It's no secret that the market for standalone handhelds is shrinking, but with the Tungsten T5, palmOne is betting that there's still room for a plain old power PDA. The T5 is not a smart phone. Nor does it have Wi-Fi -- unlike nearly every other PDA in its price range. It borrows its straightforward design from the workhorse Tungsten E series (rather than the T3 that it supplants with its fancy slider). What the T5 lacks in flash, it makes up for at least partly in function. It has 256MB of nonvolatile flash memory, a great display, and Bluetooth, and thanks to new software tweaks not found on other Tungstens, it is also a capable MP3 player and flash drive.
Design
Elegant and sexy are two words that come to mind when looking at the palmOne Tungsten T5. Designed along similar lines as the popular Tungsten E, the T5 sports a classic dark-silver finish and slim form factor. At 79 by 122 by 15mm and 145g, the T5 easily slips into your bag without adding much weight, yet it still benefits from solid construction and is comfortable to hold in your hand.
The T5's most notable feature is its gorgeous display. The 94mm (3.7-inch-diagonal) TFT screen shows 65K colours and a sharp 320x480-pixel resolution. Similar to the Tungsten T3, the T5 has virtual Graffiti input area, which increases the overall viewing size of the screen. There's a convenient taskbar at the bottom of the screen that offers quick access to the Home page, the Find function, Bluetooth, and more. You can also switch from Portrait and Landscape mode with a single click. Below the screen, you'll find the standard four shortcut keys, easily identified by their icons as Home, Calendar, Contacts, and Files. The five-way toggle sits in the centre, and its roomy layout makes for easy navigation.
The top of the T5 houses an SDIO/MMC expansion slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack (which accepts Walkman-style headphones), a power button, and a stylus holder. We particularly like the heavy feel of the stylus; compared to the plastic styli we've seen on other PDAs, this feels more like a luxurious fountain pen. On the left side, there's a slot to slide on the included screen cover, while the bottom of the device has a connector for the power adaptor and USB HotSync cable. In a new twist, the USB dongle features a one-touch button to activate a HotSync operation, and there's also a slot to attach the power cord. There are a speaker and a reset button on the back.
Other than a flip cover and the syncing and power cables, the T5 doesn't come with many extras. However, palmOne offers a number of accessories, such as a desktop cradle and a nice leather case (both sold separately) if you feel like sprucing up your investment.
Features
The palmOne Tungsten T5 is chock-full of new tricks. You get more computing horsepower with the T5's 416MHz Intel processor, but even more newsworthy is its whopping 256MB of flash memory. With 215MB of user-accessible memory (160MB in internal flash drive, 55MB in program memory), the T5 currently boasts the most memory available in a handheld today. This does well as a complement to the T5's other newfound glory -- the ability to double as a USB removable drive. To take advantage of this feature, turn on the Drive mode utility, use the USB cable to connect to your PC or Mac, and the T5 will appear as a drive on your computer.
Transferring files is of great ease too, as you can now simply drag and drop items with the new File Transfer feature. We used this method to move several Microsoft Word documents, MP3s, and Kinoma video clips from our PC to the T5. Thanks to the fact that the PDA supports USB 2.0, transfer times were relatively fast, although slower for larger files, as would be expected. Still, there's no denying the ease and convenience of drag and drop, and we were equally pleased with the ability to perform a HotSync operation with the click of a button on the universal connector.
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