Palm returns with a smaller smartphone to go with your normal one

Palm

• Palm, best known as the pioneering manufacturer of the first
  mainstream personal digital assistant (PDA) in the early ’00s, is
  making a comeback with a new phone. 
• The new phone is about the size of a credit card and
  is supposed to work in tandem with your existing
  regular-sized smartphone.
• The idea is that you take the small phone with you, and leave
  your regular one at home, thus helping you spend less time on
  your smartphone. 
• The phone goes on sale in November for $350.
• Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors is helping promote the
  new device.

Palm, a gadget brand known for its pioneering personal digital
assistants (PDAs) from the early ’00s, is making its return with
a smartphone, designed as a travel-size companion to your
regular-sized main phone.

It’s been eight years
since the brand released its last line of phones, which
featured the full Blackberry-style physical keyboard we all used
to love. But Palm has rebranded with its new “ultra-mobile” phone, which
it bills as letting you focus on “what’s in front of
you and stay present during life’s most important
moments.”

The phone is not yet on the market, but
The Verge reports it’ll be available to buy starting in
November for $350. The idea, it seems, is that you carry around
your smaller Palm phone, and leave your regular phone at home,
thus combating your app addiction. 

Oh — and NBA star Stephen Curry has been brought in to promote
the new Palm.

The Palm phone is an Android device about the size of a
credit card (approximately 2 inches by 3.8 inches) that’s
essentially supposed to be an on-to-go version of your existing
smartphone. The mini phone syncs with your regular smartphone
(either Android or iOS), which means that the devices share the
same number and both receive calls, text messages, and other
alerts. It’s exclusively available for use on the Verizon
network. 

Notably, while Palm bills this device as a companion
device, it seems to be a fully-featured smartphone unto itself.

It has both a quality camera on both the front and the back. And
it seems to run a fairly typical version of Android, so it can
install apps from the Google Play store and let you talk to the
Google Assistant. That’s a contrast to recent

minimalist smartphones,  which take on app addiction by
stripping features down to just calling and texting.

The battery life doesn’t sound amazing on paper — Palm says
it can last about 8 hours. However, the phone can apparently last
all day on something called “Life Mode,” which helps filter out
calls and notifications. 

Palm’s website boasts a number of accessories exclusively made
for its phone that encourage the on-the-go concept, including a
Kate Spade wristlet, a bike mount, a sport sleeve, and a lanyard
you can hook to your phone.

Palm isn’t the only early-’00s company to make a make a big
comeback play recently. BlackBerry released the KeyOne last year
and
the Key2 this year, both with full physical keyboards. The
Chinese tech giant TCL now owns both Palm and BlackBerry, perhaps
explaining all these high-profile returns.