Palm OS — How does it look today?
By: Dmitrii Eliuseev
Tags: Smartphones, History, Visual Design, Technology, User Experience

Palm OS — How does it look today?

The first Palm PDA was introduced in 1996 and it was a huge success. How did Palm OS really work? Let's test it and figure it out. Dmitrii Eliuseev Apr 11·8 min read

Before we begin, it can be useful to remember the technological level of that time. The typical mobile phone, available for the customers in 1994, was a Nokia 2110, which had a 236g weight, a 25mm thickness, and a small monochrome 96x96 screen:

Nokia 2110 © https://www.imei.info/phonedatabase/3506-nokia-2110/

Laptops were heavy and expensive, smartphones were not invented yet, and nobody was even thinking about iPhone or Android at least for the nearest 10 years. Thus, an appearance in 1996 of a Palm Pilot device, that was relatively cheap and lightweight, that could be held in a palm and could work as a personal digital assistant, was a huge step forward. These devices became really popular and were on the market for about 10 years.

Palm V © amazon.com

From the tech perspective, it is also interesting to see how it works. Nowadays nobody will be surprised by having a smartphone with an octa-core CPU, 8GB of RAM and an AMOLED screen. On the contrary, the typical Palm OS device was having a single core 16MHz Motorola Dragonball processor, 2MB RAM and a grey-scale LCD with 160x160 resolution. There was even no Lithium battery inside, just two AA elements. How was it working? Let’s get started and figure it out.

Emulation

It is easy to test the Palm OS device using the emulator. It is free and can be downloaded from the https://palmdb.net/app/palm-emulator page. To start the device we also need a ROM file, and actually, this is all, we need for the start.

After selecting the ROM image and setting parameters, we are ready for testing:

User Interface

After the first boot, the setup screen appears. Palm OS had a stylus and a resistive touch screen, that required calibration:

After that we get a fully-fledged UI in all its beauty — b/w screen with 16 shades of grey support and 160x160 resolution:

Surprisingly, even in the modern era of high-dpi displays, it looks not so bad — all fonts and icons are good readable and the contrast is fine (it’s not AMOLED for sure, but because of the principle of this TFT, it can be readable even on direct sunlight).

The next funny thing is a “graffiti” input. Instead of the on-screen keyboard, we are using now, it was possible to draw characters on the bottom of the screen. The 16 MHz processor was not powerful enough to recognise the hand-written text, so the simplified “alphabet” was invented:

Of course, nowadays it looks like a huge waste of screen space, but the technology in 1995 probably did not allow to make a touch screen, sensitive enough to recognise the hand-written text. And maybe nobody was even thinking about a screen covering all the device surface. So the display was divided into two parts — the standard touch screen and the separated area for the handwriting. And anyway, compared to something like Nokia 2110, it was a big step forward.

Applications

The device was originally designed as a PDA — Personal Digital Assistant, it has all needed apps for productivity, like contacts or todo-lists:

In the address book, it’s fun to see a “Pager” field, something that is not in use more nowadays. The calendar and appointments views are pretty functional:

Surprisingly, 160x160 resolution allows to make notes using a stylus and to use graphical UI:

By the way, it’s fun to see nowadays, that after about 20 years, the “fashion” for having the stylus-based input is returning back in devices like Galaxy Note.

It was also possible to install 3rd party apps. Palm OS device was working 1–2 weeks from 2 AA batteries (the feature, we mostly don’t have today in modern devices), and it was good as a book reader. There was no SD-card support in the first Palm models, but 2–8 MBytes of internal memory allowed to store enough books in a zip-compressed format:

Many other apps were available, for example, we can find even the sky chart:

Text editor can be also used:

There was even a possibility to connect external keyboard:

Palm Portable Keyboard © Amazon.com

The keyboard was foldable, so it was easy to take it on the trip. Surprisingly, this keyboard is in stock even now on Amazon, but maybe the product listing just was not updated.

Connectivity

The connectivity was in general good for the end of the 90th. Palm OS devices had both serial and infrared ports, data could be synced with a local PC or even with a remote computer via modem. There was no internet support, but Palm had a serial port and it was possible to make a remote connection using an external modem.

I actually don’t know what is the “Earthlink” and what connectivity features it was providing. If somebody used it, please write in the comments.

The local PC sync was automatic, it was enough to put the device in the cradle and press the button:

Palm HotSync Cradle © amazon.com

The synchronisation could be also done wirelessly, via the IR port, if the PC has one. The Infrared connectivity was in general, well integrated into the system. For every document or note, it was possible to send it to another device:

Obviously, the infrared port does not work on the simulator.

Games

The 16 MHz CPU and b/w screen with 160x160 resolution is not the perfect choice for gaming, but some games were created for this platform. This platformer game is using the hardware buttons to move and jump, but I was not able to press 2 buttons at the same time on the emulator:

The Sokoban game is not working on the emulator at all:

For finding the mines that screen is good enough:

This chess game works also good. It’s surprising to see that on the hardest level it can take up to 8 minutes for the Palm to make the move. Alas, I am not a chess player and cannot check how good is it playing, readers can check on theirs own.

Programming

For those who are interested, it’s possible to try making apps for Palm OS. The SDK can be downloaded from GitHub, and there is a nice tutorial on how to build apps for Palm using the Ubuntu machine.

Conclusion

It was fun to test Palm OS and to remember how it was working. These devices were compact, cheap (I had one when I was a student), had plenty of apps and were good customizable (there were enough utilities, launchers, hacks, etc) and had extremely long battery life. The first Palm-based device was released in 1996 and the last was made in 2007 — in the fast-moving IT-world it's a huge interval. Of course, when much more powerful Pocket PC and Android devices appeared, there was no public interest in the Palm OS devices more, but anyway it was an important page in the IT history.

This article was based on Palm OS 3.5, but during 10 years many different devices were made by different manufacturers (Palm, Sony, Lenovo, Samsung, etc). It is even possible to say that in the pre-android era, it was a sort of a large ecosystem. Some of the devices were pretty interesting, like Palm Tungsten T3, which was released in 2003, it had a slider form-factor with a large 3.7" screen, 64 MB RAM and 400 MHz CPU:

Palm Tungsten T3 © amazon.com

And surprisingly, the Palm heritage is not completely disappeared. The “Palm Phone” is in stock even now, but personally, I don’t think there is something from the original Palm inside (according to screenshots it is based on Android OS), and I also don’t think it got even a bit of the commercial success of its predecessors. It is not possible to step in the same river twice, but I wish the Palm team good luck anyway.

Thanks for reading.

Those who are interested in the computer’s history, are welcome to read other stories: