Palm Tungsten E2 > Reviews (16)

I bought Tungsten E2 with the intention to use it as a portable editor, to input text when I don't have access to my main laptop. It proved to be ideal for that, although I did struggle with the default onscreen keyboard and found the Grafitti feature completely useless. However, I solved that problem by buying a bigger virtual keyboard from a third party and now I'm quite comfortable with writing on it. I don't type as quick as I do on a normal laptop, but I guess there has to be some compromise somewhere.

I wouldn't recommend this product to people with poor eyesight. The reason why I say this is because the fonts are too small, and the icons and menus very close together. Moreover, the stylus doesn't always do what it's supposed to do, you click one menu item and you end up opening the next one up or down. Sometimes it takes me three or four attempts to go to where I want to go. I tried to refocus it using the option in the Settings, it improved a bit but not significantly.

Apart from writing, which is my main activity, I also use the palm for listening to music, playing games, reading, storing contacts, dates and events, etc. I've noticed that some third party applications cause the device to crash. In most cases, all it needs is a soft reset, which doesn't cause significant loss of information. Only once I needed a hard reset, after which I had to reconfigure the palm again and reinstall all the applications. I still haven't figured out what had caused that.

The device has a reasonably long battery life, which is significantly decreased if you play lots of games or listen to music. However, the good thing is that it recharges very quickly and you can use it even when it is on charge. A drawback is that you need a wireless card in order to connect to the Internet and an SD card to listen to music. What I find very annoying is that I bought a 2 GB SD card and it wasn't compatible with it. It seems to work only with cards that store up to 1 GB of information.

I gave it four stars because at the moment I find it ideal for what I'm doing and it doesn't cause me any hassle. It is very robust - I dropped it a few times and it still works perfectly. It fits easily in my bag, even in my pocket (if it's a bigger pocket). It is easy to use, it's got an easy interface and I can customize the main buttons to open my favourite applications. What would I improve? Definetely, the input function and the sensors that make the stylus interact with the device.