Well, a few days ago PalmOne has publicly announced the Zire 72s-a Zire 72 with silver coating/without the rubbery paint. This rubbery paint was originally treated as one of the new features of the Zire 72, as it should improve the users capability to grip to the handheld! However, soon there were the first reports ofn its paint peeling off.
A guy at PocketFactory took the game to the end, removing the last reminders of the colour and creating a silver Z72. Find some more pictures of this action at http://www.pocketfactory.com/archives/2004/
07/zire_72_leprosy.php.
(I had to split up this link for IE)
A German site called Nexave soon carried info about the PalmOne Zire being available from palmandmore in a silver version on the 21. 10.2004. here is a link to the original information posting in German language, its the bottom post.
http://www.nexave.de/news/show.php?id=1479
On the 15.11.2004(!!) PalmInfoCenter carried a bigger story saying essentially the same thing-find the story below:
http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=7293
Now, lets take a look at the two Zires beside each other:
Image off DailyGadget, by the way!! We can clearly see that the new Zire 72s is essentially a Zire 792, but with colour peeled off and the logo reprinted. Internally, nothing seems to have changed. The hardware is still a 312 MhZ PXA270 CPU, the RAM is still 32MB non flash! The handheld isn’t mentioned on PalmOnes web site, just as information to all of you!
Basically, no change whatsoever! Just the removal of the silly looking color-and alas, we have a nice business handheld(although the camera may make it unusable in some areas).
Now, why did PalmOne take this move? I personally think that it has something to do with creating another mid-line business model, as the Tungsten E’s hardware specs are pretty odd nowadays-the Zire 31 has more CPU power.
In addition, users who have had more than two exchanges can now be “upgraded” to the silver edition essentially free-I cost PalmOne more than 1500$ with their defective units by now-same valid for my comrade and his Palm vita! However, now a Zire 72s can be given instead of the new, elusive Zire 73 when it is out-no additional cost! PalmOne can however still say that an upgrade has been issued!
Well, as always, leave behind your opinions on the topic!
