Do you pine for the old, glory days of Palm OS? Still hanging onto that old Treo for dear life? Well, hang no longer. The guys over at StyleTap have brought their faithful Palm OS emulator to Android. If you want it though, be prepared, you're going to have to pay handsomely for it. $49.95 to be precise. There is a free 14-day trial, so at least you get to play with it before committing. It's compatible with Android devices running Eclair upwards, so pretty much everyone should be able to lay their hands on it.
So, it's not going to be picked up by the casual user. Things have pretty much come full circle though now, with many current Android users starting out on Palm OS. StyleTap has done a pretty good job of keeping the platform alive over the years, bringing their emulator to Windows Mobile, Symbian, iOS and now Android. It isn't some half-baked attempt either, for all intents and purposes, this is Palm OS running on an Android device.
For the full rundown, head on over to the StyleTap website where the app is available for download. Definitely give it a try if it's something you even think could bring an air of completeness to your mobile life. We're going to bow out to the experts on this one, so for a quick review of StyleTap, be sure to head over to our sister site, WebOS Nation, for the rundown. You'll also find the full press release after the break.
Source: StyleTap, More: WebOS Nation
StyleTap Announces Immediate Availability of StyleTap® Platform for Android™
StyleTap Announces Immediate Availability of StyleTap® Platform for Android™
TORONTO, Canada, July 16, 2012 – StyleTap Inc. today announced the release of StyleTap Platform for Android™, which allows over 30,000 applications originally written for Palm OS® to run on Android smartphone and tablet devices.
"We have found that many users and businesses have made very large investments in acquiring and developing mobile applications, and these applications have been enhanced and refined to fit their needs like a glove," said Gregory Sokoloff, CEO of StyleTap. "With all the new smartphone platforms, users are reluctant to lock themselves into one platform or to make the same investment over and over for each new platform. StyleTap's cross-platform family of products can help make these problems go away.
"Although there are many useful and entertaining applications available through the various app stores, we receive a constant stream of emails from users telling us that they need StyleTap in order to keep running the applications, not available on any app store, that are critical to their lives and businesses.
"We are particularly delighted to support Android because the open nature of the Android ecosystem allows customers to take full advantage of the benefits of StyleTap without being limited by arbitrary restrictions such as those imposed by Apple."
StyleTap Platform for Android supports standard features that include TCP/IP networking, audio recording and playback, the ability to use the multi-gigabyte storage as a virtual memory card, and cut/copy/paste of text between native and Palm OS applications. It also provides innovative capabilities such as giving Palm OS applications access to the Android GPS by providing location information in standard GPS NMEA format.
StyleTap Platform for Android is the newest member of the StyleTap Platform family, which includes StyleTap Platform for Windows Mobile™, StyleTap Platform for Symbian OS™, and StyleTap Platform for iPhone®. With StyleTap Platform, the same binary executable application can run on more smartphones and PDAs than for any other software runtime, while at the same time native code execution is supported on each device. For developers, this is "write once, profit everywhere."
Interested users and developers can visit www.styletap.com/iphone for instructions on obtaining a free 14-day trial of the Android version. StyleTap Platform for Android can be purchased for US$49.95.
For more information about StyleTap Platform for Android, please visit www.styletap.com and subscribe to the StyleTap news blog.
Reader comments
Re-live the old, old days, as StyleTap brings Palm OS to Android, for a price
Now if they could bring webOS cards to Android, I would buy it!
Yup. Sold in an instant. Webos was the best operating system out there PERIOD.
LOL
Are you saying that we should be "relieved" that they can bring Palm to the Android platform? Yes, I'm being a troll. I was just SO excited that I found a typo! I am the quintessential horrible speller. As proof, I had to do a spell check on this paragraph about 4 times!
My girlfriend still uses a Palm 700p on sprint
So people will pay $50 to downgrade their OS? I'm in the wrong business.
No, but they might pay $50 for the sake of nostalgia.
I am an ex-Palm owner.
I would certainly be interested in running Palm OS on my Nexus, if only for shits and giggles.
BUT FOR $50?????? ARE YOU KARAYZEE???
If it still works like it did on Windows Mobile it's not worth 2 dollars. On Windows Mobile, way back when, only about a quarter of the apps even half way worked.
I loved Palm...but not that much! I asked for this four years ago. I would have paid that much then.
Just tried it, it really sucks. I went from palm os to android, this is just a really dumbed down version of what I had on my centro. If it could dial out I might have used it for more than 10seconds before uninstalling the trial.
Finally! I kept holding out for a Palm smart phone until WebOS came out and it was not backwards compatible with my Palm TX. Kept the TX running for about 3 years with screen, motherboard, and battery replacements. There was one program in particular, Greek Bible on Bible With You, that is no longer available anywhere but works better than anything I can find for android.
It's funny actually, the day before this came out I was wanting to play some old PalmOS games so I dusted off my old Treo 650 and Centro. Both booted up and still had everything installed. Can't see paying $50 for that same experience on my Nexus, but if it were cheaper or if it were a webOS emulator I'd buy it.
An excellent product. For any companies with highly efficient palm database systems, styletap allows you to use your existing programs and code on multi-platforms with no program modifications. Compared to tens of thousands of pounds/dollars to rewrite complex database systems in native code for Windows or Android, the $50 price tag is perfectly reasonable.
An excellent product, no doubt. But $50.00 is disproportionate with the rest of the universe when it comes to app pricing standards. They are clearly going for the corporate market at that price, but it is not going to attract the nostalgic crowd who would otherwise have sprung for an impulse purchase if it was a typical 99 cent app. A $50.00 price makes most people say "Cool, but no thanks". Which is sad, because the Palm OS had some genuinely great apps (among the admittedly thousands of bad ones) that we will never see ported to Android or iOS.