Sony NX70V Clie Handheld PDA

(November 2002) Sony's latest handheld, with a 200 MHz Intel XScale ARM processor, 16M RAM, a 320x480 highres TFT color screen, and Palm OS 5.0. It weighs in at 8 oz. (with stylus), and is sized at 5.5"H x 2.87"W (2 7/8) x 0.68"D (11/16, though one end is thicker). Just for fun, it comes with:

• A QWERTY keyboard for input
• Digital camera (VGA, 640x480), with JPEG and MPEG4 video support
• Memory stick slot for backups, transfers, storage
• MP3 player and earphones with remote controller
• Wireless comm slot (cfII) for Internet access
• Voice recorder, ADPCM wav format
• Jog dial controls for navigation
• And a 180 degree swivel display

Impressions

The NX70V is a bit bigger and heavier than my prior PDA, and still isn't a replacement for my laptops. On the other hand, it has an awful lot of cool technology packed into a very small package, serves double duty as a PDA and entertainment machine for me, turns on instantly, and can be carried around in a coat pocket.

Multimedia features

As an entertainment device, I use this machine primarily for photos, movies, music, and voice memos. Here are some of its specs:

• Photos: it displays and creates JPEG (DCF) photos, The camera supports 2x digital zoom and a variety of effects, in both photo and video modes.
• Movies: it plays MPEG-1 and MPEG-4 videos, and creates MPEG-4 videos. The camera records videos in Movie Player format--MPEG-4 ".mqv" files, playable from memory stick on Clies, and on PCs with QuickTime6 (and probably others).
• Music: it plays MP3 and ATRAC3 audio music files copied on memory stick, through either the new built-in speaker, or the earphones with bass boost and remote. A 128M memory stick holds roughly 40 songs, or about 2 or 3 albums.
• Voice: it plays and creates WAV audio format voice memo files, and can be setup for 1-button recording. A 128M memory stick can hold about 9 hours of recorded voice.

Major improvement: it can directly display a memory stick of JPEG photos and MPEG videos created on my camcorder, without conversion, and without any noticeable loss of resolution or color. One nit here: I've found that it's necessary to use photo albums or other viewers to speed access for very large photo collections; the supplied Clie Viewer utility's thumbnail-only approach can become very slow if you have a lot of unorganized photos on a single memory stick (and can even be unusable in some cases). Third-party viewers can do better, of course; AcidImage, for instance, is faster and more flexible than the supplied viewer, and completely solves the issue.

With the optional wireless card, and included software, you can also use it for email and web. I haven't tested this live yet, but the NetFront web browser nicely and quickly renders pages with graphics dropped onto the memory stick. It supports a variety of image formats (GIF, JPG, PNG, MNG), frames, SSL, JavaScript, and so on. In fact, it handles my entire web site on memory stick, though very large pages may not open, and some files like tar archives are understandably saved when accessed, not opened. This PDA can even be used as a remote for TVs and stereos (though it's probably not something you'll want to risk losing in your sofa).

PDA features

As a classic PDA, I use this device mostly as a notebook, calendar, and budgeting tool. Its screen is 1/3 larger vertically than my prior PDA (the graffiti area usually goes away, and there is a new status bar). This translates to 16 instead of 11 lines of text when viewing lists and memos in small font--a killer feature for my uses. Besides text and free-drawn memos, Word and Excel files can be both viewed and created with the included Documents to Go (noticeably improved). As for plain text, the larger screen means you get to see more of your doc files and spreadsheets: 22/29 lines for medium/small font spreadsheets, versus just 9 lines on my prior Clie.

For input, once you get used to the keyboard, it replaces most stylus and jog dial operations, and conserves screen lifetime. And as in prior models, the jog dial and memory stick slot are an integral part of how this machine is used; for example, documents may be backed up on memory stick, without having to do a hot synch.

Other nice touches: The design lets you flip the screen completely around, so you can use it in either clamshell or traditional tablet mode, and protect the screen in transit. There is also a new launcher UI, and a noticeable speedup from my prior 66 mhz PDA, which makes it much more practical for multimedia. Beyond its array of features, I've found that some of this device's most basic attributes--keyboard, large screen, portability, instant on--tend to be the most important in practice.

Conclusions

To me, this all seems like a major step beyond the prior generation of PDAs; I look forward to seeing what these little machines will be able to do in years ahead. Though useful today, it takes only a little imagination to see how these devices could eventually supersede cameras, camcorders, DVD and CD players, and more, especially given larger and faster memory sticks (see the update below). Sony's PDA sites currently live here, and here.

My prior handhelds: here, here, and here.

Updates

[10/03] My new Zaurus Linux-based PDA (and the reasons I did not get the latest Clie, the UX50).

[11/26/02] Since I posted this page, I've had multiple contacts from people wanting to know how to play videos recorded on an NX70V on PCs, and vice-versa. For a canned copy of a reply on this topic, click here.

[12/27/02] Someone wrote to ask about differences in the ways I use the U1 laptop and CLIE NX70V handheld, and suggested I post the reply for others who may be curious about roles: here it is. One machine doesn't quite do it all (yet).

[1/23/03] Sony is going to release a new high-end Clie, the NZ90, in February '03. Its major improvements are a 2M-pixel camera (up to 1600x1200) with flash and auto-focus, a swappable smart battery, and built-in Bluetooth networking. It's also significantly larger, heavier, and more expensive ($799 versus $599). See Sony's site: here, and an early review: here. The latter includes a photo of a NX70V on top of the new NZ90; in exchange for the new features, it's thicker and heavier (10.3 vs 8 oz) than the already-large NX70V.

[1/23/03] Sony is also coming out with faster and larger memory sticks in April. Memory Stick Select is a 256M stick, with two switchable 128M banks. Memory Stick Pro supports faster access, and up to 1G now, and perhaps 32G in the future. See here, and here. A 1G stick can hold roughly 16 CDs, 6 hours of MPEG-4 video, and 24 minutes of DVD quality MPEG-2 video. Future memory sticks could hold full-length DVD quality movies. When that happens, one could imagine them as viable alternatives to DVDs, CDs, and video tapes.

Photos I snapped myself: click to expand

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