Palm Foleo is the first Mobile Companion of Palm’s new venture. The product is described as a complement to a smartphone (Palm Treo) and has a much larger display, 10″, and a fullsize keyboard. The basic idea is that you will be able to access and edit all of the documents stored on your smartphone. If you edit a document on your Foleo, the document on your smartphone will be updated with the changes right away. You could call it a regular laptop with a direct synchronization, but that’s not quite right. Foleo uses a special operating system based on Linux and can be turned on and off in an instant and has a limited amount of features.
“Foleo is the most exciting product I have ever worked on,” – Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm Inc and the man behind Foleo concept. “Smartphones will be the most prevalent personal computers on the planet, ultimately able to do everything that desktop computers can do. However, there are times when people need a large screen and full-size keyboard. As smartphones get smaller, this need increases. The Foleo completes the picture, creating a mobile-computing system that sets a new standard in simplicity.”
The main features are all about viewing and editing documents, sending and receiving e-mail, and surfing the web in a better format than a smartphone. The browser is none less that Opera 9, but other than that we don’t have that much to tell you about Foleo. The processor is rumored to be an Intel Xscale or Freescale i.MX31, the only thing certain is that it is ARM related.
We should point out that there are possibilities of expanding the Foleo as the platform is open source and Palm encourages third-party developers to develop new applications for Foleo. There will also be the possibility of downloading and installing new applications through the browser and a point and click interface.
At the moment, the synchronization works primarily with Palm OS, but there shouldn’t be any problems to make it work with Windows Mobile, OS X, Symbian, and the rest.
Foleo also sports Wi-Fi, USB, video output, headphone jack and memory card reader for Secure Digital and Compact Flash. The small box weighs 1.1kg (2.5 lbs.) and will cost $499.
