We all know that the first webOS phone has been making the rounds with high scores in other places, like Popular Mechanics for example. There, the Palm Pre was among the 10 Most Brilliant Products of 2009, I definitely have to agree with them. And now, the Pre is also one of the hottest on Twitter’s Trending Topics, and is one of the Top Twitter Trends of 2009 according to Twitter.

Source: My Pre

Handhelds · Palm · Palm OS · PalmPre · Popular Mechanics · Twitter · Unix and Linux · WebOS

There’s been plenty of speculation as to when Verizon will begin offering the Palm Pre or the Pixi, but some leaked internal training slides would suggest that it’ll be sooner rather than later.

According to Phone Arena these 20-minute long training sessions are “to re-introduce Palm and webOS to [Verizon's] personnel [and] will be ongoing until January 4, 2010,” so we could speculate that there’ll be some excitement in the first quarter of the year.

Source: Gizmodo

Handhelds · Palm · Palm OS · palm pixi · PalmPre · Verizon · Verizon Communications · WebOS

Palm this afternoon sent an invite to members of the press to attend a keynote on January 7th, the first official day of CES. The company has provided no clues as to what it’s expected to release other than “new” developments. Last year was the company’s first CES keynote in a long time and saw the introduction of webOS and the Pre, both of which were key to revitalizing the struggling phone maker’s business.
Likely candidates for new introductions are a new phone model as well as adaptations of the Pixi or Pre for other carriers, including a Pixi with Wi-Fi for Verizon and other devices that end Sprint’s exclusivity in the US. A major webOS update is also a possibility and could address some of the remaining criticisms for the platform, such as its lack of 3D games and other truly native apps.

Source Electronista

Handhelds · Palm OS · PalmPixi · PalmPre · Sprint · Verizon Communications · WebOS · Wi-Fi

Palm demonstrates webOS platform and UI on the new Pre smartphone.

Engadget · Handhelds · Palm · Palm OS · PalmPre · Unix and Linux · Video Games · WebOS

PreThinking has a comparison between the Droid and the Palm Pre, here are some of the highlights of the comparison:
One area in the phone department where the Droid takes an edge, is on the amount of time you have to wait to actually get into a call. For some reason the simplest app on the Pre, the ‘Phone’ app, seems to have quite a bit of lag. The Pre’s phone app takes 1-2 seconds longer to load then the Droid and it takes longer to switch between screens such as, recent calls, the dialer, and the contacts list. Also the Pre is lacking a favorites list which comes in handy when you have hundreds of contacts. When scrolling through the contacts list on the Droid it feels much smoother and has virtually no lag or skips. The Pre’s contacts list within the phone app has quite a bit of lag and skips often. The Pre isn’t completely out of it in the phone app though. There is nothing more rewarding than sliding out the Pre’s small keyboard in portrait mode and typing a name to immediately get results within any part of the phone app. With the Pre you can basically start typing any time when in the phone app or on the home screen. When using the Droid you have to be specifically in the contacts list and either slide out the big keyboard in landscape or hit menu then tap search. Other than that the phone apps work as they should and both offer excellent quality calls as long as you’re in a decent coverage area.

The Pre and Droid both have the TI OMAP 3430 which is also seen in the iPhone 3GS and have 256mb of RAM and 512MB of ROM. Other than their processing chip the Pre and Droid are two very dfferent beasts. The Pre comes with a 3.1 inch screen that is displayed in a colorful 24bit 320×480 resolution HVGA display. The Pre, because of its smaller screen and high color density, actually looks better than other phones with similar resolutions like the iPhone and G1. The screen is a plastic capacitive multitouch screen which has a bit of roundedness to it. The Droid has a 3.7 inch WVGA display at 854×480 Resolution. The Droid has a glass capacitive screen with multitouch (YES IT DOES HAVE MULTITOUCH) and is completely flat with a bezel around the screen that has about a 1mm lift. There is no doubt the Droid has better quality video playback when it comes to videos you put on the phone itself as well as videos streamed from YouTube. The colors are more accurate, sharp, and the videos are always nice and big due to the large screen size.

Both phones have a hardware keyboard which sets them apart from the all-powerful iPhone. So which keyboard is better? It really all depends on your personal preference. The Pre has a portrait slider that can seem a little cramped but once you get used to it you can fly. The Droid has a landscape slider that can seem a little too spread at times but once you are used to it you can fly. Neither keyboard is the best at what it is. For example the portrait keyboard the Blackberry Bold/Tour has is the one to beat in the portrait department. As far as landscape QWERTY goes, the Droid’s keyboard is not nearly as good as the TouchPro 2 slider and personally I don’t think it’s even as good as the G1 keyboard. Though Motorola did away with the chin that the G1 had, there is still a 4 way directional pad to the right of the keyboard which causes your right thumb to stretch farther than your left while typing. Both keyboards require a little bit of attention while typing because there isn’t a whole lot of difference in feel between the keys. I find myself being able to type just over 40 words per minute on both keyboards which is just fine for me. The Droid has a bit of an edge because it also has a virtual keyboard in both landscape and portrait mode. This keyboard is NOT a better alternative to either the Pre or Droid’s hardware keyboard but it is convenient and useful when making quick notes or a text.

Conclusion:

WebOS and Android are so similar and so different at the same time it really is hard to tell which is better. They both have their strong points and they both have their weak points. WebOS is easier to use and a bit easier on the eyes when it comes to the UI. Android allows you to do a lot more customization and tweaking but is a little bit less user friendly. Android has behind it the fact that it is an open source operating system and there are multiple manufacturers working on putting out the best Android devices possible. Palm is working on getting its WebOS into customer’s hands and only has two devices. There is room in the market for both platforms. If I had to recommend a phone to someone just joining the smartphone community for the first time, I would feel obligated to recommend the Pre because of how easy it is to use. If I was recommending the phone to someone who loves customization and is coming off another platform, I might recommend the Droid.

android · iPhone · Open source · PalmPre · QWERTY · Smartphone · WebOS · YouTube

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