Overview
The new PDA from HandEra (formerly known as TRG Products) is, at every level, a product straight from an engineer's mind. Functionally, with its high-res 240x320 screen, support for three types of memory/accessory cards, and the most flexible power options I've seen, it is at the top of the food chain among devices running Palm OS^®. However, the unit will not be winning any beauty contests. The screen is monochrome, which will likely not sit well with those who insist that color is the only way to fly. And, with it's silvered plastic faceplate and styling cues that make it look like a prop from Star Trek, Claudia Schiffer would probably prefer to be caught wearing off-the-rack than to sport a HandEra 330. But all joking aside, this is the most impressive piece of hardware running Palm OS to come along in quite a while, and one which could easily prove to be invaluable to companies and individuals looking for bigger screens and amazingly flexible expandability options.

What's in the Box
The HandEra unit, priced at $349.00, comes with the 330 device, a serial HotSync cradle, 4 'AAA' batteries, a flip-cover, an instruction pamphlet, and other paperwork (warranty card, software license booklet, etc.)

Hardware
Upon opening the box, it's immediately noticeable that this is no ordinary Palm OS device. The silkscreened Grafitti area that we all know and love is gone, along with all the silkscreened icons (for Applications, Menu, Calculator, and Find), as the picture to the right shows. The screen has a 240x320 pixel resolution and supports a 16-shade grayscale. This is perhaps the most innovative part of this device, and I discuss it more in the Software section below. On the front of the device is a power button and LED on the upper left and the six standard hardware buttons on the lower section. Not-so-invisibly hidden behind the ToDo and MemoPad hardware buttons is the device's amazingly loud (by PDA standards) front-facing speaker. For a comparison of loudness, you can listen to a WAV file I recorded of the alarms from a IIIx (first sound) and the 330 (second sound). Both units were face up with the microphone about 6 inches away.

On the left side of the unit, one finds a hardware button, a jog-wheel (as popularized on the original Sony PEG-S300), and an A/C power jack. The hardware button is programmable, as is the jog-wheel. Out of the box, these controls act as follows:
   • Tapping the harware button acts as "Escape," taking you out of the screen you're currently in and back up one level
   • Holding the hardware button in activates the voice recorder (more on that later)
   • Up and down rotations of the jog-wheel move to the previous and next fields, respectively
   • Pressing the jog-wheel acts as "Enter" or a tap of the stylus
Using these control buttons in a one-handed fashion takes some getting used to, especially if you've been using a "normal" Palm OS device for the past 4+ years, but I expect it to become second nature rather quickly (much like the scroll-wheel on my PC's mouse).

The bottom of the unit features the same Palm III-series serial connector that was used for many years. This means that if you have many older clip-on accessories, these should work with the 330 with no physical problem. The downside to this is the relatively slooow transfer speed of serial, especially when other devices are moving to USB. Ah,trade-offs.

The top of the unit features (from left to right in the photo to the right) the stylus slot, the Secure Digital / MultiMedia Card slot (top), the CompactFlash slot (bottom), and the IR window. The big news here is that this device is the first to offer two expansion slots of different formats without needing some sort of clip-on attachment or hardware modification. The CompactFlash slot is the same that made the TRGPro PDA famous, and supports all Type I and Type II cards (including the IBM Microdrive, which offers up to 1 GB of storage). The SD/MMC slot supports these formats for memory expansion, and will enable I/O functions, such as modems and BlueTooth, in forthcoming Secure Digital cards.

The back of the unit shows the improved power supply area, which accommodates either 4 'AAA' batteries or a forthcoming rechargeable Li-Ion battery pack (HandEra states this summer as the expected availability of the Li-Ion pack). The power port on the side of the unit can be used to power the device from one's car DC outlet or from a wall A/C outlet (with optional adapters). The Li-Ion pack is recharged inside the unit in a similar fashion.

The 330 features a 33 MHz Dragonball-VZ processor from Motorola, the same CPU used by most new devices running Palm OS. It has 8 MB of RAM on board as well as 2 MB of Flash ROM. However, the operating system takes up nearly all of the Flash ROM and leaves virtually nothing to be used as extra memory (through the likes of programs such as FlashPro and FlashPack, also from HandEra). Some will be upset at this lack of Flash capacity, but with the huge amounts of storage available in the two expansion slots, I personally see no reason to complain.

Overall, the unit is the roughly the same size as a III-series model, and a bit lighter, surprisingly, than a IIIxe. On a postal meter, the 330, with stylus, flip-cover, 'AAA' batteries, and a CompactFlash card installed, the device is an even 7 ounces. This is comparable to my IIIx, which weighs in at 6.5 ounces. The photo shows the backlights of the 330, a Palm IIIx, and a Palm m100. Yes, the 330's backlight is actually bluish compared to the greenish backlights of other devices. Personally, I find the blue to be rather soothing and have had no problems using it in pitch dark for hours at a time. You'll also notice that the Grafitti area is illuminated in the 330 -- this is a huge improvement, and until the Palm m505 came out, no device running Palm OS had this feature. Also noteworthy is the fact that the backlight is like the old PalmPilots -- it has black text on a light background. This was the favored mode for a lot of us original Pilot users, and I no longer need to have GreenLightHack enabled.

Software
The 330 uses Palm OS version 3.5.2, which has numerous enhancements. The operating system affords four different levels of compatibility with the improved screen resolution. At the most advanced level, an application that has been enhanced for the HandEra can run natively at 240x320. At the "next-best" level of compatibility, for applications that haven't been rewritten specifically for the HandEra, the program is "scaled to fit" from 160x160 up to 240x240. The unit does this by replacing the standard Palm OS fonts with new high-res fonts as well as by resizing screen elements (like buttons, icons, etc.). In Scale To Fit mode, the program occupies the upper two-thirds of the screen, just as it would on a normal Palm OS device, but the fonts and lines are crisper and clearer. At the next lower level of compatibility, the application will appear in the native 160x160 resolution in the center of the screen above the Grafitti area. This affords compatibility nearly every program, and is better for some programs that use bitmapped images a great deal (mostly games and image viewing programs). Finally, if a program is written such that it requires specific pixels to be used, the OS allows the program to run in the 160x160 upper left corner of the screen. Which mode a program runs in can be chosen from within the "Preferences" app (as shown to the left).

The unit is preloaded with all the basic Palm OS applications, including DateBook, ToDo, MemoPad, AddressBook, Calculator, etc. The four basic apps, plus the standard application launcher, have all been enhanced to take advantage of the enhanced screen resolution and increased screen real estate. As the launcher screenshots show, a lot more can be seen from the standard view (far left) to the small icon view with the Grafitti area minimized (far right).

The Grafitti area also offers some extra tricks as well. For one, it echoes your Grafitti strokes on the screen, so you can see what character you drew. After 4+ years of using Grafitti daily, I'm still only about 95% accurate. Within the past few days, however, I've noticed that my Q's are much better, thanks in part to the on-screen echoing (I can actually see what it is that my stylus tip is doing). Another trick that is offered by virtue of the "soft" Grafitti area is the ability to use a pop-up keyboard that appears within the Grafitti area. This functionality, which is achieved through a software patch being made available only to registered HandEra users (of course, it's useless to anyone without a 330), is shown in the series of photos immediately below. You'll also notice something that just blew me away: you can use Grafitti on top of the keyboard, and it doesn't skip a beat. Wow!

The four pictures above are regular keyboard (upper left), small enhanced keyboard (upper right), large enhanced keyboard (lower left), and Grafitti on top of enhanced keyboard (lower right). Of course, with the keyboard/Grafitti area hidden, no stylus input of characters is possible. Maybe telepathy input will be the next OS patch from the HandEra gang.

The unit also comes with a fully functional, registered copy of Quickoffice, from Cutting Edge Software. But wait, this is no ordinary Quickoffice -- this version has been enhanced to take advantage of the 330's larger screen and higher resolution. The upper screenshot to the left shows a Quicksheet spreadsheet in high-res, landscape mode with the Grafitti area hidden (you can also use it in high-res portrait mode, of course). One of my pet peeves with spreadsheets on Palm OS is that you couldn't see more than maybe 18 cells at a time. With new fonts and more screen real estate, you get 3-4 times as many cells visible at any one time. Quickoffice also comes with Quickword, which offers the same portrait and landscape modes for document reading/editing, and Quickchart, a pretty cool graphing program that works as an add-on to Quicksheet. The lower screenshot shows a sample Quickchart graph, again in high-res, landscape mode.

I mentioned that the HandEra offers new high-res fonts. The shot below shows all eight different fonts that can be selected from within most apps. Even the smallest font is quite readable, in my opinion, but the middle three are more legible than the typical low-res Palm screen fonts while simultaneously providing more info on a given line of text.

The HandEra 330 also comes packaged with demo versions of several other applications and games that have been enhanced to run at the full high-res, 240x320 resolution. These include applications like AportisDoc (which supports full-screen and rotated-screen reading), Mapopolis, BigClock, QuikBudget, WordSmith and TealDoc. The games include enhanced favorites such as Euchre and Solitaire from Seahorse Software and TankPilot. Another program that the HandEra folks added is VoicePad -- this program permits digital recording directly into the unit, using the built-in microphone. The resulting WAV files (8-bit mono) can be stored in RAM or directly onto CF or SD card (they can also be played back directly from any of those locations as well). I found the audio recording quality to be superb -- far better than what I found on an HP Jornada 548, even at much higher sampling rates. The playback is good as well, as the front-facing speaker does a pretty great job. One thing I wish was included is an earphone jack, which the unit doesn't have, as I'd like to be able to review voice notes without annoying those around me.

Expansion Cards
Using the CompactFlash and Secure Digital expansion slots is relatively easy. Two pre-loaded programs facilitate this process. Backup is a no-nonsense, does-what-it-says utility that allows you to back up the entire contents of RAM to either CF or SD card. I've found that backing up 3.7 MB requires about 16 seconds, give or take a couple of seconds. I find this to be totally acceptable, if not downright terrific. You can keep multiple backups, depending on the capacity of your destination card, and restore each at any time. Furthermore, you can restore individual databases from with a backup set, making this a pretty flexible utility.

The other program is CardPro, which allows movement and/or copying of programs and databases (data files) among RAM, CF, and SD in a fairly clear-cut manner. In essence, this is your comprehensive file manager utility for the device. The one thing that CardPro cannot do is enable applications to be run from the memory cards. To do this, an enhanced version of HandEra's AutoCF program, to be renamed AutoCard, will be required -- this program is expected to be released by HandEra shortly.

3rd Party Software Compatibility
One of the biggest questions I had was how the enhanced screen resolution and non-square dimensions would be accommodated by the applications I use. Well, after several days of trying things out, it's pretty darn nice. I've found that most apps run perfectly well in the Scale To Fit mode, which takes advantage of the 240x240 increased resolution. A few programs benefit from being run in the centered 160x160 mode. For example, the two screenshots of Hardball show how the Scale To Fit mode can make some bitmap-intensive programs look a bit odd.

The shot on the left is in Scale To Fit mode, whereas the shot on the right is in centered 160x160 mode. Notice that the graphics look a bit cleaner and the ball looks a bit "rounder" in the centered mode.

This is just aesthetics, but some programs really did not function well in Scale To Fit mode (see below for the compatibility list). One example is CSpotRun, the fine freeware DOC reader. When in Scale To Fit mode, it ends up only refreshing part of the screen, as you can see in the image to the right. When run in Centered mode, similar goofiness occurs. The app runs just fine, however, in the Upper Left 160x160 mode. There is some support in the form of hacks emerging for the HandEra. If you look closely at the screenshot to the right, you'll see the date, time, battery level, and memory available displayed in the Graffiti area. This is a result of SilkClockHack, a recently released hack specifically written for the 330.

I've found some programs just do not run at all on the HandEra 330. Most of these are older hacks (applets that use the HackMaster OS extension) that depend on the silkscreen area for execution. For example, SwitchHack doesn't work at all, nor can you call up MultiClipHack's list of recent clipboard contents. FitalyHack, which uses HackMaster to pop up a floating Fitaly keyboard, creates a corrupted screen, but pushing any hardware button gets out of that with no problem. In time, I hope these get updated (I miss my SwitchHack!).

Conclusions
Overall, I like this PDA a lot. The screen is a joy to use. When I pick up my IIIx, I immediately think "Ugh!" I am spoiled for life. The CF and SD card compatibility means this device may well last me for several years, and I don't have to replace my old III-series clip-on modem (joy!). The apps that run in enhanced mode are killer. Those that run OK in Scale To Fit mode are better than ever. And those apps that don't run in either mode, I sure do hope that they get updated soon. For the price, this PDA may not be considered a bargain, but it sure packs more functionality than any other PDA running Palm OS. I wish it could be a little nicer looking, though...maybe HandEra will come out with some replacement faceplates the way that Palm did with m100 series.

After a lot of soul-searching about what really mattered to me in a PDA, I decided that being able to see as much info at one time as possible was really the deciding factor. While color may look nicer, given the trade-offs in the devices currently available, I would definitely pick the HandEra 330 over any other Palm OS device out there.

Disclosure
I obtained a HandEra 330 with the intention of reviewing it for the MemoWare website. HandEra provided this unit to me for that express purpose. If I choose not to purchase the unit after the review is complete, I must return it to HandEra. Rest assured, however, that it's not going back. ;-)

Here are the results of my own tests. Please note that I did not attempt to be comprehensive, but merely sampled from what was readily on hand:

OK with Scale To Fit 240x240 Mode:
• dbScan
• Documents To Go (minor screen repainting issues)
• Filez
• HackMaster
• iSilo
• MobileDB
• Plucker (can't open ZLib-compressed documents, though)
• Quickbits
• Parens
• Reversi
• Reptoids
• Showtimes
• TealMeal
• Z'Catalog

Requires Centered 160x160 Mode:
• GameTime

Requires Upper Left 160x160 Mode:
• CSpotRun

Nonfunctional:
• Doodle
• MultiClipHack
• SwitchHack
• FitalyHack

Strangeness:
• AfterBurner Hack (actually slowed the unit down ?)

Here are the compatibility comments of Bob Greschke as posted to the comp.sys.palmtops.pilot newsgroup:

Here are a few applications that I have tried out with the HandEra
emulator.  The comments generally refer to running the application in
the "Scale To Fit" mode, unless otherwise noted.  I didn't try every
program in every mode.

ActionNames - Gonna take a little work.  Things get a bit out of
alignment.

AppHack - Appears to work OK.

6 Month View - Not bad, but the numbers get a bit difficult to read
because they get fat.

Big Clock - Works, but there has been an announcement on a version
just for the 330, hasn't there?

AutoPond - Works fine.

BillSplitter - Works OK.

BinCalc - Works.

CardSync - "FlashPro not found"?

ChessGenius - The board graphics get screwed up.  Does OK in centered
mode.  Thought for a long time on the 1 second/move setting, though.
Didn't wait to see if it ever made a move.

CityTime - Appears to work quite well!

CSpotRun - Doesn't appear to rotate correctly, or auto-scroll.

Domino! - Nope.  Needs to be in the center or left.

Eudora - Looks OK, but didn't try to use it.

EVPlugBase - Appears to work OK.  App/DA Launcher 0.6 also appears to
work, though the list of DAs and applications don't come up in quite
the correct place.  The seem to think the screen is 160x160.
Splitting up the Applications icon to perform various tasks even works
when the Grafitti area is minimized and the Application icon is small!

Filez -  Appears to be OK.

FPSUtilityP4.1 - Appears to work.  I think this is now SuperUtility?

Hi-Note - Oh oh.  The drawing function doesn't appear to work, and it
gives an error when you are done editing the picture and it goes to
save it.  This will be trouble for me.  I use it a lot.  It seems to
run OK centered, though.

Lightning - Works.  Even controls the backlight correctly.

Mahjongg - Upper left only.

MathU - works, but the fonts on the the keyboard don't appear to scale
up.  They just kind of stay the same size.

MiniCalc - Seems to work.

Monet - Works well!  I'm impressed.

Moon v1.7 - Looks good.

MPG - Seems to work

Orrey - Almost works.  There are a few alighnment problems.  Works OK
centered.

Planetarium - Forget it.  Upper left only.

PocketWatch+ hack - Seems OK, but setting it to come up when the "123"
button is tapped doesn't seem to work.  The numerical keyboard keeps
coming up.

QED - Seems to have a bit of trouble with the graphics.

RunnersLog - Looks OK.

ShopList v1.01 - Looks good.

SolFree - Works, but doesn't look really good.  Additionally, you can
really see the processor working overtime to scale everything when you
drag a card across the screen.  The card moves quite slowly.

SplashPhoto - It works!  I have a bunch of pictures that I resized to
160x160 before feeding them to the SplashPhoto converter.  Those
pictures expand to 240x240 really well, although they appear a bit
fuzzy.  Will have to wait for the real thing.  Nice.

TikTok - Functions expanded, but needs to be run in the upper left to
get the cursor positioning correct.

Traffic - It (unfortunately) seems to work. :-)

Tricorder - Works, but doesn't scale well.

Typhoon - You get three mini-typhoons up at the top of the screen no

matter where you set it to run.

WalletMate - Appears to run OK.

WankWordsBingo - Looks good, except that the bottom row of boxes get a
bit chopped off.

YAtzee - Doesn't look really great, but seems to work OK.

Z'Catalog - Seems OK.

Here are the compatibility comments of Jim Thompson as posted to the comp.sys.palmtops.pilot newsgroup:

Here's my experience on a beta unit.  I found that most of my games did 
not work well or at all, because they tend to be written with shortcuts 
that work OK in earlier Palm OS versions but are doomed to fail in 
subsequent OS releases.  However most quality apps worked and displayed 
just fine.  I didn't have to run any of them in the tiny centered or upper
left modes -- scale-to-fit seemed OK.

Legacy apps performance with a beta HandEra 330 (testing only to see if 
they can be used, not to look for ability to take advantage of Starkist's
features like graffiti-area minimize.  I didn't test many of these apps 
from the CF card, simply owing to my time being limited.)

Lexidrugs 3.1.2 in CF - works fine.
5MCC 3.1.2 in CF - works fine.
5MEC 3.1.2 in CF - works fine.
(The links between those 3 medical references from Skyscape.com all work
fine too.)

ThinkDB 1.3 in RAM - works fine (limited testing).

Z'Catalog 1.0 in RAM - works fine (limited testing).

WordSmith 1.1 in RAM - works fine except the list of documents is in tiny
font and that can't be adjusted.

BackupBuddyNG - works fine on my Win98 PC.

CityTime 2.5 - works but the nightime display zone is rendered poorly and
the twilight zone does not show up as a different shade.

iSilo 2.58 - works fine in RAM, and reading a large medical reference file
stored in CF (PEPID 2000).

JFile 4.1a - works fine in RAM (limited testing).

MedCalc 3.2 (MathLib ) - works fine in RAM.

Planetarium 2.0.4 - doesn't draw the compass view, and only draws an
incomplete sky view.  Same in stretch or compatibilty modes (hotsync'd twice
from virgin copies of the install files).

Bonsai 1.0.6  - works fine in RAM (limited testing).

Parens 1.5 - works fine but lower boarder of the top number window displays
a broken line.

Patience 2.3 (solitaire) - works but initial screen shows empty-faced cards
until a few cards have been tapped.  Many (most?) of my games don't seem to
work right, so I won't test any more at present.

TealInfo 3.11 - works fine in RAM (limited testing).

TideTool 2.0 - works fine in RAM but graph display shows broken bars instead
of rendering smoothly.

TealPaint 4.87 - in RAM: opened fine but when I went to save a new image I
got MemoryMgr.c, Line:4425, Nil Ptr error and had to pin reset (OS 329).
Unregistered version because my registration key works only on my TRGpro.

BeamWare 2.03 - works fine in RAM.  Beamed to/fromTRGpro fine.

TealMaster 1.12 - in RAM, either it or the McPhling 1.08 system extension
don't work.  TealMaster runs fine, but the extension doesn't, even though I
checked it off in TealMaster's list.

TealInfo 3.11 - works fine in CF.

Bonsai 1.1.1 - works fine in RAM.  Still mapped to the Notes hardware button
after HS using the old device name.

TideTool 2.1 - works fine in RAM except display of the graph is not optimal
and the alternating grey/white areas do not match with the tides.

PregPro 3.74 - works fine in RAM.

yBasic 1.2.0 b2 - works fine in RAM.