The Ultimate Moblogging Tool?
Brighthand has a review of Sony's latest Palm-based handheld (via Gizmodo):
The PEG-NZ90 was announced by Sony last month and is expected to be available for $800 in the next few weeks. It's the first handheld to include an integrated 2 megapixel camera. It also has Bluetooth wireless networking. It runs Palm OS 5 on a 200 MHz XScale processor and has a 320 by 480 pixel screen.
The appearance, especially the size, of the NZ90 has been a topic of sometimes rancorous debate since it was announced a few weeks ago. There's no doubt this thing is big. By my own measurements, it's 5.5 by 2.9 by 1.15 inches. It's also heavy, about 10.5 ounces.
I don't think this makes the NZ90 a brick, as some have described it. But it is a niche product. The main reason this device is larger than even the NX series is it has that 2 megapixel camera. It has been designed for people who frequently need a wireless-capable handheld and a digital camera. It allows you to quickly snap a picture, attach it to an email, and easily send it off. It's going to be great for real estate agents, insurance claims adjusters, journalists, and even parents with a new baby.
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Wow, that's quite the device. 1/2 VGA resolution, Bluetooth, integrated high-end camera and video as well as a CompactFlash slot for WiFi networking, this thing is amazing. The fact that Sony got this beast to run using the PalmOS - even v5 - is to me an incredible feat. It's a pretty cool gadget...
But really, despite the fact that it's a neato toy, I would never really want to have one of these things around - except if I was into some serious moblogging. If you had a SonyEricsson T68i hanging around, for example, and you were a journalist as the article says above, you could really do some cool things. Take newspaper-quality snaps of an event in progress, write up an article using the thumb keyboard, attach it all to an email, use Bluetooth to use your phone as a modem and you're not just moblogging, you're SUPER moblogging. ;-)
By the way, the weight of this thing makes me realize why the smartphones have such crappy cameras. Obviously, the higher the resolution, the more hardware you're going to have to have along with it. Anyways, I thought this was an interesting thought.
-Russ