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Palm OS is a compact operating system developed and licensed by PalmSource, Inc. for personal digital assistants (PDAs) manufactured by various licensees. It is designed to be easy-to-use and similar compared to desktop operating systems such as Microsoft Windows. Palm OS is combined with a suite of basic applications including an address book, clock, note pad, sync and security software. Palm OS was originally released in 1996.

History

Palm OS was originally developed by Jeff Hawkins for use on the original Pilot PDA by US Robotics. Version 1.0 was present on the original Pilot 1000 and 5000 and version 2.0 was introduced with the PalmPilot Personal and Professional.

With the launch of the Palm III series version 3.0 of the OS was introduced. Incremental upgrades occurred with the release of versions 3.1, 3.3 and 3.5, adding support for color, multiple expansion ports, new processors and other various additions.

Version 4.0 was released with the m500 series, and later made available as an upgrade for older devices. This added a standard interface for external filesystem access (such as SD cards) and improved telephony libraries, security and UI improvements.

Version 5.0 was introduced with the Tungsten T and was the first version released to support ARM devices. Described as a stepping stone to full ARM support, Palm apps are run in an emulated environment called the Palm Application Compatibility Environment (PACE), allowing great compatibility with old programs. Even with the additional overhead of PACE, Palm applications usually run faster on ARM devices than on previous generation hardware. New software can take advantage of the ARM processors with PNO (PACE Native objects), small units of ARM code, these are also sometimes referred to as 'ARMlets'. It was also roughly this time when Palm began to separate its hardware and OS efforts, eventually becoming two companies, PalmSource, Inc. (OS) and palmOne (hardware, now named Palm, Inc.). Further releases of Palm OS 5 have seen a standardised API for hi-res and dynamic input areas, along with a number of more minor improvements.

Palm OS 5.2 and 4.1.2 (and later) also feature Graffiti 2. This is based on Jot by CIC.

Modernization

For several years PalmSource has been attempting to create and license a modern successor for Palm OS 5. Palm OS 6 was shipped to licensees in January 2004PalmSource Ships Palm OS 6 to Its Licensees. It allowed ARM native applications along with improved multimedia support.

In February 2004, PalmSource introduced names for the Palm OS families in an attempt to make it clear that 5.x development would not stop while 6.x development was ongoingPalmSource Introduces Palm OS CobaltPalmSource Develops New Handheld Strategy. Palm OS 5 became Palm OS Garnet, and Palm OS 6 became Palm OS Cobalt.

In September 2004 PalmSource released Palm OS Cobalt 6.1. The new OS features extended support for a variety of LCD panel resolutions, redesigned telephony components, one-handed navigation and extensive use of scalable fonts throughout applications.

In late 2004, PalmSource announced that future versions of the Palm OS will support running on top of a Linux kernel. Initially, PalmSource said this would be in addition to the custom kernelPalmSource to Extend Leadership in Phone Software with Acquisition of China MobileSoft, but in July 2005 it revealed that development of all other products had been delayedPalmSource Shifting All Efforts to Linux Development.

In May 2005 at the PalmSource 2005 developer conference, it was announced that PalmOne had acquired full rights to the Palm brand name. For a period of four years, PalmOne will grant certain rights to Palm trademarks to PalmSource and licensees.

In September 2005, PalmSource announced that it was being acquired by ACCESS ACCESS to Extend Leadership in Mobile Device Software with Acquisition of PalmSource. Later that month, Palm announced a new Palm Treo 700w running Windows Mobile OS, signaling Palm's diversification into two OSes for their handhelds.

In February 2006, PalmSource announced ACCESS Linux Platform, "the latest evolution of Palm OS® for Linux." ACCESS and PalmSource Announce the ACCESS Linux Platform This announcement provided more details on the Palm OS for Linux effort, and a new name. As of 2006 it is not known if this name is intended as a complete replacement for the Palm OS name.

As of 2006, only unreleased smartphones have been seen running Cobalt.

Built-in applications for Palm OS

Palm OS licensees decide which applications are included on their Palm OS devices. Licensees can also customize the applications. Below are some of the most common PalmSource applications included with the Palm OS:

Address Book/Contacts

The Palm's Address program stores personal information, keyed by any of several user-definable categories. Entries are displayed and sorted in last name, first name order (this can be changed only to Company, Last Name order). There are five slots for phone or e-mail, each of which may be designated Work, Home, Fax, Other, E-mail, Main, Pager or Mobile (the slot designations cannot be changed).

Starting with the OS version 5.2.1 on Tungsten T3 and Tungsten E a customized version of this application was released, not developed by PalmSource, but by PalmOne, called Contacts.

Blazer

Blazer is a web browser for Palm handhelds. The versions 1.0 and 2.0 run on Palm OS 3.1 or higher handhelds, but they needed a proxy server which has been shut down, so they can no longer be used. Version 3.0 is used on the Treo 600 smartphone. The current version of Blazer is Blazer 4.5, which is compliant with most major standards. It is generally bundled with newer smartphones and newer Palm devices capable of accessing the internet.

See also Blazer (web browser)

Calculator

Calc turns the Palm into a standard 4-function pocket calculator with three shades of purple and blue buttons contrasting with the two red clear buttons. It sports square root and percent keys and has one memory.

It also has an option to display a running history of the calculations, much like the paper-tape calculators that were once common.

Starting in Palm OS v. 5.4 Garnet, the calculator has a menu option to switch to an advanced mode, which features several button layouts that pertain to specific jobs. These modes include: Math, Trig, Finance, Logic, Statistics, Weight/Tmp, Length, Area, and Volume.

Date Book/Calendar

Date Book shows a daily or weekly schedule, or a simple monthly view. The daily schedule has one line per hour, between user-selected begin and end times. Clicking on an empty line creates a new appointment. Empty lines are crowded out by actual appointments, whose start and stop times are shown by default bracketed in the left margin.

An appointment can be heralded by an alarm, any number of minutes, hours or days before it begins. These alarms sound even when the unit is switched off.

Appointments can recur in a specified number of days, weeks, months or years -- and can contain notes.

Starting with the OS version 5.2.1 on Tungsten T3, Tungsten E, Palm Inc. released their own version of this application, called Calendar. It allows categorisation of events, as well as coloured categories and featuring a summary screen similar to that found on Windows Mobile devices.

Expense

The Expense application allows a user to track common business expenses. No totals are calculated on the Palm. The user must sync with a host computer and view the expense data in a worksheet (templates for Microsoft Excel are supplied). NOTE: Not included on all Palm OS devices.

HotSync

The HotSync application provides integration with the user's PC. Usually activated by a press of the physical HotSync button on the Palm's cradle (a dock station), this application communicates with various conduits on the desktop PC to install software, backup databases, or merge changes made on the PC or the handheld to both devices.

In addition to the conduits provided by the licensee, developers can create their own conduits for integration with other Palm OS applications and desktop products. For example, a time tracking package could provide a conduit to communicate information between Palm OS and Windows executables.

A Backup conduit included with the HotSync software backs up (and restores, if necessary) most of the data on a Palm OS device. This allows users to hard reset their Palm -- thus, clearing all of the data -- with few noticeable consequences. This also allows users to migrate to new Palm devices of the same Palm OS version, a feature that is helpful to those who lose or damage their device.

Some models of Palm keep their data storage in volatile memory and require constant power to maintain their memory. Although these handhelds attempt to save the contents of memory in low battery situations by not "turning on," leaving a "dead" handheld for an extended period of time can cause this reserve power to be used up and the contents of storage memory to be lost. Some later Palms use NVRAM or microdrive for storage.

Memo Pad/Memos

The Memo Pad can hold notes of up to 4,000 characters, keyed to user-configurable categories. Memos are ordered in two ways: alphabetically, and manually (which allows the user to choose the order of the memos). Memo Pad is for text, not for drawings. For this reason, text in Memo Pad must be entered using the Graffiti alphabet.

Starting with the OS version 5.2.1 on Tungsten T3 and Tungsten E, PalmOne, Inc. released their own version of this application, called Memos, and the limit has been increased to 32Kb.

Note Pad

Drawings go in Note Pad. With neat handwriting, about 10 words will fit on one page; for more text, Memo Pad is the better choice. There are three sizes of drawing crayon, plus an eraser and a background color change feature in some models. It is possible to draw a very simple map.

Note Pad appeared on most Palm OS PDAs starting with Palm OS 4.0; certain PDAs with previous versions of Palm OS did not include this application, except Palm m100 with OS 3.51.

To Do List/Tasks

Also referred to as Task list.
This is a convenient place to create personal reminders and prioritize the things you have to do.
Each To Do List item may also have: a priority, categories (to organize and view items in logical groups), attached Note (to add more description and clarification of the task).
To Do List item can be sorted by: due date, priority or category.

Starting with the OS version 5.2.1 on Tungsten T3 and Tungsten E PalmOne, Inc. released their own version of this application, called Tasks, in which alarms may be assigned to tasks, and can be made to repeat.

Palm Photos

Palm Photos creates a digital photo album used to view pictures on a Palm OS device. Photos can even be beamed to other mobile devices. Each photo can be labelled and organized into separate photo albums. A slideshow can also be shown for a specific album, and each photo in the album will be shown full screen.

Photos can be edited with the Palm Photos PC software (Windows only), and when the photos are transferred to the handheld they will contain all changes made to the photo.

The Palm Photos software is available in the Zire 71, Tungsten C, Tungsten E, Tungsten T2, Tungsten T3 and several others. Palm Z22 uses a lite version of SplashPhoto.

With Palm OS 5.28 (Zire 72), Palm Photos has been replaced by the Media application, which also manages and displays video files and edits photos.

Voice recording

Some models feature the ability to make voice recordings which are synced using the Voice conduit and can be viewed under Mac OS with the Voice Memo application which is part of the Palm Desktop Suite.

Preferences

Also referred to as Prefs. Preferences works as a second launcher allowing the user to launch program files with the 'panl' type. Palm OS contains approximatley 15 preference panels by default and new preference panels can be added just like any other application.

Preference panels allow users to manage a number of setting including Graffiti settings, sound settings, text shortcuts, network settings and the system time.

Security

The Security application (which is a panel on newer Palm OS devices) allows users to specify a password needed to display hidden records and unlock the device when locked, as well as setup an automatic lock down time or inactivity threshold. On the PC, only Palm Desktop honors this password but other PC programs can view everything--in other words, all the data protected by this password can be seen by anyone opening the .dat files using a text editor or word processor. While it may be tempting to use this as an excuse to switch to Microsoft Outlook, "password recovery" programs can analzye Outlook .PST files to reveal the password instantly.

Third-party applications

There are many successful applications that can be installed on a Palm OS device. As of August 2005, there are more than 20,000 third-party applications available for the Palm OS platform, which have various licensing types, including open-source, freeware, shareware, and traditional commercial applications.

Application development

Palm OS Garnet applications are primarily coded in C/C++. Two compilers exist: a commercial product, CodeWarrior Development Studio for Palm OS, and an open source tool chain called prc-tools, based on an old version of gcc. CodeWarrior is criticized for being expensive and is no longer being developed, whereas PRC-Tools lacks several of CodeWarrior's features. A version of PRC-Tools is included in a free Palm OS Developer Suite (PODS).

OnBoardC is a C compiler that runs on the Palm itself.

Palm OS Cobalt applications are also coded in a variation of gcc, but the Cobalt compilers have fewer limitations.

There are development tools available for Palm programming that do not require low-level programming in C/C++, such as CASL, AppForge Crossfire (which uses C#) and Handheld Basic or HB++ (which uses Visual Basic). A Java Run time Environment is also available for the Palm OS platform, however it itsn't shipped as standard on non-Treo handhelds, and has to be obtained separately, as a result it less popular with developers in general.

Screen Resolution and Color Support

Multiple resolutions are also supported. The original Pilot 1000 used 160x160 pixels. The first color device was the Palm IIIc introduced by Palm, Inc in 2000, supporting 256 colors. HandEra followed up in 2001 with the HandEra 330 which displayed 240x320 in black and white featuring a virtual graffiti area. Samsung introduced in the same year the first screen supporting 160x240 pixels in color with its i300 smartphone. Sony also in the same year introduced the N710C which pushed resolution to 320x320 (Hi-res) in full color and in the following year introduced the NR70V which supported 320x480 (Hires+).

As of 2005, Palm hi-res is usually 320x320 (with a silkscreen Graffiti area) or 320x480 pixels (with a collapsible virtual Graffiti area). 320x320 devices include Sony's Clie series. 320x480 devices include the Tapwave Zodiac, Zodiac 2, Palm Tungsten T3, Tungsten T5, Life Drive and TX. Presently Palm OS supports 160x160, 160x240, 240x240, 240x320, 320x320, 320x480 and nearly any combination in between in both monochrome and color on existing devices, while 640x480, 640x640, 640x960 are supported by Palm OS Cobalt (6.1) but not yet available on any devices being sold.

Legal Issues

Palm OS has been involved in various lawsuits over the years.

Xerox vs. Palm Computing (1997) In 1997, Xerox was granted a patent (5,596,656) on "unistroke." It filed suit against Palm (then U.S. Robotics), alleging that Graffiti infringed on this patent. The Palm OS switch from Graffiti 1 to Graffiti 2 was triggered by Palm losing this suit to Xerox. The patent was overturned in May 2004 due to prior art*.

Pilot Pen Corporation vs. Palm Computing (1998) The original name for Palm OS handhelds was Pilot. However, a lawsuit from Pilot Pen Corporation forced a name change to PalmPilot, then eventually to Palm.

Palm vs. Microsoft (1998) In 1998, Microsoft planned to name the next version of their handheld computing platform Palm PC. Palm filed suit against Microsoft, forcing the name change to, first, Palm-sized PC, and later, Pocket PC.

E-Pass Technologies vs. Palm, Microsoft and HP (2000) In 2000, E-Pass Technologies filed suit against Palm, alleging that its handhelds infringed on an E-Pass's patent (#5,276,311) for a multi-function, credit card-sized computer that allows users to securely store account numbers, PIN codes, etc. This lawsuit is still ongoing.

NCR vs. Handspring and Palm (2001) In 1987, NCR was granted a patent for a portable e-commerce terminal. In 2001, NCR sued Handspring and Palm. This case was ruled without merit in 2002, a decision that was upheld on appeal.

RIM vs. Handspring (2002) In 2002, Research In Motion (makers of the BlackBerry), sued Handspring. By year end, both Handspring and Palm licensed the patents and the suit was dropped.

Peer-to-Peer Systems vs. Palm (2002) Also in 2002, Peer-to-Peer systems filed lawsuit against Palm that alleges Palm infringed on its patent for wireless gaming. This lawsuit has been settled as of Feb 9th 2005.

Forgent Networks vs. HP, Toshiba, palmOne, etc., etc. (2004) Starting in 2002, Forgent Networks began offering licenses for a patent that encumbers JPEG. In 2004, it filed suit against various companies, including palmOne. This lawsuit is still ongoing.

International Palm user groups

See also

References

External links

Makers of Palm devices and Palm OS

Daily/Weekly Palm News/Forum Sites

Developing for Palm OS:

  • AppForge - Add-in to Visual Studio .NET.

List of Other Sites (alphabetical by domain name):

Embedded operating systems | Palm OS devices

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Palm OS".

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