Another long-awaited smartphone sequel that finally appeared at the end of the year was Samsung's Palm OS-based SPH-i330 ($499 with service), an upgrade from the company's earlier SPH-i300, the first color Palm OS smartphone in North America. The dual-band/tri-mode phone has 16MB of RAM, a 160 x 240 pixel, and a 256 color display for navigating pop-up screen menus and viewing websites with the Handspring Blazer multi-mode browser. As with the earlier SPH-i300, the SPH-i330's display also serves as its keypad.

Samsung SPH-i330

It features an always-on data connection that runs on Sprint's CDMA2000 network, which supports data speeds averaging 50 to 70 Kbps. The device measures 4.9 x 2.3 x 0.7-inches, weighs less than 6 ounces and has specs for talk time of 170 minutes and standby time of 174 hours.

Keep on the look out for the Palm OS Samsung SPH-i500, which is slated to appear early in 2003. It has a similar clamshell design to the Kyocera 7135, but is more compact, with the display on the top half of the clamshell and the Graffiti area and keypad on the bottom. In fact, one interesting feature has the Graffiti area above the keypad. The clamshell phone runs on Palm OS 4.1 and comes with a 65,000 color display and a 66MHz processor. It measures a compact 3.4 x 2.1 x .85-inches and weighs only 4.5 ounces.

Samsung SPH-i500