The original inventors of the Palm Pilot who founded Palm, Inc were Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan. Since Palm was a subsidiary of 3Com, purchased Palm,they became upset that 3Com had too much control over the product, and they did not have enough control. As a result, they founded Handspring in June 1998.
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2 Handspring Treo |
Handspring Visor
The company launched the Handspring Visor line of products on September 14, 1999 which, unlike most of products produced by Palm at the time, used USB to synchronize with the desktop computer and included an expansion port. The USB support made these the first Palm devices to work with the Macintosh operating system out of the box. More liberal than the Palm Pilot, the Visor line featured vibrantly colored handhelds focused more towards average people. The expansion port, called the Springboard Expansion Slot, allowed for addition of modules such as games, ebooks, extra memory, universal television remotes, cellular telephones, modems, MP3 players, digital cameras, and even a device for connecting to an EKG.
Visor and Visor Delux
The Visor line at first introduced the Visor Solo, which was black and contained 2 megabytes of onboard memory. The Visor Deluxe had the option of translucent colored models, and had eight megabytes of onboard memory. The Visor and Visor Delux used Palm OS 3.1H, a modified version of the OS from Palm that included an enhanced datebook, a city time appllication, and an advanced calculator. Unlike the Palm Pilot, the Visor's infrared port was placed on the side of the device to make room for the Springboard. Critics of the device note the lack of rubber between the buttons and metal contacts making the buttons harder to press and complain that the screen cover was not connected, making it easy to loose. The Visor and Visor Delux weighed 5.4 oz. Their dimensions were 4.8" x 3.0" x 0.7".
The company is now owned by PalmOne.Visor Prism
When Handspring released the Visor Prism, it was the first Palm OS handheld to have a display of thousands of colors; the current model produced by Palm only had 256. The Prism featured Palm OS 3.5.2H3, and weighed 6.9 oz. The dimensions were 4.8" x 3.0" x 0.8".Visor Platinum
Visor Edge
Handspring Treo
Handspring stopped producing the Visor line, and replaced it with the Handspring Treo, a more "communication centric" line of handhelds, most of which were integrated with cellular phones.