Version: 2008

Comments on: Answers to burning Palm Pre questions

Here's the stuff they didn't mention during the keynote, including whether there will be a GSM version.

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by andboo1 January 8, 2009 2:03 PM PST
Can I run the new OS on an old Palm?
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by January 11, 2009 9:08 AM PST
probably not.. the hardware is definitly more advanced than the old palm...
by January 8, 2009 2:08 PM PST
Palm's website says:
"Phone as laptop modem - Bluetooth tethering"
Here:
http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/index.html#tab2
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by Hep Cat January 8, 2009 2:45 PM PST
Fail.
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by D3vildog699 January 10, 2009 11:00 AM PST
why?
by gopnick January 8, 2009 2:47 PM PST
As of today, Palm is officially doomed. They were doomed before, but now that they admit that they won't have a phone most of the world can use (GSM) running this OS any time soon, they effectively told RIM, Apple, HTC and Google not to worry one bit.
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by wkcole January 8, 2009 4:24 PM PST
An initial one-carrier deal at first is pretty much standard for all high-end mobiles these days. RIM and Apple are doing just fine with such deals. Hooking up with Sprint for the Centro is what kept Palm alive recently, so it is no shock that they went with them for the Pre. You can bet on there being a VZ model and both carrier-custom and unlocked GSM/UMTS/EDGE models eventually, just as there are now for the Centro and the Treo models that have started on single carriers.

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.
by wdowell January 8, 2009 3:00 PM PST
Any info on whether it will be available outside the US?
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by ballmerisanape January 8, 2009 3:03 PM PST
"the tools to write applications are JavaScript, HTML, and CSS"


Oh yea... innovative.
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by miles4444 January 9, 2009 3:40 PM PST
K.I.S.S.
by wkcole January 8, 2009 3:33 PM PST
As a longtime mostly happy Sprint and PalmOS user, I'm happy to see a new Palm offering on Sprint that is worth buying. One thing I don't see mentioned *anywhere* regarding the Pre is the desktop sync capabilities. One thing that I've loved about my Palm devices is that I've been able to sync it with my personal desktop (a Mac) and with whatever Windows machine(s) I am saddled with for work, and to keep calendars and contacts coherent where appropriate and segregated where appropriate. The new OS clearly will demand new sync tools, and that is a huge concern for me because that multiple-desktop multiple-OS sync magic has only been possible because Chapura has made useful sync add-ons for Windows and Mark/Space has essentially taken over the market for PalmOS sync tools on the Mac since Palm abandoned maintenance of their Mac software. What I really want to hear from Palm is that they are either including new robust sync tools of their own or that they are making WebOS open enough to third-parties that there can still be serious third-party software to enhance whatever they provide.
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by tcarterva January 9, 2009 11:02 PM PST
Palm can sync with a desktop? Hardly. When I had a Palm Treo I had to buy third-party software in order to sync all of my contact categories, because Palm's so-called desktop software only supported two: personal and business. even then, syncing would sometimes drop some contacts. Pathetic. As gopnick said above, Palm is doomed. They threw in the towel long ago. That company lost its bearings long ago and is a joke.
by info4fastrabbitsoftware January 8, 2009 3:58 PM PST
"Pre" meaning "before"? Before what? The going out of business sale? Last I heard Palm was on its death bed.
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by JoE030 January 8, 2009 4:10 PM PST
I currently am using a Palm OS device and the calendar feature is what I use daily. The best feature about the Palm calendar and not many other OS systems offer, is that you have the option to make appointments in 15 minute increments. Will the new WebOS calendar offer the same option to make appointments every 15 minutes?
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by lmasanti January 8, 2009 4:15 PM PST
"the tools to write applications are JavaScript, HTML, and CSS"

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!!!
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by Hep Cat January 9, 2009 10:17 AM PST
"When Apple said that for the iPhone, the world (including c|net) trash the company."

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.
by garlique_is_stinky January 8, 2009 4:17 PM PST
Why didn't they call it "eo"?

palm | eo
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by lmasanti January 8, 2009 4:18 PM PST
When Apple --a newcommer to the cell phone design and manufacturing world-- announced the iPhone, in January 2007, it also announced that it would be available at the end of June and how much it will cost.

An experienced company like Palm --I won't remember some commentaries-- is unable to mark a date and a price!
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by vinhluu January 8, 2009 9:04 PM PST
Not supporting old Palm apps is a big mistake... they will need to include seamless support for old apps, otherwise, why would anyone choose Palm over an iPhone? Palm's biggest asset is its huge library of old applications, many of which are still very useful and keep people tied to the Palm platform.
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by johnqh January 8, 2009 11:45 PM PST
By looking at the video tour, it is obviously not production quality yet. It looks cool for demo, but has some serious problems.

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.
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by miles4444 January 9, 2009 3:40 PM PST
The Palm Pre makes the iPhone look old and outdated!
by haub123 January 10, 2009 7:21 PM PST
First off, I would rather have a physical keyboard then software anyday, and the fact that they put that in is good, Second, you are ovbiously a huge Apple fan, and third, this statement lost all credibility to me when you said that Sprint is neither GSM or CDMA, and it is in fact CDMA, and this can multitask, can the Iphone? No. This has and easier way to devolop apps then the Iphone, and you don't need a mac to make an app. I'm pretty sure the pinching is revelent to how much you move your fingers, and it is on a better all around 3G network then your precious Iphone, and your opinion on looks doesn't matter to anyone but yourself. Oh, and bye the way, your number 2 argument doesn't count, because on the Iphone, texting and email is stuck in portrait mode, and only the web is in landscape.
by gPtrope January 28, 2009 1:48 PM PST
Re: #1 - ALL of my Treos have automatically defaulted to numbers and special characters when used for numeric-only fields. hardware or not, it's easy
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.
by royswap January 9, 2009 3:13 AM PST
Having multiple apps open seems to be a USP for Palm Pre. However what remains unclear is:
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.
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by fuddes January 9, 2009 3:36 AM PST
I'd like to know if it can edit MS Office documents, whether OS updates will be pushed to the phone, and if they have any plans for visual voicemail (unlikely, but a man can dream, can't he?)
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by January 11, 2009 9:50 AM PST
they may actually have visual voice mail.. the instinct does. and when you get this phone you will have to swtch to one of sprints new phones
by zubinwadia January 9, 2009 3:45 AM PST
Check out thoughts on Palm's strategy & WebOS programming model on my ad-free blog:

http://zwadia.com/?p=70

Cheers,

Zubin.
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by gkergosien January 9, 2009 9:15 AM PST
I'm a pretty loyal Windows Mobile user, however what I've seen so far is very impressive and may entice me to switch. We've even started a community over at <a href="http://www.sprintpre.net">SprintPre.net</a> to chat about it.
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by roland827 January 9, 2009 9:51 AM PST
Pre means prior... so Palm is basically calling this a "Pre" phone, A BACKWARD PHONE.... And sticking to a small consumer base (since not all Sprint customers will buy this)... No wonder Palm is slowing dying...
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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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