The Palm Pre takes Best of CES.
(Credit: Palm)Though cell phones are just a small part of CES, the category made a big splash at this year's show with the first cell phone to win CNET's Best of CES award. But the Palm Pre was not the only device in Las Vegas; new devices also debuted from Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and LG, to name a few.
In the smartphone category, the obvious star was the Palm Pre, which scored a hat trick by winning not only the aforementioned Best of CES award, but also the Best of CES award in the cell phone category and the People's Voice Award. The Pre restored a bit of faith in Palm and more importantly, pushed the capabilities of a smartphone. The Pre promises to offer true multi-tasking on a phone and dazzles with its unique user interface, design, and features.
In addition, the Palm Web OS and App Store will only expand the Pre's (as well as future Palm Web OS devices) uses and capabilities. By raising the bar, Palm has certainly sent a message to its competitors and we suspect they'll step up and respond, which is always good for us since it will bring more innovation.
While the Pre might have grabbed much of the CES spotlight, it wasn't the only smartphone to debut at the show. T-Mobile announced the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 and T-Mobile Shadow, while HTC introduced its HTC S743 smartphone. Nokia also announced that it will bring a U.S. version of the Nokia E63 to market in the coming weeks, and we finally got some hands-on time with the Nokia N97. Looks like 2009 is shaping up to be another action-packed year for the smartphone space.
Motorola earned a Best of CES nomination with its Surf A3100 smartphone. The touch-screen device offers multimedia features in an eye catching design. And better yet, it puts a nifty and user-friendly spin on the Windows Mobile 6.1 operating.
Moto also introduced the Renew W233, a phone made from recycled water bottles, and the rugged and tough Tundra A76r for AT&T. We got a close look at both models. And though it wasn't introduced in Las Vegas, CES gave us our first opportunity to handle the style-centric and posh Motorola Aura.... Read more
Cell phones and smartphones are just a small part of CES, but that doesn't stop the various manufacturers from making their presence felt. The largest companies like Nokia, Motorola, and Samsung build impressive, glitzy booths that are larger than most homes. Inside you'll find their latest models on display, from the basic and functional to the hot and high end. For a peek at all the cell phone action on the CES show floor, check out our slide show.
Best in Show: Palm Pre
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)On Saturday, CNET, in partnership with the Consumer Electronics Association, handed out its Best of CES 2009 Awards, including Best in Show and the People's Voice Award. And this year's big winner? The Palm Pre.
The Palm Pre smartphone took home both honors and became the first cell phone/smartphone to win the Best in Show since CNET started presenting the Best of CES awards in 2006. The Palm Pre went up against some stiff competition, including the Sony DSC-G3 and the Sony P-series Lifestyle PC. So why the Pre?
Well, it was a combination of things. First, and most important in our opinion, the Palm Pre along with the new Palm Web OS, brings an innovative way to how you interact with your device and how it organizes information. The Deck of Cards feature truly makes multitasking on your smartphone a breeze, and the Synergy functionality pulls in all your personal management information (e-mail, contacts, and calendar) from various sources into one place. Sure, other devices and operating systems have made similar attempts, but from what we've seen, the Palm Pre is the first smartphone to truly deliver on this in a seamless way.
We also liked the best-of-breed design, as the Pre offers a multitouch screen that rivals the iPhone and even one-ups Apple's smartphone with a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard. The list of features is long and impressive, including a full HTML Web browser, a full range of wireless options, and multimedia capabilities. Palm will also offer an App Store, and since the Palm Web OS was built with developers in mind, we expect the smartphone's capabilities and uses will only expand.
It's pretty evident that Palm put a lot of thought into the user interface, design, and features, as everything seamlessly works together to offer the best user experience, making the smartphone a really useful tool in your daily life. Obviously, this is a huge win for Palm, a company that has come under harsh criticism for its lack of innovation and struggles to keep up the competition, but it looks like Palm stepped up to the plate and hit one out of the park. It will be interesting to see where the Palm Pre stands in a year and whether it delivers on all this hype, but for now, we'll let Palm bask in its victory. Congratulations to Palm and all the Best of CES winners and finalists.
Check out CNET's full coverage of CES 2009, including the complete list of Best of CES category winners.
TXT8020, a new messaging phone, spotted at the PCD booth
(Credit: Nicole Lee/CBS Interactive)PCD didn't have much to show off at CES 2009, but it did give us a brief sneak peek at one of its upcoming texting phones, dubbed the TXT8020 for now. It looks suspiciously like the Verizon Wireless Blitz, but with a swivel screen instead. It is a dual-mode 800/1900 CDMA phone, and it has EV-DO, which the Blitz does not. The display is around 2.2-inches diagonal and supports 260,000 colors.
Features include stereo Bluetooth, a microSD card slot, 1GB flash memory and 1 GB of RAM, text and multimedia messaging, instant messaging, a 1.3-megapixel camera, a speakerphone, voice commands, and e-mail capabilities. Measuring around 4 inches by 2.5 inches by 0.7 inch, the TXT8020 has a pretty roomy keyboard too. Seeing as this looks like a successor to the Blitz, we suspect it'll be available from Verizon Wireless soon.
Happy New Year! This week we bring you a special Dialed In podcast live from CES in Las Vegas. Listen in to hear all the highlights of the show and a complete rundown of the nominees for Best of CES in the cell phones and smartphones category.
Palm's new Pre smartphone quickly emerged as one of the hottest items at the show, and you'll get Bonnie's full take on this intriguing device. And there are plenty of other nifty handsets on the show floor. Nicole got the chance to try on the LG Watch phone and Kent scooped out the new models from Sony Ericsson and Motorola.
Earlier in the week, Kent also went to the Macworld 2009 keynote sans Steven Jobs. For the most part it was a snoozer, but there was a bit of iPhone and iTunes news.
Listen now:
Download today's podcast
Best of CES cell phones nominees:
Full CES cell phones and smartphones coverage
Apple activates iTunes downloads over 3G, but with a caveat
Nokia shows its MD-8 speakers
(Credit: Kent German/CBS Interactive)If you've followed me at CES over the last couple of years, you'll know that I'm a sucker for cell phone speakers. It's an odd passion, I know, but I like how they make your music phone that much more useful.
We've reviewed a selection of Nokia speakers, including the MD-6 and the MD-7W. Both performed admirably, so I was eager to seek out new models at Nokia's bright CES booth. There I found the Nokia MD-8 speakers attached to a Nokia 5310 Xpress Music phone.
The MD-8 speakers have a oval design in white or black. They come as one unit, but they're compact (4.7 inches tall by 1.6 inches wide by 1.1 inches deep) and lightweight (4.23 ounces including the required three AA batteries).
The MD-8 speakers require a wired connection to your phone, but the 2.5-inch cord has ample length. What's more, it uses a 3.5mm plug. Nokia says the speakers have 40 hours of battery life. We'll try to get them in soon for a review.
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The Nokia 1006 is a simple cell.
(Credit: Kent German/CBS Interactive)Nokia brought a new basic phone to CES that we had't seen before: the Nokia 1006. It is a very basic model for CDMA networks. The slim candy-bar design is centered on functionality. Controls are intuitive, if a tad cramped, but the display supports 262,000 colors. At 4.1 inches tall by 1.7 inches wide by 0.53 inch thick and 2.6 ounces, the 1006 is compact and lightweight. No, it's not much to look at, but the curved back is unique. The 1006 comes in blue, silver, and red.
Features are limited to support for Brew 3.1.5, 72-chord polyphonic ringtones, customizable wallpapers and screensavers, a 500-contact phone book, a calculator, an alarm clock, a stopwatch, a voice recorder, a speakerphone, messaging, and Bluetooth.
Nokia doesn't have U.S. availability details at the time of this writing, but we expect that MetroPCS is a likely carrier. You should see it in the first quarter of this year.
Palm Pre
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)Phew! Thursday was a long, action-packed day thanks to Palm. I'm just now getting to sit down and gather my thoughts on the Palm Pre and Palm Web OS announcements, and I have to confess that I went into the press conference with some skepticism. It's no secret that Palm's been struggling to keep up with the competition and has come under heavy criticism for its lack of innovation and delays in releasing its new operating system. So can you blame me for thinking that Palm might disappoint again?
Well, I'm happy to say that I was wrong. My CNET News colleagues Ina Fried and Tom Krazit did a great job of covering the press conference and reporting on the basic specs of the Palm Pre, but I wanted to put my two cents in on what I think of the Pre and Palm Web OS and what kind of impact it will have on the market.
User interface and OS
To me, the real highlight of the Pre is the user interface and OS. The UI reminded me a little of HTC's TouchFlo interface, with the various swiping gestures and cool animated motions, but Palm certainly put a fresh take on it. It's beautiful and smooth, and just plain cool. It's pretty evident that Palm put a lot of thought into the UI, as everything seamlessly works together to give you the best user experience and making the smartphone a really useful tool in your daily life.
Synergy on the Palm Pre
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)The smartphone makes multitasking easy with the Deck of Cards feature that lets you scroll through various applications and toggle between them without having to open and close windows. It's slick, but most importantly, it's easy. I also think Synergy is a huge player, since it brings all your e-mail accounts and contact and calendar information from various sources into one place. Again, it's about simplicity and whether you're a consumer or business user, you have to love that.
Design
To facilitate all this is a best-of-breed design. First, you've got a multitouch screen that's absolutely sharp and brilliant in color with its half-VGA (320x480) resolution. Not only can you use the screen to navigate, there's a gesture area right below the display where you can use finger swipes and touches to launch menus, toolbars, applications, go back, or advance. Of course, my favorite part might be the slide-out full QWERTY keyboard. I've made it no secret that I'm a huge texter and need physical buttons, so I was more than delighted when I saw that the smartphone had a keyboard. The Pre's keyboard is similar to that of the Palm Treo Pro; the buttons are a little on the smaller side, but there is a good amount of space between them to reduce any problems.
Again, looking at the design of the phone, I could tell time and thought was spent on the device. The hardware feels solid and not as plasticky as the Palm Centro. When you slide open the Pre, it has a slight curve that makes it comfortable to hold against your cheek when talking on the phone or even when typing out messages. Also, going back to the touch screen, it felt responsive and--hooray!--on Web pages, you can pinch the screen like the iPhone to easily zoom in and out of pages.
Web
Pre's Web browser
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)Speaking of the Web, the Pre's browser is pretty outstanding. It renders sites onscreen as you would see on your desktop, and quickly at that. When asked about Flash, Palm said they were not commenting on that at this point. We do know that there will be an app store, and Palm will release an SDK to developers. The company reiterated throughout the press conference that the Palm Web OS was built with developers in mind and based on HTML, CSS, and Javascript, so that's all one really needs to know to develop apps for the Pre and other Web OS devices.
Multimedia
As far as multimedia, the Palm Pre offers a 3-megapixel camera. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to snap any photos, but early reports say that the quality is pretty good. Disappointingly, the camera won't have video recording capabilities at this time, but those could be added in the future. In terms of music, like the T-Mobile G1, Palm has partnered with the Amazon Music Store, so you will be able to purchase songs over the air from your Pre.
The rest
The Palm Pre offers so much that I could write on it forever, but I'll save some for when we actually get the unit in review. (By the way, I'm not sure when that will be, but I don't expect it to be anytime soon. I know. I'm sad, too.) Just to cover some quick specs: the Pre offers integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 (with support for stereo Bluetooth), EV-DO Rev. A, and GPS. There's 8GB of storage, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and high-speed USB 2.0.
Outlook
The Palm Pre and Palm Web OS isn't necessarily going to revolutionize the smartphone market, in that it doesn't offer any crazy, new features, but it definitely brings a fresh look into the way you interact with a device and how it organizes information. It also brings innovation and life back to the struggling company and has certainly set the tech world abuzz. Palm's undeniably taken a beating from the media and general public, so it's good to see the company respond and take action.
As much as the Pre is important to Palm, the smartphone will also be a key player for Sprint. It needs an iconic phone to compete with the likes o AT&T and the iPhone and Verizon Wireless and the BlackBerry Storm, and Pre could certainly be the one to do this for Sprint. Pricing will be key of course, but I suspect the Pre will be priced competitively with the iPhone and Storm. I also think its chances of overtaking the Storm are pretty high. It offers a better user experience and has more consumer appeal. There are still some unanswered questions about everything that will be offered with the Pre; in my opinion, and I know these words are thrown around a lot, but I think the Palm Pre could truly be the stiffest competition for the iPhone.
Palm took a bit of a gamble announcing the product early at CES 2009 and not closer to its release date, which is expected some time during the first half of 2009. Both Palm and Sprint will have to be careful to deliver on their promise and not delay the phone. (You can pre-register for Palm Pre at Sprint's Web site.) Still, the Palm Pre and Web OS has certainly gotten everyone excited and I can't wait to get some quality hands-on time with the final product. You can check out of Palm Pre photo gallery and of course, we'll update you as we get more information, but for now, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Palm Pre and OS.
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When Motorola last October, we were intrigued from the start, even though it was clear that the Aura was all about its design.
Luckily, CES provided the first chance to get up close and personal with the Aura. Normally, manufactures keep cell phones that cost $1,999 safely behind glass at trade shows. But to our surprise, Moto was eager to let us get our grubby hands on the Aura. And from what we can tell, the device is just as attractive in the flesh. Its overall shape may not be for everyone, but it will stand apart from any other phone on the street. Be sure to check a gallery of shots in our Aura slide show.
The etched pattern on the shiny, stainless-steel exterior is eye-catching, even if Moto hadn't told us that it takes two weeks to etch and polish the design. As we said in October, the Aura reminds us of the much more mundane Moto V70. But that's not where Moto found its inspiration. Apparently, the company said it was inspired by Swiss design for luxury watches. If that's the case, we have to say that we get it.
The Motorola Aura is a looker.
(Credit: Kent German/CBS Interactive)The circular display is something we haven't seen before on a cell phone. We like the clock design and the icon-based menu design that's similar to the interface on the Motorola Rokr E8. The 16 million colors and 300dpi resolution is gorgeous even if attracts more than its share of fingerprints.
We were apprehensive about the swivel mechanism, given our past experience with that design. We've found over time that swivel phones like the Sony Ericsson W600i tended to wear out faster than their flip or slider counterparts. Yet, the Aura's sturdy mechanism felt quite promising. Perhaps it's due to the 130 ball bearings on which the swivel turns. You can even see the turning mechanism through a small window on the phone's exterior just below the camera lens.
Other exterior features include a camera shutter, a volume rocker, and the standard Moto smart key. The Aura also has a memory card slot, but it's stashed behind the battery cover. The keypad is flush and relatively spacious, but it too attracts smudges and fingerprints.
All of that glitz and high-end styling does come at a price, and we don't just mean the wallet-crunching $1,999 price tag. The Aura weighs almost 5 ounces, so it will add some mass to a pocket or bag. And it doesn't come with a huge feature set either. Goodies are limited to a 2-megapixel camera, a music player, stereo Bluetooth, Moto's CrystalTalk, messaging, a speakerphone, and an open-source browser. But if its looks are what you care about, there are few better phones.
Sprint may have the Palm Pre, but T-Mobile wasn't a wallflower at CES. The carrier announced five new cell phones that span the range of usability. In the smartphone category there's the T-Mobile Shadow and the Rim BlackBerry Curve 8900, the Nokia 7510 is a midrange handset, and the Motorola Renew W233 and the Samsung SGH-T119 weigh in on the basic side.
It's a decent assortment in most regards, and we're glad to see T-Mobile starting the year off with a bang. So you can see all the handsets together, we've wrapped them up in this convenient T-Mobile slide show. Browse away.
