Back in March, a trusted source revealed to us that a Palm-branded Android smartphone was slated to launch on Verizon in the second half of 2018. We haven’t heard anything since then, but a Palm device with model name ‘PVG100’ has just rolled through both the FCC and Wi-Fi Alliance.
As is commonplace with these filings, much of the information and all photos are obscured at the request of the manufacturer. However, there’s still a bit of information that can be gleaned. The FCC page is barren aside from the model name and some operating frequencies, but the Wi-Fi Alliance PDF reveals that the PVG100 will run Android 8.1 Oreo. Interestingly, the only frequency band listed is 2.4GHz, meaning that the PVG100 will not have 5GHz. Without 5GHz support, it’s unlikely that this device will wind up being very upmarket.
These Palm phones will probably have little to nothing to do with the Palm I loved (the pre-webOS Palm, because webOS was terrible and not a proper Palm product).
I will be keeping an eye on this. Hopefully it’s not just a cheap Android knockoff, but adds something worthwhile of the original Palm flavor. (The problem is, I can’t think of what that might be, other than hopefully including a stylus.)
I guess only time will tell…
Thom, I think your nostalgia made you biased against webOS, and I understand that. For those of us who hadn’t really used Palm before, webOS was super nice, despite the lackluster hardware. And webOS didn’t really had time to mature, in the way iOS and Android have. I’m glad the last two actually borrowed a lot of stuff from webOS, so the spirit carries on.
Also, to get root access on webOS you just have to do the Konami code. And that is cool. 🙂
Edited 2018-08-08 06:13 UTC
I also don’t know of these great zen of palm devices Thom spoke so lovingly of. The old school Palm III devices I used back in the day were barely usable. They were slow, clunky devices with crappy input, and terrible sdks. While the webos device I played with in the cell stores was snappy and responsive. In retrospect, I wish I had purchased it. The writing was on the wall for palm it was dying, so a first gen galaxy made more logical sense. But still, the palm was a better demo like experience, imho.
Thom, I recently got a hold of a HP Jornada 680.
I think that device would be right up your alley
But try to get the 720, as the 680 lacks USB.
WebOS may not have been a proper Palm product, but it sure was exciting to use. I loved getting and using my Palm Pre.
I thought we liked webOS here. What a strange thing to say.