Palm Cuts Tungsten T by $50

Palm has officially dropped the price of the Tungsten T by $50 to $350. It is not known at this point if this is a sign that this product is nearing end of life or simply an acknowledgment that it was over-priced for its feature set.

The Tungsten T first launched late last year at $500. Several months later the company said it was experiencing lower than expected demand for this model in the U.S. and cut its price by $100. This had the desired effect, as the company reported that worldwide sales of the Tungsten T increased 75% in February compared with the previous month.

Recently, Palm introduced the Tungsten C, which offers a much faster processor and far greater memory, for $500, just $100 more than the Tungsten T was selling for. At the same time, it introduced the Zire 71, which has a similar feature set as the Tungsten T but costs just $300. Both of these have put downward pressure on the price of Tungsten T.

This will also surely increase speculation that Palm intends to release an upgraded replacement for the Tungsten T in the near future. However, this goes against the company's long-held strategy of releasing new models only in the spring and fall. It's possible that the Tungsten T will remain in Palm's line-up as a mid-range model.

Palm also introduced a trade-in program today which allows people to send in an old handheld and receive a $50 rebate off the cost of some new models, including the Tungsten T.

More About the Tungsten T

The Tungsten T runs Palm OS 5 on a 144MHz Texas Instruments' OMAP1510 processor. It has 16 MB of RAM and includes a 320 by 320 pixel screen, capable of displaying 65,536 colors. It also has built-in Bluetooth wireless networking.

The bottom part of the Tungsten T slides to alternately hide or expose the Graffiti area. This allows the handheld to be just 4 inches tall when not is use or the user is looking something up, and then expanded to allow text to be entered. When compressed, the T is 4 by 3 by .6 inches. It is 4.8 inches tall when expanded. It weighs 5.6 ounces.

Related Links

• Brighthand Reviews the Palm Tungsten T
• Palm Launches Trade-In Program