Reg Review PalmOne Zire 72

When I reviewed the PalmOne's previous consumer-oriented multimedia PDA, the Zire 71, last October, little did I realise that the company would replace it in six months' time. But that's what it has done, dropping the 71 in favour of a new model, the 72. The 71 was a nice machine, and it's good to report that its successor is no mere tweak of the specifications but a major revision that not only eliminates almost all of the limitations of its forebear but manages to offer something new.

The 72 is fractionally larger than the 71 - the new one's 11.7 x 7.5 x 1.7cm - though certainly more curvaceous. Both models weight 136g (4.8oz). While the 72 retains the line's trademark blue and silver colour scheme, this time round the metallic sheen has been replaced with a matt, rubbery feel, presumably to further widen the gap between the Zire series and PalmOne's executive-oriented. It also gives it a more rugged look and feel, though whether it will prove more robust over time than the 71 remains to be seen.

In place of the 71's joystick control, the 72 adopts the five-way navigator common to other PalmOne devices and replaces the original's linear array of application buttons with two rows of two - a big improvement for folk who want to hold the device in one hand and control it with a single thumb.

Camera obscura

Gone too is the 71's slider mechanism, which separated the front and the back of the device sufficiently to expose its rear-mounted digicam. While the slider neatly protected the camera's lens from scratches, too few consumers realised that there was a camera behind it. Upgraded to a 1280 x 960 resolution (1.2 megapixels) from the original's 640 x 480, the digicam is now rather bigger and its electric razor-like steel mesh casing bulges from the back of the device in a way not indicated by most of PalmOne's publicity shots, which make the 72 appear thinner than it is. Fortunately, the camera casing looks more bulky than it is, but still comes as a surprise after the smoothly curved 71.

The camera is activated using one of the application buttons - the others call up the calendar, contacts and RealNetworks' RealOne MP3 player applications. The Camera app provides the usual resolution control, allowing you to, say, drop back to 640 x 480 to increase the number of shots the PDA can hold, and take similarly limited-only-by-memory video footage at up to 320 x 240. The software also allows you to activate the device's 2x digital zoom.

Picture quality is surprisingly good, and the camera upgrade makes a big difference to how your shots will look. The change puts some clear blue water between the 72 and most camera phones, although they too will see upgrades going forward.

That's all much as you'd expect, but PalmOne has shown some real savvy with the Zire 72's camera. Realising that quite a few pictures end up in other applications, it has integrated digicam functionality directly into those ones too. Now that Contacts supports pictures, if you want to add a photo of an individual to his or her entry in your contacts database, you no longer have to take the picture, save it and then import into Contacts, you can do it directly.

'Integration' appears to have been a watchword of the Zire 72 development team. The old Photos application has been re-titled Media and updated to allow it to play back video. Media also includes a desktop component for creating PC-hosted albums and compressing video into a form suitable for playback on the PDA. Unlike Kinoma Producer, the formerly bundled software it replaces, Media's desktop code is Windows only. Mac users may be satisfied with a desktop applet that simplifies transfering files over to the handheld, but since that's easy enough to do with PalmOne's own Desktop software, I rather doubt they will be. Worse, the .ASF video files created by the Zire 72 appear incompatible with the Mac versions of QuickTime Player and Windows Media Player. Windows users with WMP 9 should have no problems playing the files back, however.

In addition to integrating video playback, Media now allows you to add or remove photos from categories using a single button that calls up a thumbnail gallery of all your pictures from which you can select or deselect the shots in each album with a single click.

Media handles images larger than 320 x 320 rather better than its predecessor did. As before, they're initially scaled down to that size, but click on the new zoom icon and the pic is displayed at its native resolution. Tapping and dragging with the stylus lets you scroll around the pic. Photos can be rotated and have text and line art added - the latter neatly rendered with anti-aliasing.

Incidentally, Palm OS 5.2.8 now allows you to add a backdrop to application launcher categories, each selected from the PDA's image repository and with a user-defined level of contrast, or 'fade', as the OS puts it.

Click for a full-size shot taken by the Zire 72

Messages, another new app, handles both text and multimedia messaging. Again, it makes use of the digicam directly. Unfortunately, it doesn't look after your email, and I hope this omission will be rectified in a future release. Right now, email on the Zire 72 is handled by PalmOne's venerable VersaMail, updated to version 2.7, installed separately off the bundled CD.

Under the hood

PalmOne has upped the Zire's processor speed from 144MHz to 312MHz, switching from Texas Instruments' old OMAP 310 to Intel's brand new XScale PXA270 in the process. The 270 includes Wireless MMX, the set of multimedia-oriented instructions taken from the desktop Pentium family, which bodes well for digital data processing on the Zire, and is possibly one of the reasons why it's running Palm OS 5.2.8 rather than the anticipated and more common 5.2.1.

The 270 also features integrated digicam support, saving the need for separate image processing chips, which in turn allows PalmOne to cut its costs. The Intel chip can handle a four megapixel digicam, so PalmOne has room to expand this aspect of the Zire 72 at a future time.

For now, the company has doubled the Zire's memory to 32MB, 24MB of which is available to the user. With the bundled apps in ROM, that leaves plenty of space for PIM data, photos and further applications, though the SD IO slot provides scope for further expansion. You'll need a card if you plan to play MP3s or record video - with no bundled memory card, recording video will not work out of the box.

Incidentally, the top of the 72 curves up at the front, making it difficult to insert and remove cards properly. Cards have to pushed quite a way in before they will lock in place.

Wireless connectivity

Anyone wanting to pair up their Zire with a mobile phone will now be spared the cost of a Bluetooth SD Card - PalmOne has built the wireless technology into the 72, addressing my main concern with the 71. The company has also taken some of the pain out of the setting up a wireless link by bundling a Bluetooth wizard that builds on its earlier PhoneLink app. Pairing a compatible phone with the 72 for multimedia messaging and mobile Internet access is just a few clicks away.

And once Bluetooth is activated, you now get an icon to tell you so in the launcher's menu bar, but it's not interactive so can't be used to quickly switch the radio on and off.

I've already mentioned the updated - but not much improved - VersaMail, but PalmOne has also upgraded its WebPro browser, to version 3.5, which now displays a thumbnail of the site you're accessing. Dragging the square cursor around the screen allows you to select which parts of the page are displayed on the 72's 320 x 320 transflective display, saving all that scrolling around as you work towards the bit of the page you're most interested in.

Bluetooth has been a part of PalmOne's Tungsten T line since the first model was released. So has voice recording. Just as the 72 brings Bluetooth to the Zire line, so it brings voice memos. Like the Tungsten T series, the 72 sports a separate voice recorder button on its left-hand side, ready for activation dictaphone-style.

Performance

To test the 72, I used a variety of benchmark apps: Laurent Duveau's Speedy 3.4, HotPaw's yCPU and Kinoma Player 2.0, which has its own performance testing option.

The 72 clearly outpaces my ageing Tungsten T, with the suite completing in 0.86s to the T's 3.21s. Speedy comprises three individual tests: calculation, memory and graphics. What took the T 1.50, 0.49 and 1.22s to complete took the 72 0.49, 0.12 and 0.25s to finish, a significant speed gain all round.

xCPU confirmed the big difference between the 72's processor, memory and screen performance and the T's

Kinoma Player provides a more real-world test. Kinoma's results with our 1.4MB, 25.6s test movie played out of system memory as fast as possible yielded 86.48fps for the T but a massive 487.88fps for the 72.

I wouldn't like to say faster processors are no longer a necessity, but it's hard to imagine anyone who would be disappointed with the 72's speed. It's limitations are now not CPU speed but Bluetooth and mobile phone network bandwidth. Video capture and playback performance are good - again, the limitation's not performance but simply the screen size.

Battery life does remain an issue, however. PalmOne's choice of processor, Intel's XScale PXA270 incorporates a Wireless SpeedStep, a version of the chip giant's power conservation technology for its notebook processors. But the big drain on a modern PDA's battery remains the colour screen and its power-hungry backlight. The Bluetooth radio doesn't help much either.

How much operating time the 72's 950mAh - up from the 71's 900mAh cell - yields you between charges will depend very much on how often you use your PDA. Checking your diary and contact details now and then shouldn't prove too much of a drain, but start using those multimedia features in earnest - which, after all, is what the device is for - and you can easily find yourself recharging every day. Intensive aming may only give you three or fours' play.

There's no cradle supplied with the 72 - instead, it connects straight to a host PC's USB port through its own USB mini-port. Alas, it doesn't support recharging the battery this way - a disappointment for anyone who accidentally leaves their power adaptor at home. However, PalmOne does include a rather natty camera-style case in the package, though the PDA fits into it sideways, which means you end up putting your fingers all over the screen to get it out.

Verdict

The Zire 72 is a big improvement on its predecessor that's no mere spec. tweak. With Bluetooth, the PDA's messaging and Internet access finally become usable, and the digicam upgrade makes the machine a worthy alternative to disposable film cameras. It's by no means a pro's device, but it's a great way to record those special moments.

At the same time, the software improvements PalmSource and PalmOne have made to the core OS and the bundled apps make organising and using those snapshots much more straightforward and more pleasurable.

Not so MP3 playback which is hissy - even when you're not playing anything back. I use the very same app (same version too) to play MP3s on my Tungsten T and there's no background hiss, so it's clearly a Zire 72 problem. For a device pitched as a multimedia PDA this is inexcusable - even much cheaper players can provide better sound quality than this - and the 72 loses marks for PalmOne's audio blunder.

The battery life is disappointing too - but that's the nature of the beast. Modern colour displays eat up power more than any other component. If you don't like that, you'll just have to go back to an old, greyscale job. If you are willing to put up with regular rechargings, you'll also find the Zire 72 fast and feature-laden. ®

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