Sony’s managed to make an even weirder handheld than their current series of twisty-screen devices (NX, NV series). They’re announcing the PEG-UX50 (Japanese site; more in English at Brighthand), a bizarre clamshell design that resembles a miniature notebook computer. It’s still got the twisty-screen feature of their current top-end handhelds, so it transforms from very small notebook to very small tablet PC.
It’s got both Bluetooth and WiFi built-in, along with 22MB of RAM that function kind of like an internal, unremovable Memory Stick. The extra memory is for media: images, movies, voice recordings, MP3s and such. Theoretically, you could use it without a memory stick, but as I’ve discovered, I personally can’t live with less than a 64MB Memory Stick attached to my handheld, and I swap that out for a 128 when I want to listen to music.
The landscape screen orientation makes my head hurt. It looks like they’ve shoved the Graffiti area onto the right side of the screen, with a numbers-over-letters orientation that’s guaranteed to cause cognitive dissonance for long-time Palm OS users like me. Unless you can customize it, the Graffiti area will be totally useless to lefties, too.
The keyboard is larger than that on earlier Sony offerings, owing largely to the landscape orientation. Combined with the dual onboard wireless and a digital camera, this would be a fabulous moblogging tool. It’s also nearly two ounces lighter than my NX70V, which would make my trousers sag a bit less when it’s in my pocket.
I’m not sure I’d be able to use the UX50 without going totally barking mad, though. It’s as much a departure from the Palm OS mainstream as the NR70 was when it came out. Amazing how attached we get to interfaces when we use them on a daily basis.
