First ARM-based, Palm-powered smartphone

Late in January I posted an entry about Kyocera’s new Palm-powered smartphone, the 7135. I was hoping to upgrade to it from my 6035, but it’s still not carried by any major carrier, and now Samsung has a phone that looks a lot more interesting than the 7135.

The SGH-i500 is a smart-looking smartphone with flip-phone form factor, and is first to use Palm OS 5. Palm OS 5 requires an ARM processor, and the SGH-i500’s runs at 300 MHz. The phone has a built-in 640×480 camera (with flash, even), and two color displays — a large true-color TFT display on the inside, and a small OLED (!) display on the outside for time, caller ID, etc. The phone has 32 MB of RAM built-in, and an SD slot for storage and I/O. Nice!

The SGH-i500 is expected to be available this fall, which really means that it probalby won’t be available through your favorite wireless carrier until 2004. If the goal was to make potential 7135 customers defer their Kyocera purchase, they’ve succeeded in my case.


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