Refine search for Mobile Phones

  Leave a comment      Email this to a friend TrustedReviews Newsletters

Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge

Palm, or rather palmOne as it’s now known is the granddaddy of pocket size PDAs and with the new Zire range, palmOne is taking on the low cost colour display models from Sony and Mitac. The Zire 31 is the more basic of the two recently launched Zire models, but it’s also far cheaper than the Zire 72.

But even a basic PDA today comes with more features than top of the range models did only a year or two ago, which shows how fast the PDA market is moving. The Zire 31 is the first entry level PDA from palmOne to feature a colour screen and even though it is a fairly small, low resolution 160 x 160 pixel display, it represents a big step forward in terms of what you can get for just over £100.

It does however look more like the kind of screen you’d get on an older mobile phone rather than a PDA, but then an STN display will never offer the same kind of quality as a modern TFT screen. To be fair though, the main quality issue isn’t with the display itself but rather the limited use of colours, which at 8bit or 4,096 colours is some way below the 16bit displays seen on most other PDAs. In use I found that with certain colour combinations a lot of streaking was evident and dark colours never looked particularly convincing.

The processor has also been given an overhaul from the comparably slow 126MHz Texas Instruments OMAP part found in the Zire 21 to a 200MHz Intel ARM processor. This allows for more advanced applications and tasks, such as picture viewing and mp3 playback.

The one thing that always appears to be stingy on PalmOS based PDAs is the amount of onboard memory and things aren’t any different with the Zire 31. What you get is a mere 16MB, of which 14MB is free to use. But when your average PalmOS application takes up between 300-500Kb, 14MB should be plenty.

The Zire 31 can use SD and MMC memory cards and as mentioned, the faster processor allows for mp3 playback, but you have to store the mp3 files on memory cards as you can't play music from the onboard memory. You can also use SDIO devices such as Bluetooth and WiFi adapters.

As the Zire 31 is a basic model there is no docking cradle supplied, nor a fancy proprietary port to which one can be attached at a later date. Instead there is a mini-USB port and a power socket for the charger under a small rubber flap at the top left hand side. The issue here is that rubber flaps tend to get worn quite quickly and break off, but then only time will tell how robust these flaps are.

Around the top is a standard 3.5mm headphone socket as well as the SD slot, which has a flip-down dust cover to prevent foreign objects getting inside. Next to the SD slot is where the stylus lives in a standard pull out slot, but it can be a bit awkward to get the stylus out if you have very short fingernails. The stylus is the standard plastic toothpick variety, but it is comfortable to use and I much prefer it to the extendable styli found on some more upmarket PDAs.

Around the back is a slot for the protective rubber flap that comes in the box. This flap covers the screen when the device isn’t being used and protects it from scratches and knocks. This is also where the speaker is located as well as the reset button. To get to the reset button you need something like a paperclip or similar as the hole is too small to use the stylus.

Add your comment