Sony Clié

» see clie.sony.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obit ~

the clié was sony's pda line. it ran on palm os under license from palmsource, with sony's own industrial design and a jog dial that the rest of the palmos ecosystem eventually copied. the first model shipped in japan in september 2000 as the peg-s300. north america got its first clié in mid-2002 with the peg-nr70, and the line ran in the us through summer 2004 before sony pulled out. japanese production continued for another six months and ended in february 2005.

i missed the clié as a consumer product. by the time the line was in its flagship era around 2002-2004, the clié was a luxury pda priced around $500-$700 in the us, japan-first at the model-launch layer, and not in any meaningful sense distributed through turkish retail. handheld pdas were a workplace-issued device here when they showed up at all, almost always a more affordable palm pilot or hp ipaq. the clié sat in the part of consumer hardware history i can read about but cannot personally remember owning.

the clié's distinguishing feature was the build quality. sony made the device feel like jewelry. the peg-nz90 from 2003 paired a rotating display that pivoted ninety degrees so the screen could go from portrait to landscape with a built-in two-megapixel camera. the screen itself was a full-color vga panel at 320x480. competing pdas of the same year were running 160x160 monochrome dot matrix. the clié was simply two generations of hardware ahead.

~ the rap sheet ~

~ what it was ~

the clié product line was unusually broad for a single brand. low-end models like the peg-sl10 sat at the cheap end with mono screens and basic palm os 4, while flagships like the peg-nz90 and peg-tg50 pushed the form factor into thumb-keyboard territory. sony shipped clié models in both vertical calculator-style and horizontal mini-laptop orientations. the memory stick slot tied every clié into sony's broader media ecosystem, which meant cliés could play back atrac audio and view photos pulled off other sony devices without conversion.

palm os was the operating system but sony's relationship with palmsource was always slightly tense. sony shipped its own launcher and skin on top of palm os, called clié launcher, which most palm os power users disabled in favor of the stock interface. by 2003 sony was contributing significant code upstream to palm os 5 and was one of palmsource's largest licensees. it was also one of the only licensees whose hardware was actually selling at premium prices, which gave sony a leverage position that did not last.

~ the postmortem ~

sony announced in june 2004 that no new clié models would ship outside japan. the existing us inventory cleared through that summer at clearance prices. the japan-only continuation was supposed to keep the brand alive in its strongest single market for an indefinite period. that lasted about six months. in february 2005 sony announced the full discontinuation of the clié line worldwide, with no successor product.

the official statement cited a shift in sony's portable-device investment toward the psp, which launched in japan december 2004 and in north america march 2005. internally the read was that the psp was eating the budget, the resource pool, and the executive attention that the clié needed to continue. palmsource itself was bought by access in 2005 and the palmos platform began its longer decline. the clié line had no migration path. existing devices kept running, and sony stopped issuing firmware updates by mid-2006.

~ what survived ~

the clié is the part of pda history that aged the best aesthetically. the nz90 still gets picked up at retro auctions for several hundred dollars because the rotating screen and the milled-metal build still feel deliberate in a way most pdas did not. there is a small community on reddit and youtube that runs clié devices in 2020s as note-taking tools and conversation pieces. the screen technology actually holds up at portable sizes because vga at 3.8 inches was already higher density than many modern e-reader displays.

the inheritance most people miss is that the clié's roll-out pattern was a direct rehearsal for the psp and later for the vita. sony shipped premium hardware with a strong industrial design and a media-ecosystem hook, watched it lose to a cheaper competitor with better software, and pulled the plug when the next product line needed the budget. that pattern has repeated through sony's portable lineup for two decades. the clié is the first run of that script.

@}-->--

              )
             (_)
            .-'-.
            |   |
            |   |
            |   |
            |   |
          __|   |__   .-.
       .-'  |   |  `-:   :
      :     `---'     :-'
       `-._       _.-'
           '""""""

« previous  ·  random  ·  next »