Table of Contents

Group Sense PDA

Company History

Group Sense Ltd. (GSL) was an international company, founded in Hong Kong in June 1988.

Early days (1988~2000)

Before the rise or PDAs and smartphones Group Sense's main businesses included:

PDA Era (2000-2002) After 2000, the company faced new challenges, with the pager business in decline due to the rise of SMS, and with new competition arising in the PDA market from other Chinese companies.

On 4 September 2000, the business restructured into three divisions; Electronic Dictionaries, PDAs & Smartphones, and ODM services. In May 2001, a join venture was formed between GSL, Intel, SB China (Softbank subsidiary) and UTStarcom to develop devices for the PDA market.[14] The PDA division was named Group Sense PDA Limited (GSPDA).

In 2001, GSL released their Xplore V series of PDA. The first model, the V88, came with 8MB RAM, and had the appearance of a typical PDA of the time.

The company envisioned that wireless-data enabled PDAs would be popular in the future, and in their annual report they explicitly indicated that this market would be a primary focus going forwards. In October 2001, the i-Xplore 938, was announced and shown to the press. This was a Bi-lingual PDA with integrated GSM mobile connectivity, and featured an in-house developed proprietary OS [2]. i-Xplorer938 e968 early smartphones

Smartphone Era (2002-2007)

In late 2002, GSPDA signed a licensing agreement with PalmSource for permission to develop Palm OS PDA's [1], with 5 Palm OS devices eventually developed. The license was initially only for devices to be marketed to the Asia/Pacific market [10], before they later pursued a full ODM license with worldwide distribution rights [11].

During this period, a new Xplore was being developed and released yearly.

A flip cover device codename “Onyx” was reportedly being developed in 2001-2002, with the design of this device appearing similar to the original GSM PDA series, and unlike the later Palm-OS based Xplore series. However, this device was axed eventually before release.

GSPDA were also in development on possibilities of other operating systems. v2002 Linux PDA's

The Singapore branch of GSPDA incorporated as a subsidiary called “Group Sense Technology (Singapore) Pte Ltd.”, before renaming as Oswin Technology PLin 2004, when they began trading as Oswin Technology, eventually moving to a newown domain name in Nov 2004.

In early 2005, an Oswin device running Palm OS 6.1 (“Cobalt”) was show to the press and demoed [25], and it appeared likely that this would be the first Cobalt-based device to ship[17].

However, with the sacking of the PalmSource CEO in mid-2005, and the sale of PalmSource to ACCESS in late 2005, it appeared that Palm-OS 6.1 would be cancelled. In response, in 2006 GSPDA announced that they would continue to ship new devices with PalmOS 5.4, such as the Xplore M70 (announced Sep '06), alongside a second series of smartphones running a newJava-based OS developed by company SavaJe. The first new device announced with this Java OS was the Jasper S20 (shown right), for future release in 2007.

However, by 2007, the Xplore M70 international release was canceled, while plans for the Jasper S20 were disrupted with financial troubles at SavaJe, seeing them acquired by Sun in April 2007. In 2008, the GSPDA joint-venture were closed, the Xplore brand and website was retired, and the Palm-OS device lineup was depreciated. In-place of this, a new brand called Group Sense Mobile-Tech Ltd. (GSML) was created, initially producing GPS units and VOIP handsets, and later focusing on point-of-sale (POS) PDAs and systems.

Xplore Smartphones

In total, six Xplore Smartphones were developed by GSPDA.

Initially, GSPDA announced two models, a candybar model “Zircon Z3”, and a clamshell model “Onyx” [12][13]. The Zircon model was released in July 2003, renamed as the Xplore G18, while the Onyx was promised for later release in Q3 2003. However, the Onyx release did not eventuate, and in early 2004 was quietly removed from the GSPDA website. Photos of the Onyx device are on the right.

Common Features:

Palm OS 4.1

Palm OS 5.4

Palm OS 6

G18

“The smallest Palm OS® Smartphone in the world” Launched July 2003 in Asia, Q3 in EU. Sold over 100,000 units[15].

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=1162

Specifications

Source 1 Source 2

G88

Announced Feb 2004 as update to G18. Promoted as “Still the smallest Palm Powered Phone”. https://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=2375

Specifications

Source 1 Source 2

M28

Announced Nov 2004

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=3710

Specifications

Source 1 Source 2

M68

First Xplore phone with Bluetooth. Ann. Feb 2005, rel, early 2006

[5][6][8]

Specifications

Source 2

Features

* Subject to local network service and usage conditions

Accessories

Specification

M98

Specifications

Source 1 Source 2

M70

Almost identical to the M68. Ann. Sept 2006, rel, early 2006

A minor update, the M70S was later released in Oct 2007 with a firmware update.

Specifications

Source

Features

Accessories

Specification

Oswin Zircon Axia A108

The Axia A108 was announced in Nov 2004, but discontinued by 2006. It was launched under the brand name Axia, separate from the Xplore devices. It was also sold under the Zircon brand name, as the Zircon Axia A108 [26].

http://tech.sina.com.cn/mobile/n/2005-05-19/1742612387.shtml

. This device was advertised as "The world's smallest PDA Phone on Win CE .NET OS"., in a similar fashion to the Xplore devices.

In Feb 2005, at a local GSPDA public meeting, a representative indicated that GSPDA indicated to release a Palm OS 6 (Cobalt) based smartphone by the end of 2006[16] - over a year after Cobalt 6.1 was announced in 2004[17], and almost two years after Cobalt 6 was announced in Feb 2004.

In April it was indicated that the Oswin Axia A108 device would be available with a range of different OS platforms, including Palm OS 6 Cobalt [18][19].

These plans were again confirmed in May 2005, during an interview with PalmSource exectutives.

Finally, in late May, a prototype device running Cobalt 6.1.1 was shown at the PalmSource DevCon [20][21].

However, after this date, no news was heard about the Cobalt version of the Axia, and the launch never materialised.

Additional Photos provided by Dmitry Grinberg (creator of Palm Powerups) :

Specifications

Other Cobalt OswinTech Devices

Revealed in Brochure provided by MobileRead

GroupSense Phone Slow? Disable the network GSM modem: