It seems some retailers have jumped the gun and put the new Palm m515 and m130 on the shelves in advance of the official release date. I stopped by my local CompUSA this afternoon, and was able to examine both of them. The m515 is virtually indistinguishable from the m505, save for a noticeably brigher screen (when set to maximum brightness, that is). There's a new brightness control (a little "sun" icon in the upper-right corner of the Graffiti area) that pops up a little dialog that allows you to select from three brightness settings - off, low, or high. The "low" setting resembles the m505 with the backlight on, while the "high" setting is considerably brighter. It's not quite as bright as the Palm IIIc or the Visor Prism, but it's a big improvement. Time will tell what effect the brighter setting will have on battery life. Other changes from the m505 include an extra 8MB of RAM, and Palm OS 4.1. The Palm m130 resembles the m125, with a black-and-blue faceplate instead of the m125's black-and-silver one. The most obvious difference is the color screen. Oddly, the screen seemed to refresh rather slowly, giving menu drops and screen transitions an almost animated quality. Also, there's no brightness control, but there is a contrast slider. I'm not sure how useful this really is, as most people will probably find a contrast setting that they like and just leave it alone after that. As far as prices are concerned, the m515 is retailing for the expected price of $399, while the m130 is $279. Since Palm hasn't officially announced these devices yet, it's odd to see the m515 and m505 side-by-side selling for the exact same price. I suspect we'll see a price reduction on the m505 very shortly (I'm guessing something on the order of $50). The official release date is supposedly Monday the 4th.
posted by Kent 8:03 PM |
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