Theo Poon really is a truffle swine when rumors(and WristPDA replacement batteries, too) are concerned. He hanged around AstraWare’s web site and found them listing a PiTech w300 smartphone:
The site lists the w300 all over the place – almost every game has some info on compatibility with it. However, Google leads to nothing – no one seems to know anything about this box. AstraWare lists the phone as incompatible with most/all HiRes games, so it looks as if the phone has a lowres screen. However, there is no mention of non-OS5-ness, so it looks as if this phone will run at least Palm OS 5.0(example is here).
In the past, the main thing interesting coming out of PiTech was an announcement for the i10 – a 3 megapixel capable Palm OS camera phone. The phone was announced far and wide on the PalmInfoCenter, but we never heard anything else from the manufacturer. Theo Poon thinks that the company ran into a similar problem like the one Handera had with their famous 330c – lack of funding for seriers production.
The w300 could be a “cheapshot” of the company that attempts to get them the cash to produce the i10, or it could be a new concept. We don’t really know – but developers have had a long history of chatting about new devices before their release. A popular example was HandMark’s slashdot-famous Treo 700p fiasco…
Anyways, loads of rumors are floating around the market – is Palm Os really dead?
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Hi Tams, thanks for the post!
You are good on the screen-res and OS version issue! I completly misses that!!!
I think my suggestion of PiTech looking for investors on i10 and/or W300 was fair guess to this Hong Kong base PalmOS hardware manufacturer, I can’t confirm but I think the story isn’t much far away, looking back, not only i10, handera 330c (I still kept the photo of it when it was leaked…)
Remember sometime ago PIC has a post about a Palm OS Cobalt Phone Shown at DevCon
http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/7874/palm-os-cobalt-phone-shown-at-devcon/ ?
I was luckily enough to have play around this hardware (Not in PalmOS tho, this is the most strange PDA/smartphone I have tried, it can run on at least 6 different Mobile OS platforms, CE.net, PPC, MS smartphone, Linux, PalmOS5, PalmOS 6 and others), connection was close to this company comments that many of these ODM company do have the skills of making different good advance products (HTC example), and normally they do make and show these hardware prototypes to investors try to get investments on more/new business oppoturities.
Like this Oswin Palm OS Cobalt Phone, it was never made to the market other than the first release on 2004~2005 by CE.net in certain area only.
Hi guys
Thought I should clear this up. The W300 was released a few years back, even before I arrived at Astraware, and we had a couple of games bundled with the device. It had a limited release in the Far East, but no European or US distribution.
Sorry I can’t give you any more info, but it’s not a new device.
Kind regards
Alison
Astraware Limited