Veo's Photo Traveler series aims to answer the old Axim "a picture is worth a thousand words" for the thousands PDA owners who don't have camera-enabled handhelds.

The Photo Traveler, a digital camera peripheral, comes in two versions, one for Palm OS devices that works with Secure Digital slots, and the other for Pocket PCs with CompactFlash slots. In this review, we take a look at the Palm OS version of the camera. The camera is compatible with Palm OS 4 and 5.

To use the camera, you first need to load the software from the bundled CDROM. The camera comes with a desktop application that syncs with the Photo Traveler software on the handheld, which takes up about 150KB of space. The camera, which comes with a nice little protective case, measures a mere 3 inches long and 1 inch wide. A nice feature of the camera is the ability to rotate it 180 degrees, so you can either have it face away from you when using the PDA screen as a viewfinder or face it towards you so you can take a self-portrait.


Photo Traveler & Case

Plugging the camera into the Secure Digital slot automatically launches the camera application. Since the camera doesn't snap into the slot the same way as a memory card, it is sometimes hard to tell if is attached correctly, which can be annoying. When the camera isn't attached correctly, you get the following error message.

The camera allows you to take pictures at either 320x240 or 640x480 resolutions, storing the images as 24 bit color JPEGs, and at either low medium or high quality. You can also turn off the sound the camera makes when taking a pictures. As you see from the screen shots, it tells you what the size of the images will be and how many you have left to take depending on available memory. You can take either close-up pictures or landscape images with the camera's adjustable focus lens.

Manage Camera Preferences

Set Image Size

Set Image Quality

Turn Off Sound

The software also allows you to set the exposure time to either Auto or Manual, which is important for pictures that aren't going to be taken on a nice sunny day and indoors where the camera didn't perform as well.

Choose Manual or Auto Exposure

Set Manual Exposure

The viewfinder on the handheld's display is pretty small. When you tap on it however, it enlarges the image. One problem I had with the viewfinder is that there is a delay from when you point the camera at something to what you end up seeing on the screen, making the experience kind of choppy, especially when compared PDAs with integrated cameras such as the CLIE NZ90 and NX70 and Palm Zire 71, which feature real-time video like images that takes up the whole display. The choppiness with viewfinder of the Photo Traveler gets even worse when the image is enlarged, which you can do by tapping the viewfinder with your stylus. This is probably due to the limitations of the bandwidth of the SDIO (Secure Digital In & Out) slot.

Another difference between camera-enabled PDAs and using the Photo Traveler is that the image on the viewfinder appears washed out with the Photo Traveler, even on a fantastic display like with the Tungsten C we used for testing. You press the little camera icon or one of the handheld's hardware buttons to take a picture.

Small Viewfinder Image

Large Viewfinder Image

If you press a little clock, as seen on the screen shots above, you can set a timer to take pictures on a delay. By selecting the four little patterned squares on the left side, you can view the pictures you've taken individually or as thumbnails. There is also an icon to beam individual images to other handhelds or delete a selected picture.


Set a Delay When Taking a Picture

View & Edit Image Thumbnails

Similar to the way the usability of the Photo Traveler suffers when compared PDAs with integrated cameras, so does the image quality, as colors always appear a little washed out as they did with the viewfinder. And I'm not talking about comparing the Photo Traveler to the 2 mega-pixel camera in the CLIE NZ90, but to ones that are more in line with the Photo Traveler, such as the one with the Zire 71 and the CLIE NX70. Indoors, the image quality suffered the most. Of course, as with cameras in the PDAs just mentioned, the quality of the images doesn't even come close to what you'd get in a stand-alone digital camera, but even less so.

So if what you mainly need is a digital camera, then the Photo Traveler isn't for you. If you want the convenience of being able to take pictures easily without any hassle with your PDA, then you should consider one of the camera-enabled models available. Nevertheless, the Photo Traveler does give the majority of PDA owners who don't have a camera-enabled handheld an option they wouldn't otherwise have. And with all its faults, if you take it for what it is, a relatively easy to use gadget that is small and convenient, then the Photo Traveler is worth considering.

For a while Palm was offering the Photo Traveler as an incentive to buy the Tungsten T, which would have been a great way to get the camera add-on. Veo's asking price of $100 for the Photo Traveler, however, is going to make some people think twice before getting one.