The Tungsten series was introduced in October 2002, created as a "prosumer" line priced at $199 to $300 to compete with the popular Sony Clie and Windows Mobile PDAs.

[citation needed] Tungsten models used a five-way navigator pad, in the shape of a rounded rectangle, circle, or oval and had four buttons for built-in applications.

It had a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack and a speaker in back and used a mini USB connector not supported by most dock accessories.

[citation needed] The Tungsten E, though, did not include a vibrating alarm and indicator light like the Palm m500 series had.

It had a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack, a longer-lasting battery than the Tungsten E, had Bluetooth capability, and a single speaker on the back.

Unlike other models, the Find function was limited to only the first eight matches, and the calculator incorrectly found percentages at half their actual value, though this was fixed in units shipping after April 2006.

[citation needed] The Tungsten E2 had the ability to use WiFi, but only by using an add-on SDIO card released by PalmOne, manufactured by SyChip.

The maximum size SD card supported on the Tungsten E2 was 1 GB due to a software limitation.

Its design set itself apart from other PDAs by having a sliding lower portion; the bottom third of the casing could be slid up and down to cover or reveal the touch-sensitive Graffiti writing area.

When open, the Tungsten T looked like a normal slate-shaped PDA, but the bottom portion, with the five-way controller and four buttons, could slide shut, covering up the Graffiti writing area.

The Tungsten T was the last Palm PDA to use the original Graffiti Version 1 handwriting recognition software.

[citation needed] Thus, they chose to hide the data entry medium while not in use to make a more compact device.

Furthermore, a new status bar appeared at the bottom of screen, giving quick access to the time, system information, home, find, menu access, alerts, Bluetooth, full-screen writing, screen rotation, and what is shown in the input area.

The Tungsten T3 came with RealPlayer for Palm OS Handhelds (called RealOne Player for Palm OS Handhelds at the time of its release) in addition to a 3.5 mm Stereo Jack, making it a digital music player when used with a Secure Digital (SD) flash memory card.

At the time of its release, the Tungsten T5 (along with the Treo 650) was plagued with memory inefficiency problems, third-party application issues, and device driver crashes, due to the new Non-Volatile File System.

[citation needed] The addition of NVFS however, brought the benefit of no longer losing all stored data in the event of a complete battery drain.

The power button was prone to reliability issues causing it to become inoperative over time, requiring the user to either use a third-party app, rely on the PDA's other physical buttons or insert a SD card which would then switch the PDA back on.

[citation needed] In some countries, including Australia, the Tungsten T5 was withdrawn early since the Palm TX offered more advanced, built-in WiFi support, instead of requiring the optional Palm Wi-Fi Card in its one and only SD slot as many other non-Palm PDAs on the market at the time came standard with built-in WiFi.

It had a thumb-sized hard plastic keyboard, like the Treo 600 rather than the typical silkscreen Graffiti Writing Area found on most Palm handhelds.

A flip cover was also released that allowed the user to hold the handheld like a normal phone and talk on it, although it did obscure the screen.

[citation needed] It had 16 megabytes of memory, a Motorola DragonBall 33 MHz processor, vibrating alarms, indicator light, and ran Palm OS 4.1.1 (with an optional upgrade to 4.1.2) with special enhancements for its 320×320 display since most Palm OS 4 devices had 160×160 displays.

The Tungsten C introduced in April 2003 was, at the time of its release, palmOne's only handheld that allowed the user to access the internet wirelessly through 802.11b Wi-Fi without the use of a card or other external device.

For instance, a special adapter could be purchased to convert to a standard 3.5 mm jack that splits the mono output into left and right channels.