Click for more pictures of the Sony CLIE PEG-TJ35.

With handheld sales going flat, some people will have you believe that the PDA is dead. If that's so, someone forgot to tell Sony. The Japanese electronics maker's new pair of products--the TJ25 and TJ35--go back to basics and attempt to coax more users into handheld haven.

Design
Prior to its official launch, the CLIE PEG-TJ35 had been showcased in Japan, painted in a myriad hues from purplish pink to charcoal black. Outside Japan, you can have any color you want--as long as it's silver.

At least the aluminum coat is well-finished, with shiny bands at the sides and bottom. The TJ35 is almost physically identical to the TJ25, but sports a slightly better finish. At S$120 (US$69) more, it also offers MP3 playback and twice the memory.

The TJ35 impresses with its compact figure. It weighs just 140g with a thickness of 11.9mm--an easy fit for most pockets. A nifty jog dial is positioned just below the display and allows for easy navigation of Sony's scrolling menus. On the right is the power switch which doubles as a "hold" function, so you can listen to music without accidentally pressing buttons.

Features
The Sony CLIE comes with a 200MHz ARM-compliant processor that ably handled all the applications and games we threw at it. It also gave us respectable frame rates when playing Kinoma video. The 32MB memory is good by Palm-based handheld standards, and you can add more using a Memory Stick expansion card which you'll need for listening to MP3s.

Otherwise, the CLIE's feature set is pretty average and comes devoid of any advanced connectivity functions.

The 65,000-color transflective display is small but sharp at 320 x 320 pixels. The TJ35 isn't as bright as some handhelds we've seen lately, and we preferred to have our unit toggled to maximum brightness. The device's speaker volume is on the soft side, so you'll do well to plug in a headphone.

Although the CLIE lacks the word processing software of the Palm Tungsten E, it comes with a few goodies of its own. Included in the memory are a full version of AeroPlayer for MP3 playback, the Decuma handwriting recognition engine, as well as PicselViewer for viewing (but not editing) documents. The packaged CD also includes the simple-to-use Intellisync Lite for contact and Datebook synchronization.

Battery Performance
The TJ35's battery life is about average. We disabled auto-off and then looped an MP3 file with the brightness and volume set to half. The handheld gave us 2 hours and 34 minutes before it stopped playing, with 8 percent cell life remaining.

Conclusion
The launch of the TJ35 in October coincided with Palm's introduction of its luscious threesome--the Tungstens E and T, as well as the Zire 21--and the CLIE was almost overshadowed then. This uncharacteristic mistiming extends further as the Tungsten E, at more than S$100 (US$58) cheaper, has now reset the price for multimedia handhelds. The S$489 (US$281) TJ35, credible if it had been launched three months ago, now needs a more compelling reason for customers to pick it up. Now maybe if Sony brings in those colorful variations...