01-13-2008, 12:10 PM | #1 |
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Remembering Palm OS Cobalt - Two smartphones that were almost sold
With the discovery of the new code name Nova for Palm's upcoming operating system, it seems appropriate to remember the next generation PalmOS that never saw the light of day. And we also have exclusive product information on some Cobalt based smart phones which were almost released. (Click through to the full article to see the attached product information sheets on a candy bar and sliding qwerty keyboard product we nearly saw!)
PalmSource was the company that controlled the development of Palm OS after being split apart from Palm, the hardware company. That split once made sense because the goal was to allow Palm OS to be on more devices, even those not made by Palm. The reality was not so pretty, when no one wanted to make Palm OS devices, Cobalt never was released but never adopted for devices, and then ACCESS bought PalmSource leaving Palm on its own with respect to a new OS. But in 2005 everything looked rosy for Palm OS, with the expected release of Palm OS Cobalt. (Palm OS5, now called Garnet, is still the only Palm OS operating system being released on actual devices. Palm OS6 was going to be Cobalt.) Here is a description of Cobalt from PalmInfocenter back in 2004 when it was announced... "Palm OS Cobalt is a complete rewrite of Palm OS designed to maintain ease of use and software compatibility while creating a foundation for next-generation Palm Powered devices and solutions tailored to the growing needs of the communications, enterprise, education and entertainment markets. Palm OS Cobalt improves compatibility with Microsoft Windows, while offering advanced features including: * Multitasking, multithreading; * Memory protection; * Support for more memory and larger screens; * Industry standards-based security; * Extensible communication and multimedia frameworks capable of handling multiple connections simultaneously;" Some prominent members of the Palm development community expressed the excitement that many of us were feeling in those days. These quotes are not presented here to mock any of these people after the unexpected turn of events, but to simply remind you of the enthusiasm and hope of the day.
As far as why we never saw Cobalt, I guess that remains a mystery. Maybe there are readers that can give us some clues. Some commenters have said performance issues were never solved. Some said it just wasn't ready for prime time. Others have claimed that it wasn't a good fit for product developers. And it has even been said that it was just the wrong time to be asking phone makers to adopt another new Palm platform. At any rate, the landscape of the smart phone market has never been the same. Well, in a way, the failure of Cobalt has caused it to remain exactly the same. Palm still sells Garnet (OS5) phones, now alongside Windows Mobile. And everyone is still chasing the Linux dream. It's has been like the dark ages of smart phone platforms. Thank goodness we are finally seeing the signs of a renaissance! . |
01-13-2008, 01:20 PM | #2 | |
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Palm hired a bunch of folks who had previously been involved in BeOS to work on it. The Be folks were apparently tasked with the multi-tasking/multi-threading kernel. As a bit of irony, the original Palm OS was based on an RTOS kernel called AMX from an outfit called Kadak. AMX offered preemptive multitasking, but Palm's license didn't permit them to expose it. (At a guess, given the hardware of the earliest Palm devices, and the intended usage, Palm decided multi-tasking was unneeded and would have been problematic, so why pay extra to get it?) Cobalt was reportedly completed, yet even Palm declined to make devices based on it. The best guesses I've heard for why not were performance related. BeOS was intended for multi-media development, and a poor fit as an embedded OS for a handheld platform. Too big, and too slow, requiring to much hardware to perform acceptably. When Access bought PalmSource, they originally announced plans for a new OS based on an embedded Linux kernel, with Cobalt as the UI layer on top of Linux. Access had acquired a mobile port of Linux in their previous acquisition of China Mobile. Linux would do the heavy lifting of process, thread, and memory management, and applications would talk to Cobalt. Access was aiming at the Indian and Chinese smartphone market. What they actually wound up doing was implementing Palm OS Garnet in a virtual machine on top of Linux. The Access entry is completed, and being shopped to manufacturers as ALP (for Access Linux Platform). They've announced a partnership with NTT DoCoMo, but no significant design wins yet. Google's Android OS has considerably muddied those waters. Meanwhile, Access released a beta of the Garnet VM that runs on the Nokia 770, 800, and 810 Internet Tablets as a free download. Early reports are mixed. It apparently runs, and many Palm apps work in it, but it doesn't see expansion cards, and programs using external libraries (like Mathlib, used by just about every calculator application) don't work. Hotsync is also an open question. Palm has partnered with embedded OS vendor Wind River Systems for their Linux port. We'll see whether they manage a better job than Access. ______ Dennis |
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01-13-2008, 05:05 PM | #3 |
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I think there are many "mysteries" about Palm. Like, what where they thinking when they created the Foleo hype - "secret third business", yeah right! Oh and yes, we've seen the Treo - a really nice device. But it was introduced, uhm, when... 2004? Is that all a company, which used to employ 1200 people (before the layoffs last December), can come up with?
It's difficult to understand what went wrong in a company that used to be so successful, with a customer base so strong that it even rivaled that of Apple's. |
01-15-2008, 09:48 AM | #4 |
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Considering the success of the EEEpc, it's pretty obvious what Palm was thinking. Though, I don't think the Foleo was quite ready for prime time.
Also, man, those phones are ugly. And bricklike. Perhaps that's why they never hit market: it was designed for a hardware platform that was DOA. |
01-15-2008, 09:54 AM | #5 | ||
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But the eee is a stand-alone device, and the Foleo was an appendage to a Treo, only really useful if you had one. And if you did, you probably had a laptop, which the Foleo wouldn't replace. The eee, from published experiences of users, largely can. Quote:
______ Dennis |
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01-15-2008, 04:38 PM | #6 | |
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01-15-2008, 05:21 PM | #7 | |
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01-16-2008, 03:53 AM | #8 | |
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Cobalt is dead. And here is how Palm is trying to get itself out of the dilemma again:
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01-16-2008, 04:06 AM | #9 | |
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Palm claims the Centro is doing nicely, thanks. The question, since Palm is trying to position is as an "entry level" device is what they have that might be considered an "upgrade". The answer at the moment is "not much". There are rumors of a new Treo model in preparation that will (finally) include Wifi. We'll see who offers it, as most folks get phones through service providers, and the carriers aren't enthusiastic about a capability that would compete with their data plans ______ Dennis |
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01-16-2008, 09:51 AM | #10 | |
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01-16-2008, 11:46 AM | #11 | |
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Sony was the major licensee for Palm OS other than Palm, and they had chosen to get out of the PDA business and fold the Clie line. It was profitable, but not profitable enough, and Sony senior management concluded corporate funds could be better invested elsewhere. There were a few smaller niche market players, like Tapwave, whose Zodiac was intended as a combination PDA and handheld gaming device (and who folded in July 2005), Kyocera (who made a cell phone with Palm OS), and Symbol Technologies (who made "ruggedized" devices for things like shop floor control). Sony's departure from the PDA business prompted the sale of Palmsource to Access -- licensing revenues dropped about 50%, and Palmsource put itself on the block to survive. Palm tried to buy them back, but was outbid by Access. Ironically, Palm originally spun off the OS division as an independent operation in part to placate Sony, who was concerned about the OS in their devices being developed and controlled by a direct competitor in the PDA market. (And, as I recall, in an attempt to boost a lagging stock price.) Access was interested in in merging Cobalt with a Linux port they'd gotten through acquisition of China Mobile, to have something to pitch to the Asian cell phone market. Their original plan was to make Cobalt the UI layer on top of an embedded Linux kernel. That was apparently a larger chore than they realized when they made the announcement. What they wound up doing was was creating a Garnet Virtual Machine that would run as a Linux task. A free download of a beta of the GVM that runs on the Nokia 770, 800, and 810 Internet Tablets is available from the access site. Access completed their effort, called ALP (Access Linux Platform), and is shopping it to possible vendors. An agreement of some sort has been announced with NTT DoCoMo (possibly brokered by the Japanese government), but thus far there have been no announcements of actual products that will incorporate it. Palm, meanwhile, has their own next generation OS development underway, code named Nova, and based on a Linux kernel from embedded OS developer Wind River Systems. In an Investor Day announcement a while back, they made of point of stating they would not license their new OS to third parties. I was amused by this. Announcing that you won't sell what no one has offered to buy struck me as silly. We'll see what Palm winds up with. Access was recommending 64MB of flash and 256MB of RAM, plus a 400mhz processor, as the minimum configuration needed to run ALP. If Cobalt was in that range when completed, I can see Palm having second thoughts, as that would have been too big for any extant product in their line. Those waters have been further muddied by Google's Android platform, which is open source and carries no license fees. Any manufacturer that desires can grab it and do a customized version to support their particular hardware and desired feature set. ______ Dennis |
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