PPP - Palm IIIc

The Palm IIIc

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.The color screen

.Inside the Palm IIIc

.The Palm IIIc cradle

.Power source and consumption

.The new OS 3.5

.Summary

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Finally a color Palm!
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Already 2 years ago 3Com claimed, that there won't be a color device as long as they can't keep up their typical form factor as well as the low power consumption. To make it short: The new IIIc meets these overall specs quite well, but looking closer reveals some compromises. The IIIc is the largest Palm ever released, except the PalmVII which was never sold in Europe. Even if it grew only 7mm in length, experienced Palm users can 'feel' it right away. What strikes more is, that it's also the heaviest Palm so far. 210 gram are nearly double the weight of a Palm V (120 gram), and even quite some more than the 160 gram of a b/w Palm III. And you can feel these extra grams in your pocket - cellular phone manufacturers just started a war about each gramm!
What else? Well, the IIIc is the most advanced Palm for sure. It comes with a rechargeable Lithium Ion cell, an inbuilt charger logic, a true charge control LED on the device, a 20MHz EZ CPU, 2MB Flash, 8 MB RAM and the new OS 3.5.
It's packed in black plastic which looks somehow more valuable than the old dark gray, good decision (I wonder whether IBM switches to dark gray now <g>). Experienced 'Piloteers' will have most likely some trouble with the new stylus position. Not that it's anywhere else, but the little notch where the stylus snaps in is twisted about 45 degrees and 'looks' more outward now. The first blind tries to slide it out with the nail of your index finger fails mostly and now the thumb nail is the better choice. But the notch is much better designed and the typical 'flying stylus' when the notch was worn out on the old design could be history.
The hardware buttons are more flat now and have a little dent, so you can press them with the stylus - like the ones on the Palm V. The scroll buttons became two seperated buttons and 'feel' quite good. The feel of the buttons is anyway better IMHO, soft and still well defined.
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The color screen - One of the exciting questions was, will a color Palm come up with a higher resolution like the CE devices? The answer is no, the IIIc screen keeps the traditional 160x160 pixel and it still comes with the passive silk screen area for graffiti input. In fact, the color screen looks exactly like the black and white one, except it's dark black when switched off. The silk screen area is also black with white symbols for the silk buttons. Plus minus a few micrometer I didn't check, the size of the LCD is also unchanged. Unfortunately 3Com managed it again, to make the screen a perfect mirror, even more perfect than the old screens. No lie, it's so glary, when switched off, the IIIc does a perfect job to do a quick check on your hair dressing - the female users will love it :). Though, with the bright backlight, the situation improves strongly when the unit is in use. Which brings me to the next subject, the backlight. As all TFT screen, the IIIc screen is backlite permanently. Using the former backlight on/off function - holding down the power switch for 2 sec. - a soft control slider pops up. It allows the backlight to be set between light gray to 'painful' white. So far I couldn't test the IIIc in bright sunlight which is always a problem for TFTs (also on the best notebooks), but even in bright ambient light siutations, the middle position of the backlight slider was enough so far to produce a well readable, crisp display. In dimmer or dark light situations even the lowest backlight setting is fine to work with the IIIc. That is quite important, since the backlight brightness has a dramatic influence on the battery life - read more about that in the power consumption chapter below. The backlight control has 128 steps which is a surprisingly high resolution and can be operated also with the scroll buttons once the slider is visible.
The display qualtity itself is excellent! The 256 possible colors are bright and the pixels are crisp and clear. In fact, the pixels are nearly too crisp for their relatively large size and with that sharpness, it's a pity the display has no higher resolution. Of course the 'old' 160x160 has its advantages, the biggest is obviously the compatibility with all the exisiting software. But that could have been solved with a 'compatibilty mode', doubling pixels for old apps. But a higher resolution requires also more memory for resources, images etc. and quite some more CPU power to move these pixels around. Exactly that seems to be already the main problem of the IIIc. Although it uses the 20MHz version of the EZ CPU, the redraw of i.e. the icons in the launcher is visible slower. After all, the 8 bits per pixel for the 256 colors are already some more work for the CPU than the former single bit on the b/w systems.
However, the color screen is a beauty and even old b/w apps are much better readable on a black-on-paperwhite display. Time will tell, how well 3rd party apps will use the new color screen and not only to carry a 160x160 image around. Color can be well used to improve the UI on the small screen. My favourite would be a datebk3 in color, different colors for different important events, days etc. and just imagine the possibilities for the icon artists out there.
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Inside the Palm IIIc - Of course I had to look inside the new Palm, and I had to find out a bit more about the power supply as well as consumption of the latest Palm unit. If you like technical details, well, read on. If not, just enjoy the images :) ...
WARNING: The high voltage sign inside the PalmIIIc is no joke! The backlight works with a voltage of over 800Vpp and you don't want to make physical contact with such a high voltage!
And yet anouther warning: Don't try to check that voltage with an average DMM! The output of the high voltage generator is quite high impedance and you might ruin it with an average DMM!
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On the image above you can see, that the Lithium battery in the IIIc is fairly large. Compared with 2 AAA cells with a weight of 22 gram, the LiIon cell brings 44 gram to the scale. The IIIc can draw quite some current, more on that below. Interesting is the new keyboard design. 3Com is using fully sealed keys which makes them quite resistant against dust and dirt. On the other side, the key caps (or actual keys) can be produced and assembled quite cheap - clever.
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The top side of the 'main' board contains mostly power supply stuff and the LCD controllers. The hardware designers tried real hard to keep the form factor of the IIIc down, even at the expense of some higher production costs. The parallel expensive, low profile tantalium capacitors (all these 5 'yellow bricks' on the right side form one bigger capacitor), the assembly of the inverter transformer 'in' the PCB are all quite nice design details to keep the device as small as possible. Nobody can say they didn't try hard :)
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The backside of the PCB carries most of the actual 'Palm functionality', the CPU, the flash and the RAM. It's interesting, that 3Com returned to conventional SMT cases for the CPU and the flash after using BGA (ball grid array) in the Palm V. Rumours say, that alot of manufacturers still have problems with the assembly and quality control of BGAs :). For us hardware 'diggers' the non-BGA cases are anyway nicer, on a BGA you can't even access a pin to snoop around some signals <g>.
Two interesting details: The MiniSIR (IrDA tranceiver) is a new type. Rumours say, it gives a better range, users of OmniRemote will love to hear that. Another detail is the changed 32kHz base crystal that might have a higher accuracy which would be a benefit for the real time clock of the PalmIIIc. I will watch the accuracy of the IIIc clock in the future to verify that.
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Not much to say about the screen. It's produced by Sharp and the only interesting detail visible from outside is the relative complicated connection cable. Right up is the usual 4-pin cable of the digitizer. I just wonder whether 3Com keeps up the usual $100 flat rate for broken screens also for the IIIc ... :)
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Did you know you have a 'black cockroach' in your Palm IIIc? Who knows why, but the little PCB that carries the new serial driver and the serial connector pins is called 'La cucaracha negra' :). The driver is a quite new chip from Maxim (MAX3386E), containing one more transmitter channel, in total supporting 2 receiving and 3 transmitting lines. Additionally the MAX3386 has an improved ESD (electrostatic discharge) protection which is good, since the IIIc has no longer the protective slider that covers the hotsync connector. I'm not 100% sure yet, but I hope that the additional transmitter is used to finally support a proper DTR signal which caused some trouble on the old devices. For one it would solve the drain problem when the Palm is left in the cradle and additionally it would generate a proper DTR signal for *all* external modems. In the past, some modems didn't recognize the non-RS232 level of the DTR signal. So far I didn't have the time to test that completely, but the drain problem is gone for sure. All RS-232 pins are properly 3-stated (floating) when the serial channel is closed. The pity is, that basically the PalmIIIc (as well as the PalmV) don't suffer from the drain, since they are reloaded in their cradles anyway. But it's a proper solution anyway.
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The Palm IIIc cradle - Mechanically the cradle looks exactly like any PalmIII cradle, but it's black like the IIIc itself and carries the name 'Palm' now instead of '3Com'. Isn't it funny how often one and them same product can change its name? On my desk I still have a cradle saying 'USRobotics' ... :). Electrically, the former unused pin 9 is now connected to a standard DC socket in the 9-pin SUB-D plug, similar to the Palm V system. The beauty of that solution is, that you have just one cable running across your desk. Unlike the Palm V which needs a true charger, the Palm IIIc comes with an inbuilt charger control and needs just a simple 5V power supply, rated 1Amp.
You can synchronize the Palm IIIc also in an old cradle, on the other hand, an old Palm III will ignore the additional charge power at pin 9 on the new cradle.
WARNING: If you modified your old Palm III to use rechargeables which are recharged via a modification using that unused pin 9, you shouldn't put such a modified unit in the Palm IIIc cradle! The power supply for the IIIc is NO charger and has no effective current control for charging AAA rechargeables. On the other hand, if you have such a unit, the Palm IIIc cradle is perfect to connect your charger :), after all it has already the necessary connection to pin 9 running nicely in the serial cable.
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Pin Number on cradle from left to right	Pin Number 9-pin SUB-D	Signal description
1	6	DTR (RS-232)
2	-	+3.3V logic supply (for hotsync button)
3	3	RxD (RS-232)
4	8	RTS (RS-232)
5	2	TxD (RS-232)
6	7	CTS (RS-232)
7	-	Hotsync button
8	-	not connected
9	-	+5V charge power supply
10	5	Common signal- and supply ground

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Power source and consumption - The new IIIc has a surprisingly solid power supply system. When it comes to color PDAs, you tend to think about very short operation times mainly caused by the early WinCE devices. The IIIc doesn't deserve that prejudice, in fact it can give you more operation time than some other Palm devices, but that depends more than ever on the working conditions, especially on the backlight brightness.
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Above you can see the Lithium Ion cell used in the IIIc. It's most likely produced by SAFT and has a capacity of about 1400mAh. As all LiIon cells, it comes with a protection circuit from the manufacturer. This circuit independently takes care, that neither overcharge nor deep discharge can happen to the cell. Since the power consumption of the PalmIIIc electronic is more or less the same than the one of a IIIx or a PalmV(x), the IIIc has a great stand-by time (off). I guess you can store a IIIc at least 5-6 month without loosing any data. Of course you want to use the IIIc, so how long can you work with it? The answer is, between 4 and 20 hours and that depends 90% on the backlight brightness. In idle mode (on, no action) the IIIc needs 60mA with the brightness set to minimum, 300mA at maximum. Subtracting estimated 20mA for CPU and the rest of the logic, the color screen consumption varies between 40mA and 280mA! So, setting the backlight on the IIIc always to the least necessary level is essential for a maximum battery life. Actually that's good news for gamblers, since the difference between an idle and a full busy CPU is no longer that important. On the b/w Palms, a busy CPU caused nearly 3 times the power consumption than an idle one. A Palm IIIc on full brightness needs idle 300mA and full working 330mA, that's just 10% more.
The PalmIIIc comes with a red charge indicator on top (a neat lightpipe construction BTW), that really shows an ongoing charge. Like all LiIon systems, the IIIc battery is charged with a combination of a constant current first/constant voltage later, supplied by an internal charge logic. The initial charge current is about 670mA and stays constant at that level until the cell voltage - typically 4.3V - is reached. Then the charger switches to constant voltage mode and the current tends towards 0. When the charge current falls below approximately 50mA, the charge indicator goes off and you can consider the battery as full. A complete charge of a Palm IIIc takes max. 4 hours, but because of the high initial constant current, already after a good hour, the battery is recharged 50%. Below you can see a diagram of the charge current. The percent numbers are the charge status of the battery at that time, you can see, after about 3 hours there's not much charging going on anymore.
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No need to mention, that the IIIc can be recharged anytime without risking any nasty side effect. LiIon cells don't know memory effect or such. Strange, when you switch on the IIIc while it's in the cradle the charge indicator goes always on, even if the battery is full. There is no current drawn from the battery while the IIIc sits in the cradle. Even if the handbook says something else, the Palm IIIc is fully charged even if it's on during the charge. If the brightness is set to maximum, the initial current is lower in the beginning (about 350mA), so the charge process takes longer. But since towards the end of the charge the current is low anyway, the inbuilt charger delivers that current indepently from the supply of the Palm. If the backlight is set to minimum, the charge process is nearly uninfluenced whether the Palm IIIc is on or off!
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And yet another good word about the backlight system which really deserves a closer look. Unlike the crappy brightness control of alot of notebooks (two steps - darker white and brighter white!), the IIIc uses a very high resolution, effective switched control of the backlight.
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Above are a few screenshots of my high voltage TEK. On the left is the 800Vpp AC drive with its base frequency of about 80 kHz. The middle image shows the inverter output when the backlight is set to minimum. The output is modulated with a frequency of ~200Hz, in other words about every 5mSec a burst of the 80 kHz drive is switched on for a certain time, defining the brightness with that burst/pause relation. The right image shows the output at 50% brightness.
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The new OS 3.5 - The news on OS 3.5 are no big deal, as always Palm kept the changes quite moderate, obviously not to break too many old applications. The most visible difference is of course the color support with colored icons, colored buttons etc. There are other, IMHO very minor improvents. A nice feature is the command bar, which pops up with the command stroke for about 3 seconds, offering the most useful commands as icons. Finally the Datebook has a screen for the ToDo's, but having datebk3 around, it seems like Palm came a bit late with that improvement :). Overall I'm disappointed, that the inbuilt apps don't make more use of the color. Hey, even my old Timesystem had Saturdays and Sundays printed in red. What does it cost to implement some color on special days in Datebook, and if only the two 'S' (for Sat and Sun) were NOT black. Yep, I guess there has to be an updated OS soon to show a better use of that expensive color screen!
The drawback of OS 3.5 is, that it seems to be slower. At least the screen handling seems to be much slower, sometimes you can 'watch' the redraw of the icons. Well, I guess it's time for the new 'VZ', a new DragonBall compatible CPU from Motorola that runs on 33MHz ...
You can click on the image below to view or download an MPEG file which compares a Palm Vx running on b/w OS 3.5 and the Palm IIIc, running on OS 3.5 color. The two overlayed sequences are really both the same speed! I picked one of my favourite 'time killers', Patience :). That was also the app I realized first, that the screen refresh of the IIIc is quite a bit slower.
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RealMedia Clip - 10 sec - 216 kB
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To save you counting <g>, the Palm 5x builds up 21 screens while the IIIc just does not quite 6 of them. That's over 3 times slower! In fact, the LCD of the Vx isn't even fast enough to display the screen refresh fast enough. I guess the color overhead can't be blamed alone for the slowness of the Palm IIIc. Palm please, maybe there are some screen routines that still need some optimization ...
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Summary - Well, the first color Palm is out and it's for sure not the worst color device on the market. The pity for the IIIc is the existance of the PalmV(x). IMHO you have to think twice whether you want to carry around a bigger, much heavier unit for your daily PDA tasks just to have them in color. No doubt, the IIIc is no multimedia machine. The crappy piezo speaker, the relatively small memory, the slow CPU and the limited resolution are all facts that prevent a typical multimedia use. But I have no doubt, that we'll see very nice, useful applications appearing for the IIIc that make it worth to have that color screen.
Palm solved the power problem of previous color PDAs very well, if you could live with the battery life of a Palm V, you can live with a Palm IIIc too. If you plan to convert from an older Palm III model, you'll love the rechargeable system. Forgetting about batteries is just heaven. Not to forget that the IIIc comes with 8MB of RAM, which is still alot on PalmOS devices when it comes to application size. If you don't plan to carry a complete copy of 'Hitchhiker's Guide ..', 8MB are enough for tons of 3rd party applications.
I'm sure the Palm IIIc will be a success, who says you can have only one PDA :)? I'll keep my Palm V for the daily work because of it's unique form factor. But I will also watch the software market for the IIIc and try to get rid of the last b/w icons on it's launcher screen ...
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