PalmOne today announced a new “mobile manager” class of handheld products, and Amazon.com let slip that the first gadget in the new category will be called the LifeDrive.
Mobile Managers will join PalmOnes Treo smart phones, Tungsten business-oriented PDAs, and Zire personal PDAs in PalmOnes product line. In a press release, PalmOne stated that handhelds in the new category will be for people who want to tote all of their important data around with them, and will have a lot of file storage capacity and can thus “carry dozens of documents and hundreds of songs” or “carry a thousand-plus photos and…videos.”
PalmOne stated their Tungsten and Zire handhelds will focus primarily on “basic organization tools, such as calendar and contacts,” leaving the mobile managers for “customers who are eager to take full advantage of the trend toward digital everything…as standalone files or in organized folders.”
That makes the Tungsten T5 look like something of a transition product, as it has the Tungsten name but is sold, at least in part, for its ability to function as a 256 MB Flash drive.
Meanwhile, Amazon.com posted a shopping page on Friday for the first PalmOne Mobile Manager: a new handheld called the LifeDrive.