News

According to a report on page A6 of Investors Business Daily, Sony will announce a new PDA likely featuring WiFi, and potentially GPRS on Friday. While there are very few specifics in the report, the unit will likely be the one shown briefly roughly 6 weeks ago.

From our prior report:

ADBrown - 6/9/03
Sony has a new prototype Clie

During a management meeting in Japan late last month, Sony executives showed off a new design style for their Clie series of Palm OS handhelds. The new concept design bears a resemblence to the Sharp Zaurus SL-C700 series, with an apparently rectangular screen mounted on a twistable hinge, allowing it to function in both clamshell and tablet modes. Unfortunately, photos and information are scarce, so we don't have full details, but it is presumable that the other half of the device plays host to the hardware buttons, and probably a keyboard. The device is also said to include a camera in the hinge, and some variety of integrated wireless communication. If the device does have a keyboard, this would also imply that the new Clie has at least some marginal support for a landscape mode.

The original Sony NR-70 was debuted in a similar manner at the 2002 PalmSource conference. Shown as a prototype, the NR-70 went on sale two months later. It's unknown whether the new design will follow a similar route, but it is considered likely.

Here is the news article discussing it in the original Japanese. The new Clie can be seen in a photo on the left hand side, with the caption (in Japanese) "The CLIE new terminal under development was also announced at the briefing session."

more info: http://pcweb.mycom.co.jp/news/2003/05/28/25.html