PalmSource has been steadily licensing its operating system to third parties for a while. PalmOne is probably the best known of the licensees, but there are others, including Tapwave, whose Zodiac has been available in the USA for the best part of a year. Though it has cooked up a storm in terms of positive press reviews stateside, it has taken until now for a European launch to take place.

I got hold of one of the first units to hit the UK and though pricing is not yet finalised or distribution deals signed on the dotted line, UK high street availability looks set.

I actually received a Zodiac 2, which differs from the original Zodiac in having 128MB of internal memory as opposed to 32MB and a slightly different casing colour. Yes, that was 128MB of memory, the most I’ve come across on a Palm OS device by some margin. Even Sony never matched this when it was distributing Cliés in the UK. 12MB is reserved for system use (on both incarnations of the Zodiac), so our review unit had 116MB available to the user. There are two SD card slots, one of which has SDIO support so you can expand on the memory and add hardware extras – a WiFi card to supplement the built in Bluetooth is expected ‘soon’.

Think Palm PDA and you may think about the built in applications: Address, Date Book, Memo Pad, and so on. Running as it does Palm OS 5.2T (the T stands for Tapwave), these are present on the Zodiac 2, but its primary aim is to be a Mobile Entertainment Console.

Hold the beautifully designed anodised aluminium deep grey hardware in the hand so that its screen is in landscape format, and on the right of the screen sit four action buttons. On the left you’ll find a 360-degree analogue controller, while the top left and right edges provide two ‘trigger’ buttons. It’s definitely a control array made for gamers.

Tapwave has placed its own MP3 player and photo viewer on ROM, and for user installation provides the Kinoma video player and Palm Reader among its software extras. Those wanting to use the Zodiac for serious stuff should note that the word processor WordSmith is provided – though only a 50-use limited version. PC Desktop software is also included, and Outlook synchronisation is provided by the Palm standby Chapura PocketMirror. There is no synchronisation software for Mac users.

I suspect the Bluetooth provision is more for multiplayer gaming than for communication. There is no email software, though a Web browser and SMS software are present for self-installation, and there is direct support for only three Bluetooth phones.

The Zodiac 2 has two processors. The main Motorola Arm9 processor is supplemented by one devoted to graphics processing. ATI’s Imageon 4200 has its own 8MB of memory to help it speed along.

There are stereo speakers one on each side of the screen. Output can be sent to a headset via a 3.5mm jack from the Yamaha audio processor. The screen itself is very nice, with a high quality 16bit colour display. The screen is touch sensitive, and the stylus lives in a hollow at the back of the casing. I managed to mislay mine twice within a week, which may not have happened if the Zodiac 2 were provided with a protective case.

Tapwave has devised its own user interface, rather nicely done so that it groups similar applications together on a ‘radial menu’. There is a centre icon and eight others connected to it by graphical ‘spokes’. You can customise the applications on the menu as well as the colour scheme used. It’s easy enough to see everything on the ROM and either SD card with a single tap.

Palm Applications run in a square area in both landscape and portrait formats, with the Graffiti area removable to allow for full-screen running if apps support this. A small row of icons linked to the Graffiti area allow for volume changes, screen orientation flipping and other odds and ends. All pretty standard features that we’ve seen in other Palm OS hardware.


The Zodiac ships with two games, Acid Solitaire and StuntCar Extreme. These are pretty basic, though the latter shows off the vibrate feature which adds effect to some games. I was provided with an array of commercial titles including Doom, Duke Nukem, Tony Hawks Pro Skater, Mini Golf, Breakout and several others. In general they play surprisingly well, and sound output is good, especially through headphones.

While I found nothing to grumble about with regard to the Zodiac 2’s turn of speed, it was clear that the controls are better for some games than others. I guess that’s always the case with handheld gaming hardware, though. Of more concern is that I’ve played some of the games so often on other platforms that it felt a bit like there was nothing new to see here.

Software support really matters for the Zodiac 2. The hardware is compatible with the oodles and oodles of Palm applications out there, but what buyers are really going to want is games from commercial high-fliers designed to take advantage of the comparatively strong sound and graphics features. In this respect, the list of titles available via www.tapwave.com is OK, but not vast.

Games development for newer platforms is a bit chicken and egg. For developers to get interested there needs to be lots of devices out there forming a good potential market. For lots of people to buy the hardware it needs to be enticing, which in this case, as the Zodiac 2 is in no small part a gaming platform, means there needs to be lots of games. I suspect the momentum needs to come from the hardware provider in this case, which means Tapwave has to get its thinking cap on.

Battery life is important with any handheld, and no gamer wants their device to fail mid-way through a session. I used BatteryBench to test the life of the Zodiac 2 putting it through the same paces I’d put a standard Palm OS device through in order to get a comparison. At Full Power I got three hours 56 minutes of life, at Normal Use I got 7 hours 25 minutes. That’s pretty good in comparison to other Palm based handhelds, but gaming is power hungry and I doubt serious players will get a day’s fun out of a full charge.

The Zodiac 2 would make a fine Palm based PDA. Its large screen and huge memory capacity make it ideal for the software hoarders among us. The MP3 player turns out good quality sound – better through headphones than the speakers – and the 3.5mm jack will please owners of superior headphones. The hardware itself has superb build and finish. The Zodiac certainly delivers a better gaming experience than any other Palm PDA I’ve seen, but its games library is small and needs to grow fast.

Verdict

A sleek, stylish and innovative product that blends the practical uses of a PDA with a mobile games machine. With an estimated price of around £300 it’s not as cheap as a games system, but it’s comparable to HP’s latest consumer focussed PDAs. If Tapwave can convince more games developers to get on board, this could be a great pocket solution.