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Android 8.1 was released in August, 2017, so it's very old. Although, it did have it's latest update just one month ago, so hopefully the security would be alright, even if it doesn't have the latest features.

But my guess is that the target market for Palm doesn't really care about the latest features, they care about gear that works and fits normally in a hand. So probably not a big issue really.

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The device was released in Oct 2018 though, so at the time it was the newest Android version (9 was just released, probably too late in the Palm dev cycle).

The $280 price tag is a biggest show-stopper IMO (and according to the Palm website that's a "sale" from the $400 price tag, although I never quite trust that). I paid $70 for my basic Android device (Samsung Core A2) and that works just fine as well (with some minor caveats/limitations of Android Go, such as the screen not lighting up when there's a notification).

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