Answers to burning Palm Pre questions
The Palm Pre. Still no word on pricing.
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)LAS VEGAS--As the device with the most mystery attached to it, there were plenty of questions left after Palm introduced its Pre on Thursday. I had a chance to sit down with Palm vice president Stephane Maes to get some (but not all) of the answers to my burning questions.
Palm's Pre preview
Here's a rundown of the basics of the touch-screen smartphone Palm announced at CES Wednesday. For more details, read our summary here.
New WebOS operating system
iPhone-like gestures, multitasking
Slide-out keyboard
Friendlier for e-mail, text?
Exclusive to Sprint
No GSM, no overseas roaming
Price unknown
Cost crucial for competition
Palm isn't answering the big question--how much will it cost--but Maes did say "we obviously know what all the prices are of the products that are out there and it will be competitive."
Although Sprint is the exclusive partner for launch, Palm is working on devices for other networks that will launch later, including a UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) version, though Maes would not say more about that device.
The Web browser is Palm-developed, but based on the WebKit engine. No word on Flash support, he said. Palm didn't give a lot of details on the media player, but Maes said Pre owners will be able to buy music from the device via the Amazon music store.
Maes said there will be some sort of app store for downloading add-on software. In general the company won't be trying to play gatekeeper.
"Certainly, we want to let a thousand flowers bloom," he said. "Every now and then there are a few dandelions we'll want to winnow out."
What else? Let's see. It's not a world phone. It does have the technical capability to be used as a tethered modem for a laptop. (The original story suggested it couldn't based on comments from Sprint that the feature wouldn't be made available).
It is Linux-based, though that is invisible for most developers as the tools to write applications are JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. It won't natively run applications written for the original Palm OS, but Maes said "we anticipate there will be solutions to do so." And no word yet on battery life.
Got other questions? Send them my way and I will see what I can do to get them answered.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina.
"Phone as laptop modem - Bluetooth tethering"
Here:
http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/index.html#tab2
That said, i understand the irritation. I live in an area (Detroit) where AT&T's coverage is a bad joke and Sprint's is great, so I've stuck with my Treo650 rather than getting an iPhone. I did love AT&T's coverage when I had to take a weekly rotation of an on-call phone for work however: as long as I stayed in my house, I never got any calls.
Oh yea... innovative.
When Apple said that for the iPhone, the world (including c|net) trash the company.
No native apps?... they also cried!
And now... oh, men, if done by Palm, it is glorious!!!
Good point. But just read the stuff that comes out of C|Net - including the Rafe Needleman hit piece from Monday. C|net loves to ate Apple.
palm | eo
An experienced company like Palm --I won't remember some commentaries-- is unable to mark a date and a price!
1. You have to slide the keyboard out to type anything. I found this is very annoying with Android. Apple's software keyboard actually changes depending on the context. For example, if a text field is numeric only, the keyboard only contains number keys. With hardware keyboard, typing some of the stuff (numbers, symbols) is very difficult.
2. Again about the keyboard - you have to turn to the correct orientation to type. On Android, you have to turn to landscape. With Pre, you have to turn to portrait.
3. Again about the keyboard. When people have to slide every time they want to type, that's extensive wear on the sliding mechanism. I have doubts on its reliability. iPhone has terrific reliability record and one of the reason is the lack of keyboard.
4. Speed. From the video tour, the responsiveness is just not there. It looks cool when doing the animations, but not cool when you try to do anything for real.
5. So the apps will essentially be web apps. Yawn.
6. Palm is squeeze to Sprint - which is neither GSM nor CDMA, and is way smaller than ATT and Verizon. Basically, it is getting the leftover from Apple, Blackberry and Android.
7. The phone is simply UGLY.
8. Attention to details. On iPhone, when you pinch, the zoom level actually stick to your fingers. On "Pre", it zooms but the zoom level seems to be fixed. Basically, it knows that you are pinching, but doesn't know how much.
Re: #2 - With Pre, you probably don't need to turn the phone AT ALL, as you'll most likely already have it in portrait mode. The only disadvantage to this keyboard is in typing URLs if you're viewing a web page in landscape mode.
Re: #3 - The iPhone may be physically reliable, but for getting ACCURACY, I'll take the physical keyboard over a virtual one every time. And having used Treos since they came out, I can tell you from experience (something I doubted before I actually used them) that the portrait-style keyboard is both easy to use and accurate; I can type entire reports using the keyboard on my Treo 680 with accuracy that matches that on a full-size keyboard, and nearly half the speed. Plus, the portrait keyboard can easily be used with one hand, something that the landscape keyboard can't, and I doubt the virtual keyboard will match either the speed or accuracy.
Re: #4 - You must be on dial-up to watch the streaming video - what I saw was speed that easily matched my experiences on an iPhone
Re: #5 - No, they WON'T be web apps - they'll be locally-installed apps that can, in many cases, access the hardware directly, depending upon what the app is designed for.
Re: #6 - already answered.
Re: #7 - a matter of taste; I fail to see how something that is mostly a black organic rectangle with smoothed corners, with virtually no details at all, can be "ugly" - personally, I find it elegant, rather than over-styled like the iPhone.
Re: #8 - What you call "attention to details" may be, in fact, actual engineering decisions. Maybe you just have to admit it's not what you're used to, rather than claiming it's deficient. For some folks, that's a hard thing to figure out; opinions aren't facts.
1. Will the processor be fast enough to really accomodate significant number of open cards?
2. Will it have sufficient RAM? Otherwise you will have that dreaded "out of memory" notification whenever any memory hogging app is open.
3. And if the processor is speedy enough,what will happen to battery life?
Any thoughts of the experts on this.
http://zwadia.com/?p=70
Cheers,
Zubin.
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by jlvjr
January 9, 2009 9:51 AM PST
- I would like to ask the same question. Can I run the new OS on an old Palm?
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