Palm Pre – my 2 cents
Yes, that’s the Palm Pre.
(Huge gallery of screenshots)
Palm Pre has been spoken enough about in the media already. The fan sites are buzzing with Palm‘s announcements and the little pieces of information they are releasing every now and then – and it sure is driving the crowd crazy.
I’m already following Pre Community, Pre Central, Engadget Mobile and Boy Genius to keep myself up2date on what’s going on with the Pre. These guys sure know how to dissect announcements and pull in the very latest Pre news – hot on the platter. Kudos to them.
Admist of all this hype, why did I decided to go ahead and wait for a phone for which the release date has not been announced, neither has been its pricing – and heck, it might be available in India much much later – as late as December 09 or worst.
(This is not a Pre vs iPhone comparison chart – follow this link if you need one.)
Multi Touch Screen and a Keyboard
Ever since Apple iPhone 3G got launched, I always wanted a phone with jazzy UI features – multi touch, accelerometer, capacitative touch screen – AND – a physical keyboard. The requirement of having a kayboard was very high on the priority list. Having used E61 for almost 3 years now, I’m in love with the QWERTY keyboard. Palm Pre has it all.
The WebOS
Not using WinMo (HTC, etc) & propietary OS devices (Samsung, LG, etc) was a no-brainer decision. The iPhone locks you into Apple’s clutches. Nokia’s Symbian was still better (when I bought an E61) as it had tons of apps available (though it still required Windows) – come WebOS (Palm Pre) – and all the FUD just gets zapped into the history.
Quoting from the information available from Palm WebOS book’s (yet unreleased) first chapter…
[...] The core OS is based on a version of the Linux 2.6 kernel with the standard driver architecture managed by udev, with a proprietary boot loader. It supports an ext3 filesystem for the internal (private) file partitions and fat32 for the media file partition, which can be externally mounted via USB for transferring media files to and from the device.
More information on Palm Infocenter
Isn’t this just plain awesome? Imagine what all can be done with the device once the underlying OS is accessed? Moreover, WebOS multi-tasking capability makes the iPhone look like prehistoric. Sending an app into background while you catch up with another app – is the most basic functionality expected out of a smart phone.
+ I am anyday more comfortable when using a *nix platform than a propietary or WinMo/etc system. I just feel @home!
Multitasking on Palm Pre
The SDK
The foremost and the biggest problem that I had to face while writing anything for my E61 was that all the available SDK’s were just available for Windows (I’m not a big fan of Java, hence not touching the MIDP domain…). Even for the iPhone, you need to be using an Apple… eughh!
Come WebOS and you can write on just any platform – as all the apps are just a combination of plain HTML, CSS & JS. The dependency on the emulator does matters as it *might* need to provide the basic WebOS test functionality – but I’m sure its going to be covered when the WebOS SDK does a stable release.
Imagine, millions of web developers would instantly be able to write apps for the WebOS without having to scratch their head ever! Wow!
Size
Yeah baby, size does matters!
Before you go on those lines… let me put it in the right perspective for you 
Palm Pre stacked against the brotherhood…
Having carried the E61 in my pocket for almost 3 years, I desperately need a small phone. Though the size never mattered much to me (infact I liked its) – I’d want to switch to something smaller this time. The Palm Pre, with a slider keyboard makes the perfect fit.
Beautiful – isn’t it? – yes, that’s the actual size.
Synergy
Being termed as Palm’s secret weapon of mass destruction (wink wink) – Synergy is really something. It pulls information about your contacts from all possible sources you can provide to it (Facebook, Google, Phone and others) – automagically manages the duplicates, selects the best way to contact them and presents you one unified interface.
Imagine I need to contact Sameer and he’s already online on GTalk. I open up the messaging app on the Pre. The device intelligently routes my messages to Sameer via GTalk than the regular SMS. Conversation is saved into my messaging app just like any other conversation, with an identifier that it happened over GTalk. – simply sweet!
And it has a Camera too…
Hell yeah, the biggest thing I missed on my E61 was a camera. Half of the phone’s fun is gone of you cannot capture the moment. Nothing beats a decent camera. The Pre has a 3MP camera with LED flash and an extended deapth of field.
Misc
Last but not the least, a few things go without mention… (other devicecs might already have it, but I’m glad they made it into the Pre)
- High-speed connectivity (EVDO Rev. A or UMTS HSDPA)
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
- Integrated GPS
- Large 3.1-inch touch screen with a vibrant 24-bit color 320×480 resolution HVGA display
- Gesture area, which enables simple, intuitive gestures for navigation
- Slide-out QWERTY keyboard
- Email, including Outlook EAS (for access to corporate Microsoft Exchange servers), as well as personal email support (POP3, IMAP)
- Robust messaging support (IM, SMS and MMS capabilities)
- High-performance, desktop-class web browser
- Great multimedia experience and performance (pictures, video playback, music), featuring a 3-megapixel camera with LED flash and extended depth of field, and a standard 3.5mm headset jack
- Bluetooth® 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support
- 8GB of internal user storage (~7.4GB user available)
- USB mass storage mode
- MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
- Proximity sensor, which automatically disables the touch screen and turns off the display whenever you put the phone up to your ear
- Light sensor, which dims the display if the ambient light is dark, such as at night or in a movie theater, to reduce power usage
- Accelerometer, which automatically orients web pages and photos to your perspective
- Ringer switch, which easily silences the device with one touch
- Removable, rechargeable battery
- Dimensions: 59.57mm (W) x 100.53mm (L, closed) x 16.95mm (D) [2.35 inches (W) x 3.96 inches (L, closed) x 0.67 inches (D)]
- Weight: ~135 grams [4.76 ounces]
Applications
Oh yesss… how can this be missed out!
Though the device is yet unreleased, its going to enjoy a huge developer support – thanks to the WebOS. Such a high level of developer interaction means more apps. The more the merrier
[youtube FhnNDCtDVI0 3rd Party apps demo]
Palm has just announced that the Pre is going to support thousands of apps written for classic Palm devices. This means, the Pre would suddenly be able to use nearly 30,000 previously written apps. The emulator is written by Motion Apps.
[youtube AGGfWj59N4Y Emulation for classic Palm apps on the Palm Pre]
I’ll end the post with a 26 minute long video from Slashgear TV which details the Palm Pre and the underlying WebOS its built on. Enjoy the video!
[youtube R33Lc8cOXRs Palm Pre 26 minutes of live demo at MWC09]
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