Sure thing! Third party apps yes (see: palmdb.net), but obviously not typical 3rd party services (no Spotify, etc.).
I mostly use a few models of Handspring Visor, typically grayscale, so not even the latest OS. Visor Edge for something as thin and sleek as a modern phone. Visor Neo if I want expandability (similar to pg6-7 in the Ars article). There's a fun module that adds both more memory and a vibrate motor for alarms, but I'll swap that out for a camera or mp3 module at times. Charge or swap batteries once or twice a month.
Common tasks:
* Notes, To Dos, Contacts, Calendar (excellent stock calendar, per @j45 above)
* Alarms & Reminders (stock + Diddlebug, which lets you draw/write notes w/ a timer)
* Offline browsing (Plucker can crawl pages and sync them)
* Weather (note: cached on sync because my Palm doesn't have wifi)
* Calorie tracking
* Games (we have a Wordle port!)
* Longform writing - I have a foldable keyboard and usually use plaintext, but there are word processing apps that save to HTML if you want. I also often write on an Alphasmart Neo, which can IR beam back and forth with the Palm and PC.
* Personal project tracking/flows
* Photos (technically video too, but only have 8MB memory for everything)
I have newer PDAs too that can natively handle things like voice recording, cameras, video playback, etc., but I really like the grayscale ones. A late Clié like a VZ90 or some of the others in this thread will have more bells and whistles (even OLED!).
Note also that all of the above is a more manual process than modern phones (and more manual today than it was then, because Outlook supported Palms in 2002 unlike now). If you use Google Calendar I think you can still sync, but if there's an important work meeting that I want in my pocket in addition to the laptop--I do the little ritual of adding it myself.
I mostly use a few models of Handspring Visor, typically grayscale, so not even the latest OS. Visor Edge for something as thin and sleek as a modern phone. Visor Neo if I want expandability (similar to pg6-7 in the Ars article). There's a fun module that adds both more memory and a vibrate motor for alarms, but I'll swap that out for a camera or mp3 module at times. Charge or swap batteries once or twice a month.
Common tasks:
* Notes, To Dos, Contacts, Calendar (excellent stock calendar, per @j45 above)
* Alarms & Reminders (stock + Diddlebug, which lets you draw/write notes w/ a timer)
* Offline browsing (Plucker can crawl pages and sync them)
* Weather (note: cached on sync because my Palm doesn't have wifi)
* Calorie tracking
* Games (we have a Wordle port!)
* Longform writing - I have a foldable keyboard and usually use plaintext, but there are word processing apps that save to HTML if you want. I also often write on an Alphasmart Neo, which can IR beam back and forth with the Palm and PC.
* Personal project tracking/flows
* Photos (technically video too, but only have 8MB memory for everything)
I have newer PDAs too that can natively handle things like voice recording, cameras, video playback, etc., but I really like the grayscale ones. A late Clié like a VZ90 or some of the others in this thread will have more bells and whistles (even OLED!).
Note also that all of the above is a more manual process than modern phones (and more manual today than it was then, because Outlook supported Palms in 2002 unlike now). If you use Google Calendar I think you can still sync, but if there's an important work meeting that I want in my pocket in addition to the laptop--I do the little ritual of adding it myself.