Earlier this week, Palm took the wraps off its latest high-end handheld PC, the Tungsten T3.
The T3, on sale at £329, is the third model in the company's popular Tungsten T series. While the T2 offered few enhancements to the original T design, the T3 is, essentially, a completely new product.
It's an impressive one, too. The most striking feature, apart from its very pocketable slim frame, is its large 320x480 pixel colour screen. Not only is it higher resolution than previous personal digital assistants (PDAs), but it can also extend it to a size that, Palm claims, is 50% larger than previous models.
Another neat touch is that the screen can be used either in portrait or landscape mode, with the latter a better option for web surfing and playing games. It works well, too, with documents from Word and Excel via the on-board Documents to Go software package.
Palm has also packed an impressive array of software into the device, including a Kinoma video player, Real MP3 player and a photo viewer. It has improved both the processor (Intel Xscale 400Mhz ARM) and the amount of storage (now 52MB).
Connections between the PDA and mobile phones to enable its web browsing and e-mail facilities are made via a wireless Bluetooth connection.
While it is a product certain to fire the imaginations of Palm users and gadget-lovers, some pundits within the mobile phone industry are predicting that the T3 could prove to be the last hurrah for the PDA in the consumer market.
There are clearly many potential uses for PDAs in the business world but, in the consumer sphere, the handheld PC is facing robust pressure from the growing number of smartphones sporting similar facilities.
Smartphones have one key advantage over PDAs such as the Tungsten T3 - they do not need an external mobile phone to make calls, collect e-mail or surf the web.
Until recently, the smartphone market was dominated by large, clunky PDA-style devices such as the 02 XDA and the Sony Ericsson P800.
Now, manufacturers including Nokia (with the 6600), Orange (with the SPV-E100) and Motorola (with its MPx200) offer features like e-mail, web browsing, MP3 music and contact management systems on handsets a fraction of the size of even the smallest handheld PCs.
The Handspring Treo 600, a phone slightly smaller than a PDA, and which runs using the Palm operating system, is also set to launch later this month.
Stuart Jackson, Orange's corporate communications manager, believes that a realignment is taking place in the handset market, and could spell the end for PDAs.
"The kind of products coming through now are not PDAs - they are essentially phones with PDA style features," he said.
"You only have to look at the Handspring Treo 600. It has all the PDA functionality in a smaller device. Once phones like these establish themselves, I can't see why anyone would need a PDA."
Looking at websites and watching video might not be so rewarding on a smartphone's smaller screen, but Mr Jackson, and others in the mobile industry, believe that, with pocket space at a premium, consumers will plump for one, rather than two, devices.
Clearly, the problem for Palm and its rival manufacturers is persuading consumers seemingly obsessed with the size of gadgets that processing power, expandability and, above all screen size and resolution, are more important.
Colin Holloway, Palm's marketing manager for northern Europe, remains optimistic that PDA makers can meet this challenge. He sees the arrival of smartphones as an opportunity.
"Compared with the mobile phone market, the PDA market is very small. But I suspect that the growth of smartphones might provide a catalyst of growth in sales of PDAs," he said.
"I think what might happen is that consumers may try these new phone devices and discover their shortcomings. Then they will consider buying a PDA."
He also believes that only larger screens can make the most out of applications such as GPS route-finding and video viewing, which will become more important to PDA owners as time goes by.
Mr Jackson believes there is a trump card that will tip the balance in favour of smartphones. "A fold-up screen on a phone that expands to a large size could make all these arguments academic," he explained.
With recent advances in LCD technology from companies such as Philips, which has an electrowetting system that makes roll-up large screens cheap to manufacture, he might not have to wait too long for one.
As for Palm, the company is much too smart to put all its money on just one horse. It is currently going through the process of merging with a smartphone manufacturer, Handspring, which happens to be the maker of the attractive Treo 600.
· Thursday night saw the annual Mobile Choice magazine awards ceremony, which took place at Olympia, in London.
Judges at the event (The Guardian's mobile phone authority Vic Keegan among them) chose everything from best phone to top network.
In the handset categories, they did the diplomatic thing and split the awards between the year's two outstanding phones. So, while Sony Ericsson's T610 took phone of the year, the award for best cameraphone went to the Sharp GX20.
Samsung was rewarded for its innovative range of handsets with a manufacturer of the year prize, Siemens took the fashion phone honours for its SL55, and Orange was top network.
