With a dazzling colour display, faster processor, and rechargeable lithium-ion battery, the Visor Prism leaps past the Palm IIIc for colour Palm OS-based handhelds.
The Prism outperforms all Palms and previous Visor incarnations while continuing the Handspring tradition of stylish design. Unfortunately, the display tops out at 160-by-160 pixels, and colour adds weight to both the unit and its price. But if you want a Palm-based colour handheld, the Prism is recommended.
Like the citizens of Pleasantville, the Palm players have been dragged gradually from a grey world out into the light by competition from Pocket PC. The latest example, the Handspring Visor Prism, successfully marries the popular Palm OS and simple, highly usable Visor design with a brilliant colour display.
The Visor Prism isn't the first the handheld based on the Palm OS to incorporate colour. The Palm IIIc, which was introduced back in February, got those honours. But it turned out to be a dubious distinction: The Palm IIIc's 256-colour display paled in comparison to Windows CE- and, more recently, Pocket PC-based devices.
The Visor Prism more ambitiously supports up to 65,536 colours, matching the colour depth of the Casio Cassiopeia EM-500 and E-125 (and surpassing that of Pocket PCs from Compaq and HP). But before you get too excited, keep in mind that that the Visor Prism -- like all devices based on the Palm OS -- is restricted to a resolution of 160 by 160 pixels, compared to 240 by 320 pixels for Pocket PCs. As a result, the Visor Prism's adjustable backlit display appears grainier, though it is still far better than that of the Palm IIIc.
On our test device, Handspring also included several applications for viewing images and video and a selection of games to give us a better idea of the performance of the colour display. Though it doesn't match that of Pocket PCs, it still a big step forward from the grey-scale display on most Palm-based devices, and it makes the user experience much more enjoyable. In fact, once you get used to it, it's annoying when you run an application that doesn't support colour.
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