Tuxtops

Although worldwide handheld shipments were up worldwide, Palm OS shipments fell enough that Pocket PCs edged past them for the first quarter ever.

The latest addition to Sony's Vaio line of portables more resembles a handheld than a laptop, featuring a touch-sensitive 5" display, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g - and Windows XP.

Trolltech, a provider of leading application development software, today announced that it has released Qtopia version 2.1, a major upgrade to its award-winning development platform and user interface for Linux-based mobile devices. New features in Qtopia 2.1 include touch-screen phone support, full-screen handwriting input and new phone themes to extend customers' flexibility and options for developing customized, full-featurd Linux-based mobile devices. Also, new Motorola Linux-based Mobile Phones Built on Trolltech Platform.

The Bluetooth SIG has finalized the Bluetooth EDR spec for three times the bandwidth, and laid out its road map for the next years of Bluetooth.

"Nobody knows when we'll start the shift to Cobalt, OS 6, or on which devices. For now, we're saying that we've built the functionality we need into the Treo and the Tungsten T5 and there's no need to confuse developers by switching. I'm not even prepared to commit us to a change next year, or the year after, at this stage", said PalmONE president Ed Colligan.

The Register has an interesting article on Nokia's internet ready/GPS/PDA ultra phone. It boasts music playing capabilities and features the Series 90 Software. Its attractiveness, and 'No side-talking' (NGage) capacity alone makes it a handy utensil.

HP's new z545 Digital Entertainment Center appears to be a Windows-based re-spin of an earlier Linux-based model that HP unveiled three years ago at the Tech X NY trade show in New York, and which was sold for some time as the de100c Digital Entertainment Center.

PalmSource has released a simulator for its latest Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 operation system. The simulator allows software developers to test their programs without actually having a handheld running the new OS.

OSNews posted a comprehensive review of the made-for-Linux LinuxCertified LC2430 laptop. They found that all its components are fully compatible with Linux, except with ACPI in recent kernels (which actually affects most laptops recently). The laptop is a desktop replacement with strong performance and some good extra features: Firewire port, 3-1 card reader, combo drive, SXGA+ TFT screen and an ATi Radeon 3D card. Four Linux distributions were tested with it.

Zupera Technology has used a 2.6-series embedded Linux kernel to build a handheld audio/visual player set for volume production in January. The 30GB "Zupera" will be available with a 5.7- or 7-inch LCD touchscreen display, along with software for playback of a variety of multimedia files.