• PC World
• »Phones

Boosting the options for personal digital assistants, the HandEra 330 debuts Monday sporting two expansion slots and a high-resolution display on a device that runs the reliable Palm OS.

Formerly TRG Products, HandEra is announcing the 330 PDA and the company's new name next week. A Palm licensee, TRG Products was the first vendor to add a CompactFlash expansion slot to a Palm OS-based device. The new HandEra 330 takes expansion further, installing a second MultiMedia/Secure Digital slot as well as 2MB of internal Flash memory (for upgrades) and 8MB of internal memory. HandEra also says its 330 is the only Palm-powered device with a quarter VGA screen (240 by 320). The HandEra 330 is scheduled to ship by June, priced at $350.

Double the Expansion

CompactFlash slots are common among Pocket PC devices, but only HandEra's $249 TRGpro put CF support into a Palm device. Besides CF, the HandEra 330 will support stamp-size MultiMedia cards and Secure Digital cards in its new Secure Digital slot. Palm's new m500 and m505 also support Secure Digital, but HandEra says it independently chose to support SD.

"The addition of an SD slot came from feedback of our TRGpro users," says J. Michael Downey, chair and chief executive of HandEra. "Most of the users purchased the TRGpro for its massive storage and on-device backup in non-volatile data, thanks to the CF slot. With so many input/output add-ons for CF, our users wanted another slot for memory."

HandEra 330 users can also use SD cards with things like software and copyright-protected content. Eventually, I/O SD modules will be able to add Bluetooth, GPS, and modems to the device. Similar modules already exist for Compact Flash and Handspring Visor's Springboard platform. Handspring recently released a thin model, the $399 Visor Edge, which competes with the thin Palm V and m500 series.

Besides expansion options, HandEra's new PDA provides 2MB of Flash memory inside the device, which offers software upgrade possibilities for new versions of the Palm OS. The Flash memory also boosts the device's internal memory from 8MB to 10MB.

Striking Resolution

The HandEra 330 promises a better viewing experience thanks to its QVGA display and noninverting backlight. It provides an optional landscape mode display, which supports documents and even spreadsheets. And you can even collapse the graffiti input area to take advantage of the full display surface.

"The display has a 240 by 320 resolution," Downey says. "The average Palm device has a resolution of 160 by 160, so ours offers roughly double the resolution."

To increase the viewing surface, HandEra converted the graffiti writing area to be software-driven, Downey says. That means when graffiti is not in use, that region collapses so you see a larger window of data.

The HandEra 330 comes with standard Palm OS software as well as the QuickOffice suite, which includes QuickSheet for viewing Excel spreadsheets and QuickWord for Word documents.

"Both of those take advantage of the resolution and larger display surface of the device," Downey says.

Most Palm devices, including TRGpro, produce an inverted image when the backlight is on, making it hard to read the type, Downey says. To improve readability, HandEra adds what it calls a noninverting backlight to the 330 device.

Audio Recorder Built In

For business users, the HandEra 330 includes a voice recorder that accepts dictation. The earlier TRGpro device already had an amplified speaker, so the company added a microphone and digital recorder, Downey says. And because the recorder can record to memory, CompactFlash, or Secure Digital, you're only limited by the size of the card, he says.

At $350, the HandEra 330 is cheaper than Palm's m500 with an SD slot, and has the added benefits of Compact Flash, internal memory, and a large viewing area. However, the HandEra device is also larger than the Palm, and it uses AAA instead of rechargeable lithium ion batteries. The HandEra 330 requires four AAA batteries, double most PDAs, although the company says this doubles its life compared with the Visor Deluxe and the Palm m100 series.

HandEra has yet to release a device with a color display. Both Palm and Handspring offer color devices with expansion slots.

As with the TRGpro, HandEra is targeting corporate technology departments, but also plans to distribute it through business retailers such as Sam's Club and Office Depot, Downey says.

• See more like this:
• HandEra,
• TRGPro,
• Palm,
• Visor,
• PDA,
• personal digital assistant,
• handheld,
• HandEra 330