Have a Nokia N770/N800/N810 Internet Tablet? Do you keep staring at it's tiny web-surfing screen wishing it could run some of the same applications you used to love on your old Palm Pilot? Now you can. Last week we mentioned the fact that ACCESS is getting closer to releasing its Linux-based operating system for Palm devices. In order to ensure backward compatibility with older PalmOS applications, ACCESS designed a PalmOS Garnet emulation layer. And since it runs on Linux, and Nokia's tablets run on Linux, it was apparently pretty easy to port the PalmOS emulator over to the Nokia Internet Tablet platform.
The Garnet emulator doesn't replace Nokia's user interface, but runs on top of it as a launchable program. Once it's up and running you can access basic Palm apps like the calendar and contacts, and install third party software by hotsyncing with your computer over a network connection. The emulator also uses Palm's Graffiti handwriting recognition.
The folks over at TabletBlog have put together a quick video demonstration, which you can check out after the jump.
[via Engadget]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-14-2007 @ 1:45PM
Dan said...
I dont mean to be a wet blanket, but for those of us who have owned a palm mobile phone in the last couple years.. you either hardly use its functionality, or you try to use it and it horribly fails. PalmOS isnt multithreaded, so you cannot have applications 'running in the background.
I have a palm treo 650, and a nokia n800. The nokia n800 runs debian - I mean flat out. I have kismet, ssh, apache, wavemon, pidgin and skype running on my n800 without issue. I can stream music to it from pandora. I can run an apt-get dist upgrade from an ssh session over 802.11. I can ssh remotely into my tablet.
My treo 650 on the other hand, crashes when it gets two text messages quickly, is absurdly slow, does not come with a fucntional mail client, often reboots for no reason, and late at night lights up my room as if its doing something but isnt displaying it on the screen. I'll be feeding it to my 12ga and hopefully getting some awesome stills of the confetti it becomes.
What I'm getting at is doing this to an n800 is the equivalent to taking the engine out of a porche gt3, and replacing it with a cured ham.
Cool hack, but holy crap - are you kidding?
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11-14-2007 @ 3:05PM
PalmOS Fan said...
Of course PalmOS isn't as powerful as having a full linux distro...that doesn't mean porting it to another platform isn't still extremely useful. This one step now enables users to access thousands of free palm applications (and thankfully, not everyone has the same problems with POS that you do).
The NES ran on a 1.79 MHz CPU, had 48 colors, and flickered like crazy if you got too many enemies on the screen. Does that make the Wii port of Metroid any less fun?
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