Tuxtops

Making an unlikely comeback, Data Evolution is reviving the five-year old Clio line of palmtops with the introduction of the Clio NXT, offering a high-end feature set.

A Chinese Linux smartphone company has won a prestigious industry award in Hong Kong. E28 received a Technological Achievement Award in the 2004 Hong Kong Awards for Industry, for a Linux-based smartphone reference design expected in January.

Sales of Symbian OS-based smartphones and communicators have risen 201% from quarter 3 of 2003 to quarter 3 of 2004, according to Symbian's latest quarterly report.

Total shipments in 2004 through September were 8.69 million units, compared to 4.89 million Symbian OS devices for the same period in 2003.

A Gartner Research study of July-September sales data found that Microsoft's mobile OS outsold Palm's. During that period, Microsoft's OS accounted for 48.1% of worldwide shipments of PDAs, up from 41.2% the previous year. Palm's share dropped to 29.8% in Q3 2004 from 46.9%. The BlackBerry quadrupled its market share in twelve months to 19.8% from 4.9%.

Does a thumbboard, improved screen and more memory warrant an upgrade from the popular P900? Jørgen Sundgot pokes and prods Sony Ericsson's latest communicator, the P910i.

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.