Gear of the Year 2021 (2)

Enjoying the second year of relative slowdown across the board, I do not have too much "gear"noise to offer. But having said that, there are several items I really enjoyed throughout 2021. And one of them undeniably was the Palm Phone.

Make no mistake, I did not use it as my primary phone, which BTW the Blackberry has continued to be (one of my top picks for 2017). But the Palm was with me on many occasions. Especially on the trail runs, where I enjoy listening to variety of audio content. About half of the runs (which I continue doing daily at a very consistent level), I had only the Garmin watch with me, loaded with the podcasts I subscribe to.

But there are other content sources which do not transfer that easily to the watch. Among them are Audible audiobooks, which can be copied over to the watch, but that requires transcoding them to the MP3 format. The transcoding itself is not that difficult, but they end up being big long files and the Garmin does not have a proper UI to skip over to chapters and does not synchronize the listening position with other devices.

Of course I could have used a regular phone, but even the Blackberry, which is not a bulky phone, is still a distraction, dangling somewhere in a pocket. The Palm Phone is much smaller and as it runs a fairly recent version of Android, it is fully compatible with the dedicated audio apps. It also has a very good camera - see the photo attached. Actually this photo, taken on Dec 31st, was one of the best I took last year. Which exactly proves the point that the best camera is the one you have with you.

With photos so much depends on just the right moment in the right place. It is hard to say "I'm going now for a walk to take great photos", as there simply may not be the composition you want or lighting or both. Which exactly happened on that New Year's eve, when the sun just made it through the fog in the woods. I wish the Palm had a telephoto lens, but that is probably too much to wish for. BTW I have been working on a super-portable super-zoom camera setup which I hope to share here sometime later this year. So stay tuned. 

And last but not least the Palm can run other apps such as one allowing me an access to a pickup locker, which is located a couple of kilometers from where I live, so I can combine a trail run with a trip to the locker and the Palm takes care of interacting with the locker via the dedicated app.