Palm to take on iPhone with web 2.0 banana phone Troubled Palm today launched its (hopefully) turnaround product, the Palm Pré, running its new Palm Web OS operating system. There's a heck of a lot of Mac OS X and the Apple phone about the Pré - pronounced 'Pree' - with an animated application dock on the main view, Exposé-style app switcher, JavaScript widgets as applets, …
Olof P wrote:
"EVDO = CDMA = No phone use on this side of the pond. Seems kinda silly to limit yourself to the american market for something like this."
Palm has done quite a bit with Sprint so it's not surprising. I'm sure once they get things ironed out you'll see other protocols. For example, it's not like the Treo is just CDMA : )
What's with these idiots locking their phones to a particular network? First they choose CDMA, which is laughable in the face of a world market, then they tie it even more to just the American market by locking it down to a sub-standard carrier.
Bloody idiots. I might even have bought one too.
I've still to find something that matches using my old Palm III and Palm Desktop connecting to Mac OS 9. I could install apps and have them sync data back to applications on my laptop. Then Palm stopped updating Palm Desktop so I moved away to other things. Unless Palm are going to provide a nice new, plugin friendly, Palm Desktop application for OS X this is no good to me. If they are, and a 3G version comes out, I'll look at it when I need to change my phone.
Sadly I suspect that by the time Palm deliver Apple will have and their chance will have gone.
Odd name, but nice device.
On the EVDO / CDMA thing, the Palm press release DOES also mention UMTS / HSDPA (see http://investor.palm.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=358392). So perhaps the Pre is an exclusive to Sprint at the moment, with a UMTS version coming out later.
There are a couple of things that make the Pre interesting - one if the user interface idea of having application cards running side-by-side. It sounds interesting, it would be interesting to see it in practice. The other thing is that the software seems to be rather good at managing contacts and messages from all sorts of different sources into a unified system.
I really don't know if this can save Palm though - if it came out 12 months ago, then perhaps. At least Palm managed to secure some more funding so that they can give it a try..
The one thing I've not seen in any of the coverage is even a hint of the battery life, which makes me think that it might be the Pre's Achilles heel.
I wouldn't be surprised at a low battery life, what with wireless, GPS, Bluetooth, a fast CPU and a phone in there it must eat power.
Shame, this is the first time for ages I've seen a pda phone like this that I wanted to buy. (I've got a BB Storm through work, it's ok but all the BB's I've ever used have felt sluggish and in need of a more beefy CPU)
Just shows people from Apple don't need supervision by Steve Jobs to make a decent product. But the current iPhone (essentially the same as launched 2 years ago) isn't the one Pre will be up against, and its shortcomings don't mean Apple can't fix them. (Apple simply doesn't play a card until it has to, an elementary lesson its competitors don't seem to have learned, which drives the Apple haters crazy when Apple prevails over "better" products).
I like the way they've put in multi-touch which the rest have been afraid to do. If Apple doesn't sue, they get away with it. If Apple sues and loses, Palm is suddenly worth much more; if they win, Palm can just pull the multitouch feature with little harm done.
Palm sold the most successfull PDA for years with no keyboard, they now seem wedded to nasty tiny qwerty keyboards just when Apple, Balckberry, LG etc are finally ditching them in favour of virtual keyboards on full touch screen. Not only is it nasty to use, but surley it costs more to manufactuer and is less reliable. Lets hoping that the OS goes onto a Propper (as in US Robotics Palm Pilot) Style PDA/Phone. I was waitiing on this, but now I think ill get a Storm. and Hope there is a non keyboard Palm in a year when contracts up etc. Still ove my TX.
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