I got a Youtube ad for suppositories...
I'm not sure if that was supposed to happen, but it's definitely painted the device with a rather shitty brush.
The Palm brand has returned with a bizarre concept: a tiny touchscreen "ghost" phone that mirrors the contents of your real smartphone – and won’t do much without one. The 3.3-inch full touchscreen promises the “full Android experience.” should you want it – or as much of the experience as you can get with a Qualcomm …
"I'm not sure if that was supposed to happen, but it's definitely painted the device with a rather shitty brush."
No, that is the new improved AI working in conjunction with the devices upgraded sensors....
You need more bran in your diet and the onboard calendar has scheduled your for a colonoscopy.
That article says that an irritating phone you don't want to use is a new concept - but what about that Nokia that had Snake instead of Whatsapp?
Maybe one day we will have mobiles with rotary dials which need coins to make calls, do not have your Contacts stored on them, and only work if you tie them to a wall.
What a time to be alive!
$4 phones (Not sure the UK price, not risked looking on Ebay/Amazon/Ali Express).
You could easily do disposable* Pub phones for that price.
*Please return address with a postage stamp on the back (it's small enough ;) ), to the local recycling centre if we want to be green.
I don't understand the recent fascination with phablets, 6" size of a phone is a design fault, not a feature.
@Gordan, because people come in all sizes, having a phone to match that variety is a good thing. I don't know about others, but I shop all my phones at least in part based on whether my fingers can hit the tiny, tiny buttons. Having said that, put a strap on this thing and I would have a nice chunky watch.
“Life Mode” will free you from constant distractions, such as the non-stop stream of notifications. Unlike in a conventional Flight Mode, you can choose what gets through, and when.
This is a selling point that I hope gets taken much further. Application management on Android phones has long been an irritant to me. It would be so nice if there was a console where you could manage access rights, notifications, et cetera for different apps all in one go, by group or otherwise instead of the current base setup where you have to go into each app's settings and select each bit. Ugh! Kudos to Palm for getting this bit right.
If you use your phone as a kindle more than as a phone, a large screen is better.
If you use your phone to read & send email more than as a phone, a large screen is better.
If you use your phone to catch up on Social Media while on the bus, a large screen is better.
If you use your phone a lot and desire a huge battery, a large screen allows for more real space.
If you use your phone as a phone but don't want to always put your glasses on first, a large screen is better.
Only the first affects me, but there are many reasons that people desire large phones with large screens.
If you want to be able to reach the whole screen with your thumb without having to jiggle it about to reach across, a 4.5" screen is better
It's all well and good saying they all come in a range of sizes, but they don't anymore. Sony seem to be the only holdouts for a decent sub-5" screen
It's not 1 April, so I don't get it. Things Palm did well:
1) Run hundreds of free or nearly free apps.
If it's an Android, this should do that.
2)Keep a handy copy of all your immediately essential data (contacts, calendar, to-do...) *offline*.
Check.
3)Sync copies of that data to a "real computer" (desktop, laptop) with nothing more expensive or tethered than an occasional serial connection.
Fail.
Hello:
3) Sync copies of that data to a "real computer" (desktop, laptop) with nothing more expensive or tethered than an occasional serial connection.
All great and much missed but it's this last virtue where Palm really excelled.
All the POS phones I have ever had (Sony, Samsung are you reading this?) failed miserably in that department with the sole exception of the neat Motorola StarTac, albeit with a software/serial connector combo you paid through your nose for.
The Blackberry 7.x series do not count as, incredibly enough, it actually did not come with address-book software for the desktop and left you to depend on MS-Outlook. 8^/
It's been eons since I purchased my first Palm and still use one (IIIxe) with the J-Pilot software under Linux and the Palm Desktop software in my netbook.
At one time I even used it to send short/basic e-mail (dial-up days) with my StarTac till the carrier decided it was game over and had to pay data fees.
A.
No. I basically have two completely independent sets of personal data management apps on my phone, ex factory: one by Google, one by Samsung. Which one do you think supports syncing to a non-connected, offline desktop app? That's right, neither. All they let you do is look at what you have on your phone - while it's plugged in.
I was using a 3.5 inch Android phone a couple of years back - £35 from Sainsbury's - as a stop gap. It did calls and WhatsApp just fine, and I was never worried if I dropped it.
The other small phone the Reg has featured recently, the Punkt, is also priced too highly when Banggood.com have a 3G clone for about £30.
All my Android phones are ~3.5", were EOL bargains, so under £20 on the High Street. Perfectly good for what I want to do.
I'm sure, if someone put their mind to it, they could have one phone mirroring whatever is on another. I'm not sure though how they'd wrangle £300+ out of anyone for having done that.
It can have full functionality, it's just that it's currently only being sold on a Number Sharing eSIM service. You don't need to have your main mobile phone in the same room, or even turned on, in order to use this as an Android mobile phone.
Still, the sticking point appears to be price. That's the common view on other tech site threads.
This was the topic of a Reg discussion the other week - technically it's possible for UK networks to issue multiple SIMs for the same number (and a Reg reader confirmed a German network does just that - commonly used for a mobile and a car phone). Such a service would open up a whole menagerie of range of cheap and cheerful phones for use as secondary 'pub handsets'.
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The advantage is that you can just grab one of two handsets as you leave the house, and still be contactable on the same number - without faffing around swapping your SIM. Say you use a 5.5" pricey phone during the day, but just want a small cheap phone on a night out for calls, texts and WhatsApp.
The concept is sound. Where this falls down is that many people would want their second handset to be far cheaper than the £300 being asked for here - especially as basic Android phones can be had for around £30.
Give it time. Offering a second SIM for a single number might be a way for network operators to distinguish themselves in the market. Phones are becoming both more expensive and cheaper than ever before, so why not use a different handset for different situations?
I don't get the use case either. Apparently it does ALL of the exact same things as your main phone, except... on a smaller screen? And using the same phone number...? But what can I do with it that I can't with the main one?
If I wanted a second phone, I could just get a small new one for $30 or so or just re-commission an older one I still have and charge (now only for alarm clock purposes, but it's working perfectly fine nonetheless...). And bollocks to the "less distractions" angle - it looks like it has all the exact same sources of distraction, and besides there's nothing preventing one to set up one's main phone to distract less. WTF?
It's not that it does things that your main phone doesn't, it is that this concept could allow you to take a compact cheap phone on a night out on the piss, or on a muddy mountain bike ride, whilst leaving your bulky and pricey do-it-all phone safely at home, yet still be contactable on the same number.
The concept is sound, but the asking price for this handset (and possibly the tariff for the eSIM) is far too high.
Yep. Unihertz Jelly Pro - cracking little phone (if you have good eyesight!)
One downside - it doesn't support OTG connection. Otherwise BRILLIANT little device.
2 x nanoSIMs. Takes a 256Gb MicroSD card, bluetooth, Android 7.0 Nougat OS and all functions that a smartphone should have. Earphone jack, removable battery, unlocked, 4G.
...is new again. Tech progress is a big circle. Once it comes around again, you don't quite notice that it's USP is what you had 20 years ago (Nokia 8210? Ericsson T68i?). So it is with this.
My $DEITY, it's a small 'phone that works for making calls! Why did nobody ever think of this before?
The thing that differentiated Palm from the rest was PalmOS. Not WebOS, which was the Prè's downfall, but good old low res PalmOS with Grafiti. This is just another Mars bar reboot with Android shoehorned into it which, for using the virtual koybred (best I can do on a touch screen), will be bloody useless.
The use case is that you can just grab one of two handsets as you leave the house, and still be contactable on the same number - without faffing around swapping your SIM. Say you use a 5.5" pricey phone during the day, but just want to carry a small cheap phone on a night out or muddy bike ride for calls, texts and WhatsApp.
However, this particular handset is just too pricey for this use case.
"this particular handset is just too pricey for this use case."
Exactly, which means it doesn't address this use case. If people want to fulfill the use case you describe, they've been able to for years, using phones that cost under $50 (and if your goal is to have a phone that you don't mind losing or breaking, cost is the most important factor). So I remain confused as to what this device is supposed to do for me.
Because it would have a different number, making it harder for people to contact you.
This concept doesn't require a specialist phone though; some network operators offer a second SIM for the same number*, but none in the UK do, save for the Apple Watch's eSIM.
*A fellow commentard has noted that a German telco has offered second SIMs, usually for use in car phones.
"Because it would have a different number, making it harder for people to contact you."
Most (all?) US carriers will let you have the same number on multiple phones. I assumed this was globally true, but apparently not. I never thought I'd actually see an area where US cell service is better than the service in other industrialized nations, but here we are!
Regardless, as you point out, you don't need this particular device to do this -- the ability doesn't depend on the phone(s) involved, it depends on what your carrier allows. If this is the main selling point for the TCL phone, then there's really no reason to buy the TCL phone.
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I went with the smartwatch idea. It really does the job of this miniphone while being strapped to my wrist and not ever in my road.
I have a Galaxy S9+ so i suppose im in the ridiculous phone category, but the watch takes care of checking notifications, answering or rejecting calls, navigation commands (used when walking), controlling music i listen to via my bluetooth headphones and quick replies to messages
oh, and tap to pay and workout tracking (read knows where i went for a walk).
A second phone is just daft.
Out of interest, what watch are you using? Asking because currently I'm running a Note 9 with a second SIM that I'd like to promote to my primary phone.
Currently my primary phone is an iPhone SE purely for the pocketability and Apple Watch. The Wear OS watches I've looked at either don't have Google Pay or look like a reject prop from a Borg cosplay at a Star Trek convention.