The first thing that you will notice is, of course, the not-seen-before clamshell design of the unit. We in North America are not used to it, but in Japan, clamshell is in and has been in for a long time with cell phones. So to Japanese this might not be so radically unusual, but to us (especially those in the Palm scene) it *really* is. The reason the unit has a clamshell design is, of course, because it is the first Palm unit to feature a keyboard. The keyboard is rather small, with each key being circular approx. 4mm in diameter, but it's functional. Of course, the keys are much too small to touch-type, but I'm slowly getting used to it, and it certainly beats Graffiti for input speed. There are a few problems with it, though. First off, there is no number row on top, which may cause a different degree of confusion depending on your addiction to a normal keyboard. In my case, I honestly thought the keyboard had an ASDFG layout, and my first thought was, "Wtf is Sony doing??!", until I realized I subconsciously looked at the second row, ignoring the top one. The next stupid thing I did was to start typing shifted by one row. After a while, I got used to it, and things have gotten better. I don't expect to become proficient enough to blind type anytime soon (ever), but I can already beat my Graffiti speed, which is not bad in itself. However, people with fat fingers might want to forget about it.

The second stupid and annoying thing about the keyboard is that it functions unexpectedly. See, there is the standard set of 4 cursor arrows. The crappy thing is that they don't work in the most obvious place: the Apps launcher! Hopefully someone will make a hack for that. However I'll be fair and say - key navigation functions as expected - CTRL+Left goes back a word, Shift selects, and CTRL+Shift+Left selects the entire previous word

The next radical non-Sonylike improvement is the virtual Graffiti area. Essentially it's similar to that of the Handera 330, but with some better and some worse things. The identical thing is that it replicates your Graffiti strokes as you do them, including showing where you started the stroke (denoted by a small square). The better thing is that it is, first of all, replaceable by a keyboard by taping an onscreen button - so if you never use the Graffiti but prefer tapping the onscreen keyboard, you can - WITHOUT it taking over your screen; a very, very useful and cool feature. . The worse (perhaps, questionably so) thing compared to the Handera is that the virtual Graffiti is collapsible ONLY in programs that support it. On the upside, that means you will (probably) never encounter the same problem Handera users do when they force the collapse - software does not scale well, and you get plenty of visual glitches. On the downside, it might (a) take a while for support-enabled software to appear (considering even the built-in software has no support!), and (b) some software that hasn't been updated in a while probaly never will, but could benefit from it. For instance, Memo Plus (which is what I'm writing this in) could really use a larger screen, and I am willing to take the risk that it corrupts the display. I wish someone wrote hacks for all these things - but I fear Palm devices have reached a consumer enough level that all new software seems to want to cook for you and do your dishes, when all you want it to do is tell you the time (but, of course, it, strangely enough, DOESN'T tell you the time). So I think I might just be engaging in wishful thinking. Oh well.

Two final things about the keyboard before I move on to other things. First, the button feel: the buttons are slightly beveled above the surface and feel slightly rubbery. They require a full, firm press to really press them, which, on the one hand, prevents you from pushing one of the adjacent buttons, but at the same time, prevents you from getting the letter down altogether. Basically, that means it's a viable Graffiti replacement for those unable to adapt, but this doesn't exactly make the CLIE a laptop replacement. I also like how Sony implemented the Del key: since the Palm doesn't have a Del stroke per se, when you hit Del, it literally executes a "Right, Backspace" sequence. Hehe. The other thing I wanted to mention about the keyboard is the overall design and balance. The screen is somewhat heavy compared to the keyboard, so if you were to hold the unit purely in the air (i.e. without setting it on a table or whatever), the most stable position found was to hold it between my little and ring fingers, and typing with my thumbs. I haven't used a RIM Blackberry, but it looks similar to how I would type on it.

Enough about the keyboard, though, let's move onto the screen. In the NR series, similar to the T600 series, Sony switched to a backlit display, compared to the earlier frontlit one used in the N series. To be perfectly honest, I like this display less than the previous one. It's darker, and less visible in incidental daylight. I have read some people's opinions, and people seem to generally prefer the new display for the quality of color representation at the expense of brightness, and I would tend to agree: while my old N750's display was brighter, it also had a yellowish "warm" tint to it. I suppose your best bet would be to try them side-by-side and see what you think for yourself.

I am very grateful to Sony for one thing, though: either it has people with brains working for the marketing department, or it didn't want to alienate oldschool Palm users, but basically it does not force you to use the new way of typing. The screen twists on it's axis and closes to conceal the keyboard, turning it into a traditional Palm unit and uniting the clamshell cell phone-like fashion and usual Palm design. If you want to use it as a normal Palm, just twist the screen and close it; arguably the coolest thing I have ever seen. Super cool.

Other features you may or may not notice include the 66MHz SuperVZ CPU; in a lot of things you may not notice much difference but CPU-intensive apps like Mapopolis, you notice a HUGE speed improvement - nothing like my old N750 with a VZ 33MHz overclocked to 55. This thing is SPEED on speed, to use a corny analogy.

That doesn’t quite sum up all of its functions, of course. When Sony originally retired the N750, I started wondering what was going on - it was the top-of-the-line model, and it had MP3 and everything, and it became impossible to find. To follow up, they cancelled (or made difficult to obtain) the MP3 adapters for the older N/S series and the new T-series. Of course, now, looking back, I know that it was due to the impending release of the NR-70. Similar to the N750, it features MP3 playback off Memory Stick media. In that department, nothing has changed since the N750, though. An “extra bass�Eoption was added to the Audio Player, but for some stupid reason, it STILL doesn’t do playlists or sorting of MP3 files (it only plays in the order that they were written to the Memory Stick), and Memory Stick media still comes in a skimpy 128MB. On the upside, the Audio Player has no trouble playing 192kbit MP3 files and is supposed to go up to 256kbit, but that’s sort of pointless - 192kbit is good enough for a portable device, and even at 192kbit you only have about 100 minutes of audio per Memory Stick. I rather wish Sony got their act together and released some 512MB or 256MB sticks; that would make life so much easier.

A few complaints are in order, too. First off, the charger. The N750C had the most original, cool and useful charger I’ve ever come across: it was an adapter that plugged either into the cradle OR directly into the CLIE! The adapter was tiny with a fold-in power plug that basically turned it into a free travel charger. Since the T-series, that has disappeared, you have to traditionally plug the power plug into the cradle, and the CLIE into the cradle. The power pack is significantly bulkier now, with two cords attached to it, and in general, not very travel-friendly - and forget about a quick charge at an airport, that ain’t happening. Also, the cradle takes up WAY too much space on my desk. It definitely has about two to three times the footprint of the N750 cradle; the CLIE NR-70 itself is no small unit, being about the same in all dimensions as a N750, but with a full two centimeters added on top for the hinge. As well, on the NR-70V model, you can get a 100 KPixel digital camera, but first of all, that model comes out three weeks later, and second, I already own a Canon Powershot S40, so a zoom-less, flash-less, 100 Kpixel camera is pretty worthless to me, though a neat toy. Also, the remote control for the unit is extremely annoying: the cable from the unit comes into it from the top, and so does the headphone cable, which means you can forget about channeling cables through your shirt or whatever - they will all be out in plain view. The T600’s audio adapter had the cables coming in from each side, which seems like a more logical design solution to me. On the upside, the Hold function is present both on the unit and on the remote just like before, but what’s even better is that if you close the clamshell unit with the screen facing down (towards the keyboard), then it automatically activates Hold.

Last but not least, the unit has 16 MB of RAM, which is a really good improvement over the 750’s 8MB, and 10MB of ROM - and I can’t wait for it to come out in the US, because I’m sure Brayder, the developers of JackSprat, would probably update it to work with it - getting a lot of free flash out of it.

So what are my final impressions about the CLIE PEG-NR70? I still think my 750’s screen was better, and the size of the NR-70 bothers me a bit sometimes, but aside from that, it’s a very impressive unit. The screen is humongous, and once software fully utilizes it, it will be a sight to see. I should say, though, that Sony is treading on thin ice: with sizes like this, people will start expecting more from the unit, because it is coming dangerously close to the bulkiness of PocketPC units, and those have a lot of power for their size - the main advantage of PalmOS units has always been size. I strongly suggest, however, that you check out one of these if you can. It’s a very cool device and the twistable screen is something to show off. The only thing that I really hate is that the colour of the installation CD has become barf green instead of the older forest green on the old CD. Oh well.


Update
The NR70V came out slightly after I got my NR70, which originally prevented me from writing a commentary on it. However, my neighbour got himself a NR70V as soon as it came out, so this update covers my impressions of it, as well as a few usability comments in general about the new Clies.

First, the important stuff - the camera in the NR70V (because aside from that, the two units are functionally identical). The camera is a 100 Kpixel unit capable of covering a resolution of 320x240, hence, half of the new Clie’s screen. Of course, that is my first complaint about it. I don’t even care so much that the resolution is fairly bad - but I would want it at least to take full-screen pictures so that I could show them off to people. As it stands, the discussion goes like this: “Cool, you got a camera, so hey, can you take pics for the whole screen? - Nope. But…. - Oh really… hmm, that kinda sucks”. The second complaint is, of course, the resolution. Granted, for roughly $100 (and virtually no space) it’s pretty difficult to put a good-quality CCD unit into the Clie, but come on, 100 Kpixels? That’s pretty bad. It generally works out semi-alright for showing off the screen of the Clie, but for anybody who asks for any degree of quality of the pictures, you would do well to look elsewhere. Due to the relatively low resolution of the camera, the images are often slightly blurred, and there is usually substantial artifact noise. Of course, there is no zoom or anything, though this is hardly a defect, because installing the right optical equipment and mechanics for zoom would be next to impossible. Essentially, my take on the camera is this: it’s a toy to add people’s pictures to the address book, but few other things, and I would hesitate to recommend spending the extra $100 on that. It’s really a much better investment to spend that $100 to step up a level in purchasing a true digital camera - for example, to get a Canon PowerShot S30 or S40, or even the Nikon Coolpix 775. But if you really, really, really must have the top-of-the-line gadget, then you’ll do okay with it - it COULD be worse. The pictures you see are in-door shots of car models I build ‘cause I had nothing to do; please, no “it sucks” comments by email. Thank you.