Palm today announced its new product line with the Foleo as the flagship product. The product line is “mobile companions,” products to act as add-ons to smartphones.
The Foleo has a 10 inch screen and a full-size keyboard and connects to a smartphone via Bluetooth. It has a VGA connection, which is a nice feature for making presentations.
The Foleo is being marketed as a small, light, instant-on device with a large screen and full keyboard. At the D Conference, Jeff Hawkins said “You can use it as a little laptop…We’re careful not to position it as a laptop… it does have a lot of functionality built around the phone.”
Hawkins also said that the Foleo runs Linux with a graphical interface. (Presumably this is the new Linux-based Palm OS recently announced.) Dataviz has written a version of Documents to Go for the Foleo. Other apps are presumably under development.
No processor or memory specs as of yet (except that Hawkins said the processor is too slow to do video and he’d use a faster one next time).
The release price is $499 (after a $100 rebate). There is not a release date for this product yet, but Palm says it will be available “this summer.”
Stay tuned for more details and commentary.