Credit: Palm, Inc. 

(First Look) - Palm has recently introduced a new handheld to its product line – Palm TX. Continuing with Palm’s tradition of worthy handhelds, at least majority of the time, the Palm TX features a gorgeous 320x480 color screen with vivid depth. The key features of the Palm TX are Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support, an integrated browser (Blazer), an e-mail client (VersaMail), office support with PowerPoint presentations, word documents and excel spreadsheets, and of course, the entertainment aspect of the device with support for photos, music and video. Considering the Palm TX is coming from Palm, the organizer characteristic of the product is a given and so are the abundance of software applications.

The top of the Palm TX contains the power on/off button, storage slot for the writing stylus, headphones jack, Infrared port and an expansion card slot. The front side has the color screen, home/favorites button, calendar, contacts and web browser buttons in addition to the 5-way navigator and built-in 3.5mm speakers. Lastly, the bottom of the unit has the multi-connector for charging the unit either via a dock or to connect a third party mobile keyboard for enhanced productivity.

In terms of specifications, the Palm TX is equipped with Garnet 5.4 Palm OS, features 128MB of onboard memory, Intel’s 312MHz ARM-based microprocessor, 320x480 color screen with support for 65K colors (landscape and portrait modes supported), Wi-Fi, onboard speakers, expansion slot for multimedia card, SD and SDIO cards, rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery and power/sync capabilities.

In addition to what’s listed above, you also get a nice bundle of applications and a plethora of accessories to sweeten the deal.

The suggested retail price of the Palm TX is $299 with a few retailers offering the unit for as low as $270.

Initial Thoughts: There doesn’t appear to be any specific drawbacks from the features and specifications listings, so everything boils down to the core findings: performance, battery life and overall functionality of the unit. These are the points that we can only evaluate once we have the Palm TX in our lab for testing. With that said, the amount of accessories, applications and features you get with the Palm TX are excellent considering the price tag. $299 (or $270 if you can find it from a reputable retailer) is a solid price for a multipurpose unit.