Palm sales 'lower than expected,' revenues to miss targets

Ruh-roh. Palm just confirmed what we heard from analysts yesterday: sales aren't going so well. The company's updated its third quarter financial guidance to say that consumer adoption of its products is "taking longer than expected," leading to lowered order volumes from carriers and deferral of some orders to "future periods." That certainly puts that "Chinese New Year" Pre / Pixi work stoppage in a slightly different context, doesn't it? Looking at the new numbers, Palm says it expects non-GAAP Q3 revenue to be about $300m, or about the same it pulled in in Q2 before the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus launched on Verizon. That's not a good sign, but we'll see if that kicks someone at Verizon or Palm into realizing they might need a new, less-stupid ad campaign focused on capabilities, not stereotypes.

Samsung to mass produce 3.3-inch touch-embedded AMOLED panels

Need a mystery to keep you bewildered? Here's one: that layer of
nothingness between the touch-sensing glass and the display on your
phone. Whatever that is, Samsung's about to
blow it away with a new 3.3-inch WVGA AMOLED touchscreen
coming in March. The magic lies in the on-cell touch technology --
0.001mm-thick capacitive touch sensors are deposited between the
panel's substrate and the bottom polarizer film, thus removing the
usual touchscreen glass cover and the gap that follows. If all goes
well, Samsung should be delivering thinner and lighter phones with
slightly brighter touchscreens in a few months' time, or possibly
phones in the current package but with bigger batteries. Sorry,
LCD, but we've got a new crush to focus on.

ATI FirePro M5800 mobile graphics chipset listed, world awaits details with bated breath

ATI's FirePro
series of graphics accelerators has been showing us that CAD
rendering is serious business on
laptops and
desktops for awhile now, and now HP fans will seemingly be
getting first taste of a new entry in the line, the FirePro M5800.
All we know is a name at this point, and that it'll be an option in
HP's (formerly NVIDIA exclusive)
EliteBook 8540w, but HP Fansite goes on to speculate
that it'll be based on the ATI Mobility Radeon 5800 series (the
numbers certainly jive) and that it will have 1GB of memory. Think
you can solve the puzzle and unearth more information? The whole
sordid PDF is waiting for you at the source link below, with the
wild and thrilling ATI support narrative beginning on page nine.

Seems like Helsinki's always got something interesting to show in its Nokia Research Center (NRC). Today's conceptual adventure involves radar, or RADAR (RAdio Detection And Ranging) if you prefer. Without going into too much technical detail, Nokia demonstrates a handset that uses electromagnetic waves to measure the speed of an impressively stoic Finn as he walks towards and away from a prototype handset that can identify the direction of movement. It also works through fabric to help turn typically mundane tasks such as volume adjustment into an aerobic art form. No really, see for yourselves in the video after the break.