Palm handhelds were Personal Digital Assistants that ran the Palm OS.
On 28 April 2010 it was announced that Hewlett-Packard would acquire Palm for
around US$1.2 billion. Although HP kept the Palm brand initially, all new PDA
devices announced at press announcement on February 9, 2011, were branded as HP
devices, not as Palm devices. TCL Corporation announced in January 2015
that it had acquired Palm's intellectual property from HP at the end of 2014,
announcing plans to restart the company with crowdfunding being a key element in
the development of new Palm smartphones. History
= Initial development = Pilot was the name of the first
generation of personal digital assistants manufactured by Palm
Computing in 1996. The inventors of the Pilot were Jeff
Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan, who founded Palm Computing in
1992. The original purpose of this company was to create handwriting
recognition software, named PalmPrint, and personal information management
software, named PalmOrganizer for the PEN/GEOS based Zoomer devices. Their
research convinced them, however, they could create better hardware as well.
Before starting development of the Pilot, Hawkins said he carried a block
of wood, the size of the potential Pilot, in his pocket for a week. Palm
was widely perceived to have benefited from the notable if ill-fated earlier
attempts to create a popular handheld computing platform by Go Corporation,
Tandy, and Apple Computer). The prototype for the first Palm
Connected Organizer was called "Palm Taxi". The first two generations of PDAs
from Palm were referred to as "Palm-Pilots". Due to a trademark
infringement lawsuit brought by the Pilot Pen Corporation, since 1998
handheld devices from Palm have been known as Palm Connected Organizers or
more commonly as "Palms". The first Palms, the Pilot 1000 and
Pilot 5000, had no infrared port, backlight, or flash memory, but did have
a serial communications port. Their RAM size was 128 kB and 512 kB respectively,
and they used version 1 of Palm OS. Later, it became possible to upgrade the
Pilot 1000 or 5000's internals to up to 1 MB of internal RAM. This was done with
the purchase of an upgrade module sold by Palm, and the replacement of some
internal hardware components. Originally, it was conceived that all
Palm PDAs were to be hardware-upgradable to an extent, but ultimately, this
capability gave way to external memory slots and firmware-upgradable flash
memory after the Palm III series. = Subsequent generations =
The next couple of Palms, the PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot Professional, had
backlit screens, but no infrared port or flash memory. Their RAM size was 512 kB
and 1024 kB respectively. They used version 2 of the Palm OS.
Palm III, and all the following Palms, did not have the word "Pilot" in their
name due to the previously mentioned trademark dispute. The Palm III had an
IR port, backlight, and flash memory. The latter allowed the user to upgrade
Palm OS, or, with some external applications, to store programs or data
in flash memory. It ran on two standard AAA batteries. It was able to retain
enough energy for 10–15 minutes to prevent data loss during battery
replacement. It had 2 Megabytes of memory, large at the time, and used Palm
OS 3. Meanwhile, with Palm Computing now a
subsidiary of 3Com, the founders felt they had insufficient control over the
development of the Palm product. As a result, they left 3Com and founded
Handspring in June 1998. When they left Palm, Hawkins secured a license for the
Palm OS for Handspring, and the company became the first Palm OS licensee.
Handspring went on to produce the Handspring Visor, a clone of the Palm
handhelds that included a hardware expansion slot and used slightly
modified software. The next versions of Palm used Palm OS
3.1. These included Palm IIIx with 4 Megabytes of memory, Palm IIIe without
flash memory or hardware expansion slot, Palm V with 2 Megabytes of memory, and,
Palm Vx with 8 Megabytes of memory. Palm VII had wireless connection to some
Internet services, but this connection worked only within the USA. It used Palm
OS 3.2. Palm IIIc was the first Palm handheld with a color screen. It used
Palm OS 3.5 which provided extensive tools for writing color applications.
Some of these newer handhelds, for example Palm V, used internal
rechargeable batteries. Later this feature became standard for all Palms.
Palm handhelds up to 2002 contained Motorola DragonBall processors, part of
the Motorola 68000 family. Starting with the Palm Tungsten, the platform
transitioned to the ARM architecture with Texas Instruments, Samsung, and
Intel as suppliers. As ARM had previously been used in the Apple Newton
series, the platform had significant investment in mobile and low-power
applications. = Recent history =
Palm Computing was spun off into its own company in 2000. Handspring later merged
with Palm to form palmOne in 2003 when Palm Inc. split into companies based
upon selling hardware and the software. In 2005, palmOne acquired the full
rights to the Palm name by purchasing the shared rights PalmSource owned and
changed names back to Palm again. PalmSource was acquired by ACCESS
Systems in 2005, which subsequently sold the Palm OS source code back to Palm,
Inc. in December 2006. Palm handhelds continued to advance,
including the ability to access computer hard drives via USB cables, and began to
merge with smartphones. The "Treo 700w" was one of the later offerings that
combined a Palm handheld with mobile phone, e-mail, MMS, and instant
messaging technology. It was also the first Palm-branded device to use Windows
Mobile instead of Palm OS. It became widely expected that Palm handhelds as a
PDA-only device would disappear as multifunction handhelds like the Treo
650 declined in price. Multifunction handhelds generally include a wider
range of abilities traditionally found in separate devices, for example: an MP3
player, mobile phone, camera, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The Treo 650+ was a series of
smartphones that included a camera, mp3 player, Bluetooth, and a mobile phone.
The Zire 71 and 72 series also had these additional features. In 2007, Palm
released the Palm Centro, a smartphone running Palm OS. Different in overall
appearance from the Treo, it was most notably thinner. The Centro was a
somewhat successful smartphone, combining many features with a decreased
price. Palm later released the Palm Treo 500v, a device similar to the Centro
which ran Windows Mobile 6.0. Palm's focus following the Zire and
Tungsten PDA lines shifted exclusively to smartphones, where the Palm OS
operating system as used on the Treos was becoming dated with both the Palm OS
and the Window Mobile versions making minor impact in market share when
compared to those of RIM and Apple. In order to try to change this trend Palm
had been working on a new web-based operating system which was an embedded
Linux operating system that hosts a custom user interface built on standard
web browser technology and offered genuine multi-tasking capabilities
through a card based concept where each application ran as a card and the use of
gestures to navigate between cards and perform actions. This platform won much
respect from its peers but was compromised by some of the shortcuts
taken in the hardware for the initial webOS, and indeed Palm's final device
offerings, the Palm Pre, and Palm Pixi. Palm released improved versions of both
the Pre and Pixi as the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus which contained improved
memory capacity or processor updates but did not significantly address some of
the limitations of the hardware in comparison to other smartphones on the
market at the time. With the acquisition of Palm by HP, the
next device to market was the Pre2, which did address the screen and
processor issues. This was followed in 2011 by the HP Veer and the HP Pre3, the
former being a compact design and the latter showing the hardware potential to
compete in the demanding smartphone market, that had expanded to include
Google's Android, before Leo Apotheker, then HP CEO, abruptly pulled the plug on
webOS in August 2011, which caused a dip in HP share value. Apotheker was ousted
from Hewlett-Packard later in the year, due in part to criticisms behind his
handling of webOS. His successor, Meg Whitman, reaffirmed HP's decision to
discontinue the sale and production of webOS hardware devices; Palm's legacy
was later maintained by Whitman's decision to support webOS on the
software side by taking steps toward open-sourcing webOS and opening it to
hardware partners. List of PDA models
= Handhelds = Palm Taxi aka Palm-Pilot
Handspring Visor PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot
Professional Z22
Zire 72 Tungsten E2
TX Palm T/X ML handheld bundle pack
= Trēo Smartphones = Trēo Pro
Trēo 800w Trēo 755p
Trēo 750v Trēo 750
Trēo 700p Trēo 700w
Trēo 700wx Trēo 680
Trēo 650 Trēo 500
Trēo 500v = Centro Smartphones =
Palm Centro = webOS Smartphones =
Palm Pre Palm Pixi
Palm Pre Plus Palm Pixi Plus
Palm Pre 2 HP Veer
HP Pre3 = Discontinued models =
See also Palm OS—includes discussion and links to
Palm OS–compatible and Palm OS WebOS
List of Palm OS Devices PalmSource, Inc.
Palm, Inc. References
External links Palm.com