Sony Clie NX70V

[BoardBonobo]

I just bought one of the above handhelds. It's a pretty slick piece of kit, much quicker to use than a pocketPC (PalmOS seems much more stable) and the display is of a very good quality. The built in camera is also better than I expected.

The only downside is that the only action you can perform via the USB cradle is to synchronise with Outlook. No other data transfer allowed (unless you have a memory stick) and no access to any network features on your PC, unless you have bought either the Bluetooth memory stick or the Wifi network card. In this area the pocketPC's win, using a Toshiba E740 I was able to connect to the internet via my PC and also use my mobile to connect, via iRDA, within minutes of setting it up.

I have a Sony Ericcsson T68i with camera but unfortuanately the Jpeg version that the mobile uses is incompatible with the Clie and so I can't transfer pictures from the mobile phone, though I can send them the other way!

It a nice piece of kit and does just what it says on the box. But it requires the purchase of other peripherals before it fully usable which is a downer.

Has anybody else had any experience with these PDAs?

 

[darkblu]

hmm, i hope it's not too much off-topic for the beyond3d boards. anyways..

i have the N770 clie (arguably the top of the 33MHz Dragonball genertion) and my impressions, aside from the fact that i had a perfectly-clear idea about what i was getting from the very beginning, are:

• nice battery life (especially true for the N series - better than the 66MHz dragonball or palmos5 generations, and way better than the average pocketPC of that time)
• really superior display tech - best LCD money can buy for the PDA class of devices (320x320, 16bit, ultra-fine pixel, 320x480 on your model, otherwise same pixel quality), and the 2D display acceleration (through MQ1100, IIRC) does help the dragonball fella a lot. the only visual issue i've had with the otherwise perfect display is that under builtin frontlight (the N770 has a front-lit display) the image tends to get slightly bluish. under bright daylight though everithing's fine.
• i have one serious issue with the display but it's not visual, rather a durability one: the top layer of the on-screen digitizer is a soft, plastic cover. this cover gets _easilly_ scratched, and under harder conditions even _cut_through_. use your clie only with a protective film over its display! or learn to live with numerous scratches (replacing the display is financially non-viable, better get a new clie).
• usb is really welcome once you start loading mp3/atrac music, movies and image albums on your clie - you'll appreciate the throughput.
• i often use my clie to browse the net, via IrDA to my gsm - no GSM alone presently has the web-browsing capabilities of a clie running the blazer browser, there's simply no comparison.

originally i chose the clie over a pocketPC for one sole reason: the simpler software technology requres lesser HW power, which ends up with longer battery life. for me, the battery life of a portable device outweights everithing else (i'm a keen mountaineer and a device whose batter dies off in less than 24 hours is of no use for me).

re the jpeg viewing, in case you can somehow place the problematic jpegs somewhere on the memory stick (i.e. you actually manage to place them as file entries in the device's VFS), there's this little image viewer, Acid Image, it handles about all jpeg variations, and works nicely with the memory stick VFS.