able to utilize the touchscreen. The touchscreen would be a step towards a UMPC but not quite there. I believe if Palm steps into the UMPC niche that they can succeed.

Although it seems that the Foleo does support Wi-Fi, there hasn’t been much information on what it supports. I personally would hope that it would at least support 802.11g if not “n” because if they went back to the pathetic and horribly insecure and crackable 802.11b with WEP, I will be screaming. In this day and age, anything less than 802.11g would be so useless and a joke. Now, one huge thing about the net connectivity is that you have to rely on your cellular network for email access, which is perplexing. Why are they supporting Wi-Fi on the Foleo but have it only limited to web browsing and not email? Since they know and have mentioned and stressed that email is such a HUGE thing for their target audience, why force them to go through paying the outrageous charges that the cellular carriers dictate? This is totally unacceptable as many of us may not have an unlimited data plan (especially for those of us in Canada) and as most of us know, unlimited is NEVER unlimited.

I was originally thinking that the Foleo would have practically all the PIM and applications that the Palm and Treo devices already have but have found that it is not the case. Oh my goodness, this is really getting worse the more I read about it. So, it really IS a smartphone companion, thus requiring a smartphone, so does it mean that this Foleo is a dumb slave device? And if so, what’s the point of spending the few hundred bucks so that I can view my web pages in a bigger 10 inch screen? I really fail to understand. Okay, they say that this is meant as a simple device (yes, I can now see that) but what’s the point? I understand that Palm wants to go back to their zen but in this day and age, I’m not sure if many of us want it now. If I want simplicity, I’d go back to the older standalone Palms with monochrome screens. Let’s take a step back from this and ponder the situation.

The Foleo is meant as a “smartphone” companion, meaning the Treo. So, this means that it’s targetted for the Palm Treo users. So, most Treo users already have a lot of features, functions in their tiny little device. People who get the Treo device obviously wants everything with them including a cellular phone, office program, video and audio playback programs, PIM programs and all the other stuff. If the Foleo is a true companion, I would think that it would provide a lot of what the Treo doesn’t have. That would include Wi-Fi (okay, at least the Foleo has that but Wi-Max would be so much better), GPS capability (AFAIK, it’s not available), larger capacity storage capability (er, that’s hardly the case here), satellite radio support (again, not available), video streaming (apparently it can’t truly support video either). Oh my goodness, again, how can this Foleo be considered to complement the Treo? This again brings back to the dumb device idea. If the Treo is “smart” and capable of doing so much and the Foleo is limited and severely bottlenecked by the GPRS email retrieval, why would I or anyone want to shell out the few hundred dollars for this? We’d need a Treo first of all, to get much use of it and then, it doesn’t really do much. I’d probably would spend the few hundred dollars on a cheap laptop or get a newer smartphone device instead and stick with the small screen. Sigh. If this is the best that Palm can do in terms of innovation, I think this pretty much spell the end.

In case everyone wonders, I am still a very happy Treo 650 owner and user since I write enough about it on this Palm Discovery blog, but I am seriously thinking about upgrading my device. The 680 is not enough to persuade me to upgrade. I am seriously now thinking of a Windows Mobile smartphone to complement my Treo. And I truly mean it that way. The Treo will still be the main device but the Windows Mobile smartphone will be around for those tasks that the Treo is not capable of doing. For me, THAT will be my smartphone companion and something that will complement the Treo. Not the Foleo. Sorry, Palm.

(Edited March 25, 2008). As I’ve already hinted, I did go and get a Windows Mobile Treo 750 to complement my Treo 650 smartphone. I keep most of my PIM and whatever else that the Palm OS is so much better at. I rely on my Treo 750 with the Spectec miniSD Wi-Fi card for accessing the internet and getting my daily Audible files as well as other things. Like I’ve said, the true complementary device would be something that will do what the Palm OS Treo can’t do or do it better than Palm OS. That’s what is the true smartphone companion in my view.

Again, I sincerely hope that I am SO WRONG because I really love Palm. But, it certainly won’t be the first time I’ve been proven wrong. I hope that as time passes that there will be some really cool stuff that the Foleo can do that has not been disclosed and hopefully once all the specs are out and people are testing them that it could be something truly interesting. Until then, I am trying to stay optimistic.

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