Palm Zire 71 Handheld

Okay... I was not a fan of the original Palm Zire handheld but Palm had a hit on their hands. Palm has sold 1 million of those low end units and is expected to sell up to 2 million of them by the end of 2003. Palm has conquered the lowend PDA market... there is no doubt about that. Now that Palm has established the Zire brand name... guess what... time to expand and get the Palm Zire adopters and the older Palm/Pocket PC base to move on up to the Zire 71!

Palm has established the Zire as a brand name standing for quality at rock bottom prices so you would think the Zire 71 would be in some trouble. The Zire 71 doesn't disappoint... however, the Zire 71 is not as easy to use as the original Zire. On the other hand, the Zire 71 doesn't increase the difficult of use by much either.

My Overall View/Summary

The Palm Zire 71 is a serious contender for the mid-range PDA market... offering a top-notch 320x320 transreflective 16-bit color screen as good as those found on Sony CLIEs, an innovative built-in 640x480 digital camera, ability to play MP3s, decent multimedia capabilities, SD/MMC slot for memory expansion, 16MB of RAM (13 MB is usable), the standard universal connector on most mid to high-end Palm PDAs, and a standard 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack. The Palm 71 also offers a few design tidbits for the future especially with the implementation of Palm OS 5.2.1 and the Graffiti 2 update. The inner hardware has been also updated to a zippy Texas Instruments OMAP310 ARM processor running at 144 MHz (Please read my Tungsten T review for more info on the OMAP1510 processor... the OMAP310 is a less power hungry version of that chip) although you cannot upgrade the OS to a future version. The Zire 71 is the lowest prices Palm OS 5 PDA available.

The only major drawbacks are the $299 price tag for people who don't need all the features of the Zire 71 but want a Palm OS 5 handheld and the so-so battery life. The battery life is not as good as ye olde black and white (or black and green) screens but quite good for a color PDA... getting 8 to 9 hours of straight MP3 playback with the screen off. Other minor issues are the cheap plastic stylus retained from the original Zire and the lack of an LED to indicate charging status (like the original Zire). The unit is a bit on the bulky side but due to the addition of the built-in camera and the MP3/sound playback capabilities.

I feel that the Zire 71 is a major design achievement for Palm and has finally given Palm the hardware company an edge over Pocket PC models and the more cutting edge designs Sony had released above Palm's older designs. Finally, Palm is understanding what it takes to be #1 and stay #1 after years of sitting on its tush!

Pros:

1) Price $299
2) 16 MB RAM (13 MB available to user)
3) 320x320 transreflective 16-bit color screen
4) Lithium-Ion battery
5) Universal connector
6) built-in 640x480 digital camera
7) MP3 playback
8) built-in speaker that supposedly can reproduce stereo sound
9) Stereo headphone jack
10) Nice design
11) Tons of accessories
12) SD/MMC slot
13) 5-way joystick
14) limited movie playback
15) Can display digital camera photos
16) decent/so-so battery life (better/similar than other color PDAs)
17) backlight
18) external battery attachments available

Cons:

1) Might still be pricey to some
2) So-so battery life (I know it is in the Pros too... the battery life is still marked worse than the older B&W/B&G screens)
3) Cheap Plastic Stylus
4) No LED for changing status and alarm wake ups.
5) Built-in speaker only decent for MP3 playback
6) No Flash ROM to upgrade OS to future versions

Designing a First Place Finisher

The Zire 71 is a slightly thicker unit than the original Zire and retains many of the Apple iProduct looks. The front of the unit sports a deep blue/powder blue color with the same feel as the original Zire. You still have a 320x320 color screen, the set Graffiti write area, the 4 slikscreened home, menu, special, and find symbols, four application buttons, and a new 5 way controller (4 directions and can be depressed). The back of the package has holes for the speaker, the universal connector, and the accessory attachment slots. The back is a chrome colored piece of heavy plastic. The front also contains the SD/MMC slot, slot for the cheap stylus, power button, 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack, and IR port. The whole package is 4.5 x 2.9 x 0.67 inches (closed) and weighs a decent 5.3 oz.

To reveal the digital camera, you push the blue front portion (contains screen) of the Zire 71 up from the chrome colored back. This reveals a large shutter button at the bottom of the unit and the camera lens at top back of the unit. Following the idea of the Tungsten T, the use of sliding part to pack features without a major sacrifice in size seems to be all the rage at Palm Hardware headquarters.

The internals of the Zire 71 is 16MB of RAM (13MB is available), 4MB of ROM that is NOT flash upgradable (the current OS version is the permanent version), and the Texas Instruments OMAP310 processor running at 144 MHz. The performance is on par with the Tungsten T model. You WILL notice the speed difference over any Palm OS 4 device!

The screen is a nice sized 65,000+ color screen (16-bit color) with a resolution of 320x320 maximum and is transreflective. Okay... what does this mean to you?! The screen is easy to read with excellent color reproduction and able to display photos very realistically. The screen is even easy to read in the daylight! The only thing I've had problems with is the inability to turn off the backlight... holding the power button down got me to the brightness level (the lower the brightness level... the better the battery life!)

Low cost Palm OS 5.2.1 device

The current version of Palm OS 5 has been tweaked here and there to perform better and add more functionality. One of the major changes is the upgrade to Graffiti 2. Graffiti 2 allows you to write characters on the screen and allows for two strokes to create a letter. You can also refine the strokes for characters on the Palm as well. The Graffiti 2 system mimics how you would write printed (not handwritten) english letters. An i is created with a long stroke down with a dot over it... the way most people would print the letter i. With the faster processor, you can also see the strokes you used to create your letters and make corrections to how you write in in your Palm. Graffiti 2 still divides the screen into two parts, the left for inputing letters and the right for numbers. Special symbols can be done on either side.

The current Palm OS 5.2.1 adds more color schemes for your screen. A number of soothing as well as more colorful schemes are included on the Zire 71.

Again, the Zire 71 is the cheapest Palm OS 5 device available. Sony's cheapest OS 5 device is the CLIE PEG-TG50 model that ran at $399 when it first came out but is sold at $349 and I believe there is a $50 mail in rebate to make it competitive with Zire 71. There are a number of major differences between the Zire 71 and the TG50 like size, lack of/addition of thumb keyboard, memory card format accepted, and several more features but my experience with the TG50 is rather limited right now.

Triggerhappy? Camera showdown!

Make no mistake, this isn't going to blow away any of the straight digital cameras on the market... it isn't going to give you quality 3x5 prints. The Zire 71's camera is the equivalent of most web cams which will likely get you about a decent to good quality wallet sized portrait photo. The camera is quite basic is nature and doesn't sport a flash unit. The camera is definitely more for web site shots and quick memories on your Palm. The Zire 71 is best suited to well lighted scenes and even moderately lighted scenes, but the picture becomes quite noisy in low light and fast action shots.

This makes the Zire 71's camera more of a just for fun picture taking but not for taking archiving photos.

MP3 and other multimedia

Video playback through the Kinoma player is decent but still choppy. There only so much you can do with a 144 MHz processor and such a small screen.

The AudiblePlayer for audio books is well suited to the Zire 71. No hiccups there!

MP3 playback requires an SD/MMC card. The RealOne player is decent and doesn't really disappoint. You can play songs back through the built in speaker but it sounds decent at best. Playback through the stereo headphones was much better. At worst, there may have been a minor hiss in the background. It is more or less on par with the Sony CLIEs with MP3 capabilities. This leads us into...

Battery life

The Zire 71 gets a respectable 4 hours of uptime with the screen at full brightness. With the screen off, the battery nets me up to 8+ hours of MP3 playback (non-continuous hours in my use). So battery life is quite comparable to other Palm PDAs and better than most Pocket PC PDAs.

In the box

You get in addition to the Zire 71 handheld, a decent carry case, two CD with the essential and extra software for your Palm, the USB hotsync cable, a power adapter, and the cheapo plastic stylus kept from the first Zire model. Note that there is no cradle with the package or headphones included with the package!

The two CDs contain the Palm desktop software, pocket mirror for MS Outlook, Palm Photos, Palm QuickInstall, RealOne mobile player (MP3), a Solitaire game, Kinoma Player and Producer (video clips), AudiblePlayer (audio-book player), RealOne Arcade (a trial program to access tons of games to play on your Palm or your computer), Palm reader (for eBooks not the palm of your hand dangnabit!), VersaMail 2.5 (email), PowerOne Calculator (duh!), Acrobat Reader (for Adobe PDF files), Telephony/SMS software (use with GSM phone only).

Accessories

If you decide to purchase a Zire 71, I would recommend several accessories. Purchasing an Secure Digital (SD) card is a must. Get at least a 128MB card since that should not run over $50 at a local store and as low as $35 on the internet.

I would recommend getting a decent case for your Zire 71. I personally like E&B cases (www.ebcases.com) which sells highly functional cases that don't need to be removed for HotSyncing the PDA. The case should run no more than $38-$42 depending if you need the belt clip with the case. E&B also sells a travel kit for $29.99. The travel kit has a USB HotSync/charger cable and includes a USB AC adapter and a USB car adapter for travel charging. If you do overseas traveling, you can purchase the optional plug adapters for another $9. www.ebcases.com gives free shipping for orders over $50.

If you do alot of typing, I would highly recommend one of Palm's two portable full sized keyboards. These keyboards are excellent with a good tactile feel!

Price

I was able to purchase the Zire 71 for $249 with a small discount through ebates.com and an additional $50 mail-in rebate after trading in a still functional m100 to Palm. On top of that I got 20% back in MSN dollars to use in specific stores in the future. Read my article The Art of Buying... Getting Your Money's Worth! to see tips on how to save mucho bucks through online shopping!

Note that I didn't keep this model... it went to my girlfriend. I sold off my fairly recent purchase of a Sony PEG-SJ33 to get the Tungsten C handheld... which I'll post a review in the next day or two.