1src: The Most Disappointing Handhelds of All Time
I got to read this piece from 1src.com a few days ago and I’d like to express how right Ed Hardy was when he declared the Tungsten W as the most disappointing handheld of all time. At first, I though I had read wrong - that by “disappointing” Ed meant “a huge flop.” It was a good thing I read his disclaimer that these handhelds were disappointing not because of what they were, but because of what they could do if the engineers just did the right (and most common-sensical) thing . Get my drift?
Let’s forget the 4 out of the 5 handheld devices because they’re not really important. I want to focus on the biggest dissapointment, at least according to Ed (with my blessing, hehe I wish) - the Tungsten W.
Ed writes:
The Tungsten W was Palm’s attempt to make a cellular-wireless handheld. Unfortunately, it got just about everything wrong, which is why it’s at the top of my list of bad handhelds.
It was widely criticized because it lacked the most basic things every phone has to have: a speaker and microphone. The only way to make a phone call was to plug in a headset.
And it didn’t have Bluetooth, so this had to be a wired headset.
It also ran Palm OS 4 at the time Palm OS 5 devices were everywhere. No one is paying top dollar for an out-of-date device.
The Tungsten W bombed. No one bought it. At least Palm learned its lesson and didn’t try again. Instead, it bought Handspring to get the Treo 600, which had a much, much better design.
I remember playing with the Tungsten W when it made its debut. For what it was, it was the first handheld to make effective use of a thumb board. In Asia, we didn’t really have a Blackberry to tinker with so the concept of a micro keyboard was exciting. It was just a huge bummer that it didn’t feel like a true phone. That’s coz you can’t hold it up your ear.
I don’t know why some engineers opt for this. A baker never leaves his cake un-frosted. The Tungsten W flopped because it failed in its core competency - which was to be a really good communication device. Who cares if it didn’t have Bluetooth, as long as it could make calls real easy. The thing is, it couldn’t. The thumb board became nothing more than an engineering achievement. How tragic. How irresponsible.
The 5 Most Disappointing Handhelds of All Time
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