The end of the Palm Foleo
When we read Engadget's open letter to Palm last month, we had quite a lively discussion about their findings in the office. Some of it we agreed with and hoped that Palm were already working on and some of it we thought was wide of the mark. But drop the Foleo, so close to launch? It's never going to happen!
So it came as quite a shock yesterday when we heard that Palm had cancelled the Foleo. It took a few minutes to sink in, but in the end we came to a conclusion: it was a brave move to make, and if the market feedback wasn't overwhelmingly positive then Palm being distracted from its core smartphone market trying to convince them about a new type of product was probably going to damage them in the long run.
That said, we are sad to see it go, and hope that it will be back some time. Being a PDA and smartphone company Palm had come up with the best integrated and most power-efficient Linux device I've seen anywhere. I did find the lack of a wi-fi accessible email client strange, but what it did it did very well, with good office applications, a nice photo viewer and a decent web browser combined with easy to use wi-fi.
We have been developing for the Foleo for about 9 months, and we have enjoyed the experience. The SDK was good, and having Linux behind it meant that you had a lot of options open in terms of libraries to use. Beyond that, the support that we got from the Foleo team was second to none. Hopefully Palm's smartphone Linux platform will be as good even if it's not exactly the same SDK. We have certainly gained a lot of experience by finishing two products on a Linux-based system, and we'll be able to use that knowledge for future Palm Linux smartphones as well as ALP phones.
Life on the edge is certainly interesting!