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Palm OS Cobalt now has integrated wireless support
11 October, 2004
by Chris Talbot
PalmSource has released a new version of Palm OS Cobalt,
which now has built-in support for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless
standards, as well as support for GSM wireless voice networks.
The most important thing about Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 is in the
integration of the OS with voice, GSM and wireless networks,
said John Cook, product marketing manager at PalmSource. Additionally,
PalmSource is also making its newly-released developer tools
available for free via its Web site.
This is the first major update to Cobalt since its launch,
although PalmSource has made several minor updates to the
OS. As the company moves more and more of its focus away from
handhelds and more towards wireless and converged devices,
PalmSource believed that it needed to integrate wireless features
directly into the OS, because it would it much simpler for
developers to build upon Palm-powered devices, Cook said.
"We felt like one of the most significant things we
could do is take that technology, which previously had to
be integrated by our licensees, and integrate that ourselves,"
Cook said.
Full GSM phone support has been added, which is the telephony
standard that most of the world uses. Cook said PalmSource
has had much success with licensees in the CDMA world, which
is the North American wireless phone standard, but it had
had less success in the GSM world.
Additionally, support for the 802.11b wireless LAN standard
and the Bluetooth 1.2 wireless standard have been integrated
into the newest release of Palm OS Cobalt, Cook said. However,
the support doesn't end there. The OS also supports multiple
simultaneous wireless connections on a Palm OS Cobalt 6.1-powered
device. Someone using one of the devices could be making a
GSM phone call, surf the Web wirelessly through an 802.11b
access point and use a Bluetooth-enabled headset at the same
time.
"It also allowed us to simplify the setup of all of
these features. We use something we call the Connection Manager,
and through the Connection Manager, we can make it easier
for someone, for example, to roam between various Wi-Fi access
points by taking some of that heavy lifting and integrating
it into the OS," Cook said.
According to Cook, PalmSource is getting very serious about
wanting to go after the smartphone market.
"We feel like we can do in the wireless space what we
have a reputation for doing in the old PDA world -- and that's
simplifying difficult and important problems that phone users
have," Cook said. "We don't go after just a bag
full of features, if you will. We want to make wireless as
simple and as integrated as possible."
Another features in Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 is an enhanced user
interface with a new look and feel, as well as support for
3D graphics, translucent windows and a status bar. Also, how
a user's info is backed up has changed. NAND ROM technology
is now supported, which enables devices to keep information
backed up even after the Palm device's batteries run down.
Once the battery is recharged, it's simple to do a restore
of the data, Cook said.
PalmSource has also re-written its Web browser application.
Palm Web Browser 3.0 takes full advantage of the Cobalt OS
and is capable of handing Web and WAP content. Also new is
standard support for Java technology (which was developed
with IBM), the ability to install new applications from the
device rather than through a hot sync, and a BlackBerry client
(developed with Research In Motion). According to Cook, the
addition of the BlackBerry client software could change for
a lot of people what they think about when buying a mobile
device.
For developers, there is the new Palm OS Developer Suite.
According to Cook, it's tied into an environment called Eclipse,
which allows developers to work with modules for development.
With this new release of the developer toolset, the tool is
now free.
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