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Sony has just unveiled its new spring lineup of handhelds. These show a new committment from the company to offer wireless networking at lower prices. The company has also built cameras into all these models.
The TH55 will be the first Sony Handheld with a hi-res+ screen that uses the traditional tablet design. Previous Sony models with 320-by-480-pixel screens have all been clamshells.
It will run Palm OS 5.2 on Sony's 123 MHz Handheld Engine, which debuted last year in the UX series. The TH55 will have 32 MB of RAM, all of which will be available to the user.
It will come with a new app called the Clie Organizer. This one application displays the contents of the Calendar, Address Book, To-Do list, and Memo Pad.
As a Wi-Fi enabled model, the TH55 will come with the NetFront 3.1 web browser and with Clie Mail, Sony's email software.
This handheld will also include Piscel Viewer, which allows the user to view documents in a wide variety of formats, including Microsoft office files. Currently, Sony is offering a free download of Documents To Go Professional Edition v6.0 for those who purchase a TH55.
It will also come with Macromedia Flash Player 5 as well as Sony's applications for playing video and audio, including MP3s and ATRAC3s.
The TH55 will have a single Memory Stick slot, located on its side. This has a door that closes completely over the card when it is inserted, preventing it from being accidentally ejected.
It will be 4.9 inches tall, 3.0 inches wide, and .6 inches thick (121 mm by 73 mm by 16 mm) with the flip cover on, or .5 inches thick with the cover off. It will weigh 6.5 ounces (185 g) with the cover, or 5.8 ounces (165 g). without it.
The TH55 will be available in a few weeks. Pre-orders are now being taken on the SonyStyle web site. It will sell for $400, which makes it slightly more expensive than the Dell Axim X3i and significantly less expensive than HP's h4155.
Read Brighthand's hands-on review of this model.
Sony has also announced a pair of new Clie handhelds in its TJ series. Both of these will have built-in cameras and one, the TJ37, will have built-in Wi-Fi.
Like the current members of the TJ series, the the TJ27 and the TJ37 will run Palm OS 5.2.1. The new models will use a 200 MHz Motorola i.MXL processor. They will have 32 MB of RAM, but just 23 MB of this will be directly available to the user, as the rest will be used for Heap Memory.
The camera lens is located on the back of these handhelds, while the screen acts as the viewfinder.They can take pictures as large as 640 by 480 pixels. Neither of these models can record video.
The TJ37 will have built-in Wi-Fi wireless networking. This will allow it to connect to the Internet through wireless access points in homes and offices. These are also being increasing installed in public places. At this point, it appears that the TJ37 will be the first time Sony releases a mid-range model with Wi-Fi.
The TJ37 will also come with the NetFront 3.1 web browser. Both these new models will come with Clie Mail, Sony's email software.
The TJ27 and TJ37 will have 320-by-320 pixel, color screens. They will also have a Memory Stick slot capable of using all types of Memory Sticks.
The TJ37 offers good multimedia capabilities, while the TJ27 is more of a stripped down model. The TJ37 will come with a built-in speaker and a headphone jack, plus the AeroPlayer audio player. It will also come with Kinoma 2 for playing video. This continues a recent trend in which Sony is bundling more third-party software with its Clies, rather than writing the applications itself.
Sony is offering a free download of Documents To Go Professional Edition v6.0 with the purchase of either of these Clies.
Both these models will be 4.5 inches tall, 3.0 inches wide, and .5 inches thick (113 mm by 75 mm by 13 mm). They will weigh 4.75 ounces (135 g)
The Clie TJ37 will be $300, making it significantly less expensive than other recently released Wi-Fi enabled handhelds. The Clie TJ27 will be $200, where it will compete with models like palmOne's Tungsten E and HP's iPAQ h1930.
Sony is also taking pre-orders for these models now at SonyStyle.
With the release of these new models comes what can almost be described as a purge of Sony's older Clies.
As of today, SonyStyle no longer lists the UX40, none of the NX series models, the TJ35, the TJ25, the NZ90, and the TG50.
In fact, the only handheld still listed that wasn't announced today is the UX50.
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