Sony Updates Clie With Better Display

Sony is again making improvements to its Clie handheld. The company says it will soon begin selling a new version of the Palm-OS based Clie personal digital assistant with a higher-quality screen than earlier models.

The new Clie PEG-N600C has a 320-by-320-pixel frontlit thin film transistor LCD capable of displaying 65,536 colors--an upgrade on the current PEG-700C, which can only display 256 colors. Sony last updated the Clie in March this year; then too, the display was one of the main focuses when the backlit, 160-by-160-pixel color screen was replaced with a reflective screen of similar resolution to the new 700C.

New Palm OS Inside

The new PDA is based on the same 33MHz Dragonball VX processor from Motorola as the Clie 700C model although it is the first to make use of the updated version 4.0 of Palm's operating system. The device is identical in size and weight to its predecessor, the 700C.

Sony plans to put the new Clie on sale in Japan on August 4 at a price around 45,000 yen. (The company's Web site lists the U.S. price at $400.)

That launch date gives Sony a two-week head start on the launch of Toshiba's first entry into the PDA market, the Genio e550 Pocket PC, which will go on sale on August 20 in Japan, and by the end of the year in the United States. Sony has not announced when the new Clie will be available here in the United States.

Besides an earlier release in Japan, the new Clie will be much cheaper than the Genio, which Toshiba says should cost around 70,000 yen. U.S prices have not been disclosed.