Palm is back with a ‘companion phone’ that costs $349

While we have all know that Palm would definitely be making a come back just like how BlackBerry and Nokia did and moved to the Android route, the company is taking things a little differently and not what we quite expected it to be, it has launched a pretty interesting device that’s simply called the Palm Phone.

Rather than a standard smartphone, the Palm Phone is designed and intended to be a companion device to your bigger smartphone, it sports a 3.3-inch display and measures 62 grams, which perfectly fits into any palm size just like its name (pun intended). The phone runs on Android 8.1 and is powered by a Snapdragon 435 processor, 3GB RAM and 32GB of storage, it has a 800mAh battery which Palm claims to last a full day when fully charged via its USB-C port, there’s also a 8MP selfie camera and surprisingly, IP68 water and dust resistance.

As a companion phone to your bigger smartphone, the Palm Phone has embedded connected SIM, just like how the LTE variant of the Apple Watch functions, it stays connected to your main phone over your cellular network, which in this case US carrier Verizon holds the exclusivity for it.

While the designers have explained that the product is meant to ‘create a new category’, this isn’t the first companion phone that we have seen. A few years ago, HTC unveiled the HTC Mini+ as a smaller phone to complement its larger HTC One Max, which at that time was a huge phablet, which users are able to make calls and receive notifications via  Bluetooth, though the HTC Mini+ didn’t quite lived up to its expectations and can’t do a lot of things like the Palm Phone.

By all means, this is an interesting device for those who doesn’t always want to carry their main smartphone all the time, such as hitting the gym or going for a hike where accidents tend to happen.

The Palm Phone is manufactured by TCL, who also manufactures other handsets such as BlackBerry and Alcatel, the phone is exclusively sold on Verizon at $349, which you might probably be off buying a cheap entry-level device, not unless you appreciate the connectivity to your main smartphone.