Toshiba updates Pocket PCs with Wi-Fi, VoIP software

Toshiba Corp. Thursday launched a version of its e800/805 Pocket PC personal digital assistant (PDA) that incorporates integrated Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) and VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) software along with several different speech recognition applications and an enhanced display.

The three main PDA vendors that use Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile 2003 operating system, formerly known as Pocket PC, have now all upgraded their offerings in recent weeks with Wi-Fi chips and system processors made by Intel Corp.

Hewlett-Packard Co. announced the iPaq h4150 and h4350 at the World Telecom 2003 conference in Geneva last Monday, and Dell unveiled its newest Wi-Fi Axim PDA last Wednesday. 

Toshiba’s commitment to the PDA market has appeared to waver over the past few quarters, said Todd Kort, an analyst with Gartner Inc. in San Jose, California. The company released an upgrade to Windows Mobile 2003 for only one of its Pocket PC 2002 PDAs, the e750, a Toshiba spokeswoman said.

This angered Toshiba’s corporate and consumer users who were unable to upgrade their older devices, Kort said.

HP’s iPaqs are the market share leader among Pocket PC PDAs, but Dell has now assumed the role as the counterpart to HP in the Pocket PC market, Kort said. “Toshiba has been more negatively affected by Dell’s entry into the market than anybody else,” he said.

But the new devices show that Toshiba is still putting effort into developing new designs and incorporating new technologies into its PDAs, Kort said. Along with the $599 e800/805, Toshiba released the $299 e400/405 for users interested in a less-expensive PDA without Wi-Fi or VoIP capability.

The e800/805 device, available Thursday, allows users to make phone calls over IP networks with VLI Inc.’s VoIP software. VoIP is a technology that is gaining user interest because of its ability to lower phone equipment and networking costs, but complexity and security issues have held back adoption to this point.

Users are required to sign up with VLI’s phone service to use the software, Toshiba said.

Toshiba increased the RAM in the e800/805 to 128MB, one of the largest amounts of memory yet included on a PDA, Kort said. Many PC vendors ship their low-end desktops and notebooks with 128MB of RAM.

The company also included on the e800/805 a larger display than what is found on competitors’ PDAs. The PDA’s 4-inch screen can support resolutions of 480 pixels by 640 pixels (VGA).

However, only one application on the e800/805 currently supports that resolution. The ClearVue software allows users to view enhanced PowerPoint presentations at the higher resolution. The display is also compatible with the more widely used 240-pixels-by-320 pixel resolution, but Toshiba expects more applications to be developed for the higher resolution in the future.

The e800/805 comes with an integrated 802.11b wireless chip to connect users to the Internet. It also comes with a 400MHz PXA263 processor from Intel, 32MB of ROM, 32MB of NAND flash memory, and SDIO (Secure Digital I/O) and Compact Flash expansion slots. It measures 5.3 inches long by 3.0 inches wide by 0.65 inches thick (13.5cm by 7.6cm by 1.7cm) and weighs 6.8 ounces (190 grams).

The 400/405 series comes with a 300MHz PXA261 processor from Intel, 16MB of ROM, 64MB of RAM, 32MB of NAND flash memory, a SDIO (Secure Digital I/O) slot, and a 3.5-inch display without the VGA graphics support. It measures 4.9 inches long by 3.0 inches wide by 0.4 inches thick, and weighs 4.6 ounces.

Both models come with software that allows a user to access their calendar or contacts information with voice commands. Another text-to-speech application will read e-mail and other documents to the user.

The e400 and e800 models are available through Toshiba’s Web site, as well as its traditional business channels such as resellers. The e405 and e805 are retail models.