Palm Moves Up Release Of Next OS To This Summer

Palm

Palm partners and analysts say the 32-bit operating system, which was originally scheduled to be delivered by the second half of the year, will help spur development of more communication-centric PDAs and streamline development of higher-end capabilities.

Among the key features of Palm's 32-bit OS 5 are support for ARM processors from 70MHz to 700MHz, 802.11b and enhanced screen resolution along with improved security and multimedia, said Steve Sakoman, chief products officer of Palm's OS division.

The OS is available in beta today and should be in gold master by early summer, Sakoman said. A second version with additional features is expected to be delivered by the end of the year.

Palm had previously said that its next-generation OS would support the ARM processor, but Palm partners said they are heartened to hear so many different chips can be used. Product designers said it provides flexibility to develop a number of devices to meet different user needs.

Barney Dewey, an editor at Andrew Seybold's Outlook 4Mobility newsletter, said broad chip support is a big advantage. "Remember, 75 percent of all cell phones are based on ARM as are [Microsoft's Pocket PCs," he said. Palm's plan "is helpful to people who want to build devices that provide communications as well as PDA functionality."

Chris Cierva, director of marketing at Symbol Technologies, Holtsville, N.Y., said support for the ARM processors means Symbol, a manufacturer of rugged portable devices, can develop one reference design for a number of different operating systems, including Palm OS 5 and Microsoft's Pocket PC 2002. Ultimately, that will save the company development time and money.

Stuart Dewar, president of Pimlico Software, Morganton, Ga., said the new OS is bringing Palm up to date. Capabilities such as native support for 320x320 screen size means Dewar doesn't have to write proprietary code to support higher-end devices like Sony's Clie.

"When you write for Windows, you don't worry about things like graphics cards and sound cards," he said. "Windows takes care of that all for you."

OS 5 will provide support for more memory in the devices, which is necessary as developers push the envelope on applications for mobile devices, he added.

For the enterprise, Palm has significantly beefed up security, Palm's Sakoman said. The company will provide encryption, as well as Secure Socket Layer services for e-mail, Web browsing and online transactions, he said.

"In the future, we will use pluggable framework so carriers and the enterprise can use the type of encryption they prefer," he said. That version is expected to ship toward the end of the year.

Palm also will provide support for digital music recording and playback in OS 5.

Palm executives said almost all applications on the market will run on the new operating system via an emulation. Sakoman said the emulator, which uses native OS 5 calls whenever possible, actually speeds up processing of applications over the older operating systems.

As for the next version of OS 5, which should ship before the end of the year, Michael Mace, Palm's chief competitive officer, said solution providers can expect additional security, multimedia and wireless.

"The current release is for the enterprise and multimedia," he said. "The next one is a wireless release."

In particular, Mace said Palm will "do some interesting and innovative stuff" with the always-on capabilities of 2.5G and 3G networks. Those networks will support simultaneous voice and data, he added.