PhoneDog’s Adriana Lee had the unique opportunity of messing with the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi in the same video session. She compared both devices in a 10 minute dogfight, that can be checked out in the video below. Slim candybar phone meets the original slider. Who wins?

Source: GSM Dome

Handhelds · Mobile phone form factors · Palm OS · Palm Pre · PalmPixi · Shareware · Unix and Linux · WebOS

he latest publication to rank the Pre high is PC Magazine, billing Palm’s first webOS powered smartphone as the “most innovate new platform” in the phones category for 2009.  As their mobile phone guru Sacha Sagan puts it:

Palm has returned with the coolest handheld device we’ve seen in a long time. The Palm Pre has the same exhilarating sense of possibility as the iPhone—and it’s even worth switching to Sprint for. The Pre is the start of something genuinely new: Palm’s webOS, an innovative operating system that’s benefited a lot by what the company has learned from Apple’s smartphone successes.

Source: Pre Central

Apple · Handhelds · iPhone · Mobile phone · Palm · Palm Pre · Smartphone · WebOS

A Palm Pre user is suing Palm and Sprint Nextel, alleging they caused him to lose most of the data from his phone, and he wants to turn the suit into a class action.

The suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, in San Jose, is the latest black eye for the Palm Profile cloud-based synchronization service, which debuted with the company’s webOS on the Pre earlier this year. Palm and Sprint last month said “a small number of customers” had had trouble transferring their data from Palm Profiles to new Palm devices and that they were working on a solution.

Read the full story on PC Magazine

Handhelds · Palm · Palm OS · Palm Pre · Palm Profile · Sprint Nextel · United States District Court for the Northern District of California · WebOS

Checkout Pre Central round table about the Palm Pre and the webOS; here is a highlight:
What was the most important event for Palm in the last six months, and what will be the most important in the next six months?

Craig: There has been no single big event from Palm since the the Pre was introduced but there are dozens from the user community. In July, WebOS Quick Install and fileCoaster threw open the door to homebrew apps like Solitaire and Checkers but none rocked like Music Player (Remix). Then came Preware and our world exploded. In September themes and patches came to the masess and suddenly our Pre phones could do almost anything. Oh, and somewhere along the way Palm released some updates and the Pixi.

Hopefully the biggest events ahead for Palm will be incorporating user patches and introducing the Pre 2. Imagine if Palm incorporated key user patches in one area each month: Messaging, Email, Phone, App Launcher, Browser, and Top Bar. Add in the Music Player (Remix) and the Pre and Pixi would suddenly have world-class apps, users would be a buzz, and the pundits would be blown away. Users could provide an endless source of patches. But if fragile Palm egos prevail, the Pre 2 will be irrelavent.

Derek: More important than the Pre launch in the long term will be the Pixi. Despite what Palm keeps saying, the Pre is a smartphone for smartphone geeks. The Pixi, however, has much more mass-market appeal, ala the Centro. In the 18 months after Palm launched the Centro they sold more than three million units, which is an awful lot for Palm. The hope, and expectation, is that the Pixi will replicate that success. Like the Centro, it’s the smallest smartphone on the market. Like the Centro, it’s a scaled down version of its big brother, the Pre. Like the Centro, it’s a new smartphone at a very attractive price-point: $100. And like the Centro, it’s an approachable cute phone. Assuming that Sprint’s exclusivity on the Pixi isn’t too long (they don’t seem to be making a big marketing push behind it), the Pixi’s eventual landing on multiple carriers will make it a serious contender in the mass-appeal smartphone market.

While the Pixi’s launch may be the most important of the last six months, the next six months will be all about webOS and the successor to the Pre. While I have absolutely no evidence apart from industry trends to back up this assertion, I believe that summer 2010 will bring both the Pre II and webOS 2.0. Assuming that the Pixi performs as well as we expect, Palm will be well positioned for an iPhone-style global launch of the Pre II. What makes the hypothetical Pre II important is that it will demonstrate whether or not Palm has learned lessons on the hardware front. Software is easy enough to correct, but once the physical phone is out there, there’s nothing that can be done to correct design deficiencies. The Pixi has shown that Palm does indeed know how to design a solid phone, but it remains to be seen whether that will be a fluke or the start of a trend.

Handhelds · iPhone · Palm · Palm OS · Palm Pre · pixi · Smartphone · WebOS

One serious flaw that the WebOs has and many will probably attest to is the fact that there’s a memory storage cap on apps, and this applies to both webOS-enabled device – the Palm Pre and Pixi. Android doesn’t have one and even more so the iPhone. However, this may soon change once webOS 1.3.5 hits the scene. This webOS firmware update is the solution every Palm Pre users out there has been waiting for which will finally lift the storage limit on apps. As to when this will be released, nobody knows for sure, but given that Palm webOS 1.3.1 is out and about already, it should be just around the corner.

Source: PMP Today

android · Firmware · Handhelds · iPhone · Palm OS · PalmPre · Smartphone · WebOS

Today over at webOS Internals, Dudestatus has put together a solution that brings the gnuboy Game Boy Emulator to webOS.

The solution is a bit technical and we’ll recommend sitting back and letting a final package release before experimenting, but the video below demonstrates the possibilities.  If you were holding your breath in anticipation of whether or not the 600MHz TI OMAP3430 processor can handle the emulator you can breath easy.  How hard could it be to replicate game play on a device that was powered by just 8Mhz right?

For full details on how you can get the gnuboy GameBoy Emulator on your webOS device hit webOS Internals here.

[Source: Cell Fanatic]

Console Platforms · Emulation · Emulator · Game Boy · Games · Hardware · Nintendo · Video Games

While still only on Sprint, the Pixi and the Pre are in the middle of a price war between Amazon and Wal-Mart each trying to undercut the other with low, low prices in a bid to grab more online market share.

PreCentral.net has been tracking the Amazon-Walmart price war as it relates to the Pre and Pixi, which are listed on the official Sprint.com Web site for $149 and $99 respectively (with two-year contracts), although only after a $100 mail-in rebate (that’s the part where you have to fill in the paper form, cut the UPC off the cardboard box, and wait six to eight weeks for your refund; ugh).

Thanks to the battle between the two online shopping giants, however, both the Pre and the Pixi have been seeing steep discounts over the past couple of weeks.

The price tags vary from day to day, but as of Tuesday morning, I spotted the Palm Pixi for just $25 (again, with a two-year Sprint contract) on both Amazon.com and Walmart.com … no mail-in rebate required.

As for the Pre, which sold at launch for $200 with service, Walmart.com currently has it listed for $99 with a two-year contract, while Amazon is down to $80 with a two-year service agreement. (PreCentral previously found the Pre on Walmart.com for $75, but the price must have gone back up.)

Read the full story at Yahoo.

Amazon.com · Contract · Online shopping · palm pixi · Price war · Rebate · Wal-Mart · Walmart.com

A comparison between three of the biggest hyped smartphone in the mobile arena, the Palm Pre, the Motorola Droid and of course no comparison would be complete without the inclusion of the iPhone 3GS.

The video is a side by side comparison lasting just over seven minutes and basically covers the similarities and differences of these three high profile smartphones, the Palm Pre on Sprint, Motorola Droid on Verizon and the iPhone 3GS on AT&T.

The reviewer states that out of all three smartphones the Palm Pre is by far the most compact and the webOS runs really smooth. Next up is the iconic iPhone 3GS and the reviewer states that out of all the phones the iPhone 3GS is definitely the best constructed handset and the one everyone wants to beat.

As for the Motorola Droid, the reviewer says it takes a lot from both the Palm Pre and iPhone 3GS with a high level construction and industrial design, and one of the thinnest handsets with a side out QWERTY.

[Source: Phones Review]

Handhelds · iPhone · iPhone 3GS · Mobile phone · motorola · Palm Pre · Smartphone · WebOS

Best Buy doorbuster special deals have just gone live and one of the special Black Friday 2009 deals includes the Sprint Palm Pre.

You can buy the Sprint Palm Pre on Black Friday for only $79.99, at the moment when you shop Best Buy is offering the Palm Pre for $149.99 so just sit back and wait until Black Friday and get it a lot cheaper.

The special doorbusters special price will be available in stores November 27 and online on November 26, you will get it for the low price mentioned above after savings with an upgraded or new 2-year agreement with Sprint and activation through Best Buy.

[Source: Phones Review]

Best Buy · blackfriday · Doorbuster · Handhelds · Holidays · Palm OS · PalmPre · Sprint

Palm’s latest update to its mobile operating system now allows owners of the Pre and Pixi to use Yahoo’s instant messaging client and watch YouTube videos in wide screen view, among other things.

But one feature not included in the update is the seamless synchronization with iTunes, Apple’s popular software for managing music and other media on a computer.

Palm has long clashed with Apple over whether or not owners of its devices can sync them up with their iTunes libraries without any intermediate software.

Palm confirmed that the newest release of WebOS, the mobile operating system for Palm devices, does not include a fix to the media syncing capability, although declined to specify the reasons behind the decision.

Read the full story on NY Times.

Apple · handheld · Instant messaging · iTunes · Operating system · Palm Pre · yahoo · YouTube