A few weeks ago, Palm sent out email invitations to anyone who might be interested in attending a sneak peek event showcasing the newly announced Palm Foleo Mobile Companion. I registered for the event at that time and nearly forgot that it was actually tonight - that is until my Palm Treo (ironically enough) reminded me this morning. The Foleo Sneak Peek Event was held at the small Palm retail store located at the Grove in Los Angeles (seriously.. it’s a small store). I dropped by for a few hours after work to take some pictures of the device, ask some questions, and see what tidbits I could gleam from the Palm representatives there. Before I get into the details, here are two important takeaways to start things off:

1. Palm would not disclose the nitty gritty specs of the device (sorry – no word on the amount of memory or the processor type/speed)
2. The Foleo is ALL about email.

Ah yes, Palm also served some free (and pretty good) food as well free drinks at the sneak peek event. Yes.. I do enjoy free things from time to time. Palm handed out goodie bags for folks who finished up and were ready to leave the event. Inside the goodie bags were a travel mug, an SD card with music loaded on it, some Foleo marketing materials, mints and a Starbucks gift certificate.

Yes that’s nice and all – but we’re here to talk about the Foleo right? So let’s get down to it shall we?

The Foleo - what exactly is it?

Palm bills the Foleo as a “Mobile Companion” – a device that’s designed to work side by side with a Smartphone – say a Palm Treo device. (It doesn’t have to be a Treo of course but the demonstrations at the event were of course related to the Treo). You can find a list of compatible smartphones here. Think of the Foleo as an extension of your smartphone. Palm’s argument centers on the following – who wants to write and read email on a tiny mobile phone display? Why not have a secondary device deliver a better viewing, composing, and editing experience? To accomplish this, the Foleo wirelessly connects with a smartphone (say a Treo) and synchronizes the inbox between the Foleo and the Smartphone.

It’s certainly an interesting concept. As proven over and over, nearly everyone will carry at least one mobile phone – no matter how crappy or functional the phone may be. Many others will also carry a notebook computer – simply because they need email or Microsoft Word or a web  browser. Why not make things simpler but simplifying the notebook down to the bare essentials? That’s what the Foleo is essentially all about.

Here are the main features of the Palm Foleo:

• 10.2 inch widescreen LCD display
• Full-size QWERTY keyboard
• Weight of 2.5 lbs
• Up to 5 hours of battery life
• DataViz Documents To Go for Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files
• PDF viewer
• Photo viewer
• Web browser
• Bluetooth 1.2 wireless technology
• Wi-Fi 802.11b
• SD/MultiMediaCard expansion slot
• CompactFlash slot
• Scroll wheel
• Previous and Next buttons
• One touch email sync button
• Linux OS (kernel 2.4)
• VGA output (with an included adapter)

Here’s what the Foleo is designed to perform:

• Wirelessly connect to your smartphone to read and write emails and view attachments
• Deliver a better viewing experience than your smartphone thanks to the 10.2 inch display
• Provide a small lightweight portable platform
• Provide an instant-on experience
• Provide a larger web experience than your smartphone
• Provide up to 5 hours of battery life – more than enough for a cross country flight

Physical overview

Here are various pictures of the Foleo that I snapped up tonight.

Initial impressions

The display is definitely nice at 10.2 inches. I wasn’t told what the display resolution was but emails and web browsing was certainly enjoyable on the Foleo. The top of the Foleo’s cover has a nice rubbery feel to it making it easy to hold and grip the device. The Foleo’s weight of 2.5 lbs is sheer joy for anyone used to carrying 6+ lbs for a notebook.

Here’s a shot of the right side of the Foleo where all of the ports are located.

You’ve got yourself a headphone jack, the SD card slot, the VGA out (using an adapter, the USB port, and I believe the power connector? (I could be wrong there)

Oh yes – the battery compartment is accessible too.

There are no ports on the left hand side.

Application performance appeared relatively robust and snappy. It was simple to start up applications through what appeared to be something akin to the Windows Start menu. For power users, Foleo provides a terminal (shell) as seen here (though they really didn’t want us playing with it at the event):

Synchronization

The Palm Foleo utilizes Bluetooth networking to synchronize content to and from the smartphone. Now if your smartphone supports dial-up modem access, then you can use the smartphone as a way for the Foleo to get onto the Internet - particularly great if you have Sprint or Verizon data plans since their data networks are rather speedy. (Keep in mind of course you will probably need to pay additional fees for this through your mobile phone carrier. This is definitely the case for both Sprint and Verizon Wireless). The Foleo is also able to connect to Wi-Fi networks so you can easily surf the web, read and write email from any freely accessible hotspot.

It’s all about e-mail

As the Palm reps repeated to me over and over tonight, the Foleo is all about e-mail. The main purpose of the device is to provide a better experience than a smartphone when it comes to reading and writing e-mail. The Foleo is able to connect and sychronize email from the smartphone to the Foleo and back. The full sized QWERTY keyboard makes it easy for a user to compose email messages. Who wants to write long email messages on a small smartphone? Heck I don’t want to write long messages on an iPhone either!

Here’s a picture of the keyboard.

For anyone curious – the keyboard had a pretty good feel to it. Of course anything will be better than typing on a thumb-board.

Here’s a picture of the e-mail application under the Foleo.

As you can see, it has a fairly standard email look and feel to it. To synchronize your email between the smartphone and the Foleo, you simply press the email button on the upper left hand corner and watch it go. Attachments can be downloaded and opened right on your Foleo. The device comes with Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and PDF viewers – which should cover most attachment file formats out there. You can even edit documents and place them on an SD card for transfer to a PC later on.

I was curious to see how far the Foleo takes e-mail synchronization so I asked the Palm rep whether the Foleo supports synchronization of draft messages. Here’s the scenario. What if you start an e-mail message on the Foleo but don’t get a chance to finish it? As it turns out, the Foleo synchronizes the draft message to your smartphone allowing you to later send the message from your smartphone (or of course via the Foleo later on if you wish). Now that’s pretty cool.

Aside from email functionality, the Foleo includes a web browser (which a Palm rep said was Opera), document viewers for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and of course PDF, a picture viewer, a terminal application as we’ve mentioned before, and a file browser.

Palm was also showing off a remote desktop application provided by a third party vendor which allowed the Foleo to connect to another PC. That’s a nice tool to have IF your PC is accessible on the network you’re connected to of course. I can appreciate remote desktop functionality but I don’t think  it’s that big of a deal. Folks in IT may think otherwise though.

Let’s start with the positives

The Palm Foleo has a great form factor. It’s small and lightweight which no $599 notebook could ever match. It has instant on capabilities, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, and an open source OS in the form of Linux. That also means the Foleo has an opportunity to tap into a vast open source community of developers – the key will be whether Palm can provide all the tools and support necessary to make it easy to get third party developers to develop applications for the Foleo.

And some negatives..

For a mobile companion device, the Foleo is all business all the time – at least in its bare form. There’s no media player application installed on the Foleo. You’ll need to pick one up yourself from a third party vendor (apparently PocketTunes is coming to the platform). There’s no instant messaging application which seems slightly odd considering the emphasis on e-mail. IM is only the next largest form of communications on the Internet. Finally, there’s the price. At $599, the Foleo is a bit expensive for the  general public – especially when you consider you need a smartphone to really make it shine. However, is the general public the true audience for the Foleo?

The real audience..

After spending some time with the Foleo tonight, it’s clear to that the device is ideally suited for the mobile professional; to the person who needs to be connected to his or her email; to the person who can’t wait for his notebook to start up.. and to the person who needs something better than his smartphone’s dinky display. As Palm reps reminded me tonight, the Foleo is all about instant-on access to e-mail above all else. Similar to how Apple claims the iPhone delivers the ”full Internet”, the Foleo delivers the “full email” with it’s wireless connectivity, 10.2 inch widescreen display, and available document viewers.

At $599, consumers might be put off by the Foleo. However, businesses and mobile professionals might just drop the dough for the device – especially if it means it will help them be more productive in their daily life.

Final thoughts…

The question I find myself asking is the following:

Would I be willing to buy the Foleo when it comes out?

As a consumer - no. As a regular consumer, I want a fully functional, fully featured device which means more than email, and more than web browsing. Instant on is nice but I can certainly wait the minute it takes for Windows to boot. Now if the device was $200 dollars cheaper, then maybe I’d consider it.

As a business user – maybe. There have been plenty of times where I wished I had a larger display on my smartphone. Even the iPhone’s display pales in size when compared to the Foleo. I can certainly read emails on my iPhone but I want a full QWERTY keyboard which the iPhone does not supply (but the Foleo does). The Foleo provides all the basic functionality that a business mobile user or mobile professional would want – minus perhaps the IM functionality. This leads me to my point that third party app developers will be central to the success of the Foleo. However, the point is this – the Foleo aims to deliver enough of what you need and nothing else. Most mobile professionals simply need email and the web and that’s what the Foleo delivers.

If the business pays for it? YES. If you’ve ever lugged around a 7 lb notebook on your back all day long, you’ll come to appreciate light devices. At 2.5 lbs, the Foleo is light.. so light you might forget it’s a computer. Now consider.. if your company is willing to foot the bill for the device – would you use it? I think most of you would say yes. Granted, this means you’ll need to carry the Foleo AND a mobile phone.. but is that so different from carrying a notebook and a mobile phone?

The real threat to the Foleo will be hardware vendors that manufacture super cheap notebooks with instant on capabilities. If you can get a small notebook in the sub $500 dollar range that starts up immediately, then the Foleo could be in for some trouble. This is where VIA’s plans for small nanobook systems is pretty interesting and perhaps troublesome for Palm.

I’ll reserve my final judgement on the Foleo when it comes out at the end of the summer. Until then, I think there is a market for the Foleo – I just don’t think it’s as large as Palm hopes it would be. If Palm would provide more functionality than just email and web browsing to the Foleo, then I would be far more positive (and hopeful) of the device. One thing I can say - the Foleo is not revolutionary by any means. It’s just a device that straddles the line between notebooks and mobile phones (yet not nearly as featured or an expensive as a UMPC).

Again, the Foleo is due out at the end of the summer. According to reps at the store, the Foleo will sell for $599. There will be a $100 mail-in rebate initially which will bring the price down to $499.

Here’s a short video clip of the marketing material being shown.

Thanks to Kontrib.com, you can see this article machine translated into:

• Arabic

• Chinese

• French

• Romanian

• Spanish

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