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When Handspring first bounced into the handheld market about 18 months ago, it gave the utterly dominant Palm its first real competition.
Handspring had licensed the Palm OS as the basis of its Visor range of handheld devices, so strictly speaking, the Visor was a mere 'clone' of the Palm product range. However, Handspring seemed to have an edge over Palm thanks to its more innovative hardware design.
Handspring adopted USB before Palm, and its Springboard expansion slot seemed to provide a wider range of options for clever add-ons such as digital cameras and even mobile phone modules. But with the release of the Visor Edge, Handspring looks like it might have, well, lost its edge.There's no denying that the Visor Edge is a very nice product. It's a mere 119 x 79 x11mm in size, and weighs just 136g. Our review unit was a restrained silver in colour, but you can also buy it in brash metallic red or blue if you prefer.
It has all the standard Palm OS features, including calendar, address book, memo pad and to-do lists, so all the basic software you need is pre-installed and ready to use.
It has 8MB of built-in memory, which will store thousands of items of information, and its 33MHz Dragonball processor makes it feel fast and responsive.
On paper, then, it's a good match for its closest rival, the recently released Palm m500.
However, there are a few niggling points that cause its techno-lust rating to drop slightly. A quick look at the specifications for the m500 show that it is about the same size as the Edge, but almost 20 per cent lighter.
There are also a number of odd design decisions that spoil the Edge's streamlined appearance. On previous Visor models the writing stylus fitted into a slot that was recessed into the body of the device, preserving the tidy, slimline appearance of the unit. For some reason, Handspring has put the Edge's stylus on the outside of the unit, resting in a kind of clip on the right-hand edge. This looks rather untidy, and the clip mechanism can be a bit fiddly at times.
Even worse from an aesthetic point of view is the ugly plastic hinge used to attach the flip-up cover to the unit. This fits into the expansion slot at the top, but having a big plastic hinge sitting right on top of this otherwise streamlined unit looks terrible. Maybe Handspring is hoping you'll buy a nice expensive leather case from its online store as a replacement, but the standard cover makes a really bad first impression that may simply send potential customers elsewhere.
So too does the way the Springboard expansion slot has been integrated. The design of the slot means that it's a little too large for such a slimline device, so in order to plug in any Springboard add-on modules you first have to plug in a separate adaptor that doubles the thickness of the entire unit. It may be technically clever, but it's an aesthetic disaster and ruins the look and feel of the thing. In contrast, Palm has adopted the more compact secure digital expansion slot for the m500.
It may seem unfair to judge the Edge on such superficial details, but if Handspring wants to market the Visor range as some sort of 'lifestyle' gadget, then these points do matter.
To be fair, the Visor Edge does have all the features you need from an electronic organiser, and it's exactly the same price as the m500, so there's little to choose between them in terms of price and features.
However, Handspring's hardware designers seem to have lost the plot slightly and the Visor Edge will have some real competition from the Palm m500 this time around.
Specifications
- Handwriting recognition
- 33Mhz Dragonball processor
- 8Mb standard memory
- Built-in calendar, address book, memo pad, to-do list
- Springboard expansion slot
- USB cradle for PC connection
Contact Handspring: 020 7309 0134 www.handspring.co.uk
See also:
All Palm PDAs
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