PEG-S500C

The PEG-S500C is the color model of the first Clie generation.

Its features (except for the color screen) are identical to those of the PEG-S300, so I won't elaborate on the subject.

The screen, on the other hand, deserves that I elaborate a bit: The Clie is the first Palm-compatible that allies both a reduced bulk (closer to the Vx than to the IIIc) and a color screen. To achieve that, Sony had to make some choices about the screen. The goal was to keep a reasonable battery life, and to fit the battery and color screen in a tiny volume. Amongst the available technologies, Sony chose the reflective screen instead of the transmissive screens used on the IIIc. The direct consequence is that the screen is not necessarily backlit all the time, saving a lot of battery life. On the other hand, this type of screen's readability depends a lot from the lighting conditions. The less light you have, the duller and harder to read the screen. Major drawback: in poor lighting conditions, your screen is almost unreadable. Minor comfort: in direct sunlight, while a IIIc screen becomes washed out and unreadable, the PEG-S500C screen is very readable and pleasant to use as shown on this picture of my Clie in bright sunlight.

The PEG-S500C does have a backlight, but it doesn't make any difference in normal lighting conditions. In poor to good lighting conditions, there's almost no noticeable difference between with and without backlight. Only in darkness can you easily notice when the backlight is used ,which indeed allows to read the screen in complete darkness.

The screen's background, as you can notice on the previous picture, is more gray/beige than white, or bluish gray when backlit. Don't expect to get the bright white screen background that is usually shown on the pictures on Sony's documentation, on the emulator or on a IIIc or other transmissive screen devices. On the other hand, I have the feeling that the Clie screen is far less affected by the fact that you see a black grid between the pixels when you look at a IIIc screen.

All in all, this Clie was a pioneer which lacked a truly efficient backlight to give the user the choice between a good battery life when the screen is used under good lighting conditions and a readable screen (with less battery life) when the backlight is switched on under poor lighting conditions. Unfortunately we had to wait for the PEG-N700C for that!

Last but not least, I do regret that the PEG-S500C was only released in Japan, with a Japanese PalmOS, when the monochrome model was translated to English and released in the USA / UK (I do understand, though: Sony knew exactly that with such a disappointing screen, the USA or European sales would probably have been very disappointing too!!!)