LinuxDevices: Royal to Debut $300 Linux/Qtopia PDA This Year

“Royal Consumer Information Products and Trolltech announced
that they are jointly developing a new line of ‘feature-rich’ and
‘competitively priced’ Linux-based handheld devices that
incorporate Trolltech’s Qtopia application platform, thereby
providing software compatibility with Sharp’s Zaurus PDAs. The
first of these products, Royal LineaLX, is scheduled to ship in the
U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2003 for less than $300, the
companies said.

“According to Bob Smith, Sr. Product Manager of Royal Consumer
Information Products, the LineaLX will be positioned at the top of
Royal’s Linea line of low-end handheld organizers. Other members of
the Linea family use a proprietary OS.

“The LineaLX will be based on a Motorola i.MX1 MDragonBall
processor running at 200MHz. Motorola claims this chip outperforms
competing chips clocked many times faster due to architectural
advantages and built-in function accelerators, and that the low
clock rate uses less power. A recent whitepaper from Motorola
claims that i.MXL processors outperform Intel’s Xscale PXA250 and
TI’s OMAP 1510 in power conservation benchmark testing…”

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