palmOne LifeDrive Targets Apple iPod

May 18, 2005 By Ian Bell

palmOne LifeDrive Targets Apple iPod

Palm may finally be getting back in the game with their new LifeDrive which combines iPod-like capabilities with fully featured PDA. But will consumers be interested?

Designed for people with a significant volume of digital information, the LifeDrive mobile manager offers 4GB of hard-drive storage (3.85GB user available), a large 320×480 high-resolution color screen, and wireless access through built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless technologies.

The 4GB Hitachi Microdrive weighs less than a AA battery, is smaller than a matchbook and transfers data 30 percent faster than the previous-generation Microdrive, so users can get to their music, pictures, data more quickly. With 3.85GB of usable storage, LifeDrive mobile manager users can store and access all of the following on a single device:

-- 1,200 office documents;    -- 6,000 emails;    -- 1,000 photos;    -- 300 songs;    -- 2.5 hours of video;    -- 50 voicemails;    -- 10,000 contacts; and    -- 10,000 appointments.

Stored information, media, files and documents are available at any time on the 320×480, high-resolution color screen, which can flip from landscape to portrait at the touch of a button.

The LifeDrive mobile manager from palmOne has an estimated U.S. street price of $499.

Full specs:

wireless features

BluetoothÂ® 1.1 wireless
Wi-FiÂ® 802.11b wireless

processor

IntelÂ® 416MHz XScale

Showing 2 comments

CkVega at 8:48am 27th May 2005 Now this does look interesting, I want a device that can store and playback a variety of of different video formats, this definatly looks the closest thing to it. The dedicated Portable media players tend to have the problem of limited format support and up until now, the PDAs have been too small. Perhaps this is a step in the right direction.
James at 9:12am 18th May 2005 I will probably be buying one of these. I like that its a full PDA and can play media. I just wish it had a larger hard drive.