Palm Announces Killer New Phone

Barence writes "At CES, Palm announced what promises to be the product that finally matches and even betters the Apple iPhone, and certainly looks to be the most important product announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. It's called the Palm Pre and it's based on a completely new operating system, called Palm webOS. Its key specs include a 3.1in 320x 480 touchscreen, 8GB of storage, UMTS HDSPA support (in the UK version of the phone), 802.11b/g WLAN, Bluetooth, and GPS. It also includes a slide-out Qwerty keyboard, 3.5mm headphone jack, and what Palm described as the 'fastest ever' Texas Instruments OMAP processor."

Comments

3.5 mm? o.o

[mewshi_nya]

Ooh, I can use it as an actual music player now :D

Now, if I could just *afford* it...

I hate being in college sometimes.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[RManning]

I hate being in college sometimes.

Soon you'll be saying: "I hate paying off college sometimes." :)

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[cayenne8]

"I hate being in college sometimes."

No...stay there as long as possible...it is your last place to be where fun/childish behavior is sanctioned and acceptable.

Sure, you have more money when you get into the real world, but, you also have to work, and have responsibilities. Especially if you get married. If you want the best of both worlds...don't hurry into marriage when you get out. In that case, yes, you have some more adult responsibilities, but, you do get to keep and burn more of that money you start to earn for yourself...and you can still get away with acting somewhat like an idiot, and you don't have someone bitching at you to 'act right'. You also are strapped with potentially a lifetime ending anchor of a kid...at least not yet.

So..stay in as long as possible. But, once out...stay single for awhile...no need to get completely locked down into full 'adult' life right away. At the very worst...if you have to, don't marry the girl, just live with her....kinda like leasing with an option to buy.

:)

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[AvitarX]

I think you're completley wrong on the marriage thing.

I certainly wouldn't rush into it, or rush into having children, but being married gives me one person I can be fun/childish with every day guaranteed (living with would work here too). Being married also has a huge benefit when it comes to wasting money. My wife and I can afford, and maintain a 3 bedroom house, either of us on our own would not be able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment, or maintain a house.

Additionally I vacuum half as often save 30-50 percent on the bills, and don't need to cook all the time (most of these apply to living with someone too).

These are not reasons to get married, I just simply wanted to point out it is not the end of childishness/fun. If you really want to commit to spending your life with someone, and makign the compromises that will be required (it's two way if done right) it is not something to dread or avoid. And it can certainly lead to having more money to spend on yourself, not less.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[jddj]

OTOH, don't wait 'till age 49 to have your first kid (voice of experience here).

I love him like nothing else in the world, but God; my back, my knees...

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[opus7600]

Ah, don't worry about getting married. The real killer is having kids. Put that off as long as possible, because once you do that, your childhood is done, forever.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, don't get married quickly. Date like 100 people first to find out what really is out there, but don't just date whomever happens to be nice to you, be choosy, and aim high even if you get shot down 50 times, you'll get used to it.

I thought I knew what I wanted. I chose poorly. That was a very expensive price to pay for some not so great years followed by an even higher price.

Marriage should be illegal until about 30. At least late 20s.

Besides, the young and irresponsible thing goes over a lot better in your 20s instead of your 30s...

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[foo fighter]

Mod parent DOWN!

That is one of the saddest and most cynical posts I've ever seen on Slashdot, and I've been here for a while.

I got married seven years ago (I was 22) to a woman I met in college after only two years in college. We had a daughter almost three years ago. I have a great, challenging job in information security with responsibilities and a career path. Our only debt is a car loan that will be paid off within the year and our mortgage that will be paid off around the time our daughter goes to college.

I'm having more fun now than I ever had in college, and that's really saying something.

There is no reason, at all, to ever have less fun in life just because you've matured to the point where women, children, and responsibility are opportunities to be enjoyed, not albatrosses to resent.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Anonymous Coward]

You certainly do not have any children.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[clickety6]

.it is your last place to be where fun/childish behavior is sanctioned and acceptable.

Or have kids. Nothing keeps you younger or acting more child-like than playing with kids - plus you have an excuse to but all those cool toys you didn't have when you were a kid and want to play with now! :-)

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Icegryphon]

Seriously I have an Palm TX(Wifi) and Tungsten e2(no wifi, but bluetooth) Both take SD cards, I have MP3's of Japanese Lessons loaded also with TCPMP and it will do video better then the software that comes with it. Cause the software that comes with them doesn't support many formats.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[meringuoid]

These are not reasons to get married, I just simply wanted to point out it is not the end of childishness/fun. Obligatory.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[cayenne8]

"These are not reasons to get married, I just simply wanted to point out it is not the end of childishness/fun. If you really want to commit to spending your life with someone, and makign the compromises that will be required (it's two way if done right) it is not something to dread or avoid. And it can certainly lead to having more money to spend on yourself, not less."

Well, for a man..having a woman in any sort of relationship, costs money. Most do...not all, but, IME, most do. And if you get married and want to trade models...well, that costs you about half of what you own. Getting laid is never cheap, but, one can make choices to at least alleviate the cost.

Hey, marriage works for some people...good for you. I personally don't see a need for it unless you are going to have kids. I think it is essential in that predicament. But do remember, the second you have a kid, you cease to be able to BE one yourself....at least for 18 years.

I couldn't personally see getting married...same chick gets boring after awhile, especially in close confines.

I've always thought of publishing that special version of Playboy for 'married men'

.....every month....SAME chick.....

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[ubrgeek]

> but, you also have to work, and have responsibilities

Then how do you explain kdawson? ;)

(Well, there goes my Karma ...)

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Archangel Michael]

And sometime after you finally get your college loans payed off, and you're married with a mortgage you're paying and three kids, you'll be saying

. wait for it

. wait for it

.

  "I wish I was back in college".

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[ubrgeek]

> even if you get shot down 50 times, you'll get used to it.

You better. Same thing often happens _after_ you get married ...

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Toonol]

That is completely wrong. Having kids gives you a second, wonderful, childhood.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[jargoone]

So, have you two gotten your proofs back from the photographer yet?

I kid...

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm trying to make it past my 30s so I can tell any woman I potentially stick with "Fuck that, I'm not having a kid in my 40s"

2 years down, 8 to go.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[stei7766]

Every month...same chick...who knows exactly which spot to touch.

No akward first-time-with-new-person sex.

It totally sucks, lemme tell you.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[swb]

When you've been married for 15 years come back and tell us how fun it is when your kid is screaming about somemthing and how your wife reacts to your childish stuff after some shitty 3 day business trip -- or how much energy you have for "fun" behavior after working full time and doing solo childcare while she's been on that business trip.

It has rewards, don't get me wrong, but it ain't nearly the pollyanna trip you make it out to be.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[lisaparratt]

I was sensible enough to get sterilised at age 20 - 8 years later, and having to grow up still isn't even on the horizon.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Anonymous Coward]

to "Avitar X" :

Get back to us after you've had that long talk with your divorce lawyer and found out that all the money you thought you gained is now being taken from you, and that house you helped pay off is no longer yours.

Now excuse me while I chuckle about all the chumps who get married and get fucked hard and dry by their ex-wives.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I don't see how anyone would finding staying in, and looking after the kids preferable to a weekend spent raving, with the inevitable afterparty orgy.

From where I'm standing, you're just using "maturity" as a rationalisation for ruining your life.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[hodet]

um... you mean.. uh.... WAT?

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[fahrbot-bot]

My wife and I can afford, and maintain a 3 bedroom house, either of us on our own would not be able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment, or maintain a house.

Just my $.02, but while this may be true, it can set you up for The Two Income Trap. In the long term, you'll find greater security (and happiness too) by living closer to the means of only one.

Case in point. My wife died three years ago, but as we always lived within the means of one salary (mostly), financially I'm fine, as would she have been if I had died instead.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Anonymous Coward]

My father was 49 when I was born. I am 39 now. From my mother's stories and the pictures from my infant and early childhood years I know that I liked and loved him a lot. But later in life we were never good friends or really close. I attribute this to our age difference and our belonging to different historical eras. (It changed only for a little while after I came back from my two years millitary service.)

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[lysergic.acid]

just because it's "off-topic" doesn't mean it can't be insightful. the GP's post was simply following the course of the conversation. he didn't hijack the thread or post about something completely random that has nothing to do with the thread.

i mean, when you have a conversation with someone off-line do you bitch about people being "off-topic" whenever the conversation naturally progresses to or touches on a new topic? this is a casual discussion, not a goddamn book report.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[ciaohound]

And the next thing you know, you're saying "Get off my lawn!"

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[digitalunity]

I'll bite, at the expense of undoing about 8 mod points.

The book is based on presumptions and faulty logic. It may be true if you have 2 earners you're twice as likely to be affected by layoff or other employment related economic interruption. However, with 2 earners you're only losing 40-60% of your household income in the face of a layoff, versus 100% for a 1 income. This makes a 2 earner household more resilient.

The real reason for for skyrocketing bankruptcy in middle income households with children is the exploding cost of goods along with unbridled middle class spending. For almost 2 generations, families have been moving more frequently from house to house using each one as a short term credit card based on the faulty assumption that the value of the house will NECESSARILY go up. They use that equity to pay off some debt, but each time they get a raise or other windfall they purchase a newer bigger better house with a 3rd garage stall or a 4th bedroom or a bigger yard.

Regardless of the number of incomes in the house, its important that people make rational fiscal decisions which includes setting a reasonable budget. When they find themselves making much more than their budget, they should be investing it in short to medium term CD's(for now) to reinvest into their mortgage or blow down their debt.

No, children aren't the cause of bankruptcy. Its more likely that there is a correlation between fiscal irresponsibility and those who have children.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Anonymous Coward]

After that, you'll be saying "Who are you?" (followed by, "it's me dad, your son")

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[AvitarX]

I don't

And unless I am mixed up on how biology works getting married isn't making me any more likely to.

In fact, I am one of only a few people I know that got married before having a child on the way at least (family and friends).

I can mis-read statistics (anecdotes) and say that getting married is good protection against having a first child.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[UNKN]

No no, "Damn kids and their newfangled gizmotronics!"

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[AvitarX]

We both have life insurance policies that will pay off the house (most of one take-home salary).

Problem solved.

Additionally we live off of about 1.5 salaries, and bank the rest (though much of it into 401K). This good for long term security, and hopefully means a few extra years retired together (Chance willing I don't have the same tragedy in my life as you).

If I lose my job I can work as a stock boy for a ling while, while looking for another job. And she is teaching, with the peak of the boomlet leaving high school last year, school populations are about to start rising again.

Financial responsibility is important, but living on half of a households income is not required. Perhaps if we didn't both make pretty much the exact same thing it would be different.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[cayenne8]

"Every month...same chick...who knows exactly which spot to touch.

No akward first-time-with-new-person sex."

Yeah..but, then she gets fat...etc...and you're stuck with her.

Not to mention (and I heard this from a LOT of my married friends) kiss BJ's good by...she just did that to snag you.

Apparently the old joke about what food destroys a woman's sex drive (wedding cake) holds true for a lot of them out there, and you don't find out till after your married and then your screwed (no pun intended).

Apparently you got lucky. Good for you...

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[93 Escort Wagon]

These are not reasons to get married, I just simply wanted to point out it is not the end of childishness/fun. If you really want to commit to spending your life with someone, and makign the compromises that will be required (it's two way if done right) it is not something to dread or avoid. And it can certainly lead to having more money to spend on yourself, not less.

Okay, I realize the average age on Slashdot is pretty low, but - this seems fairly immature to me (and I realize you're not necessarily espousing this position, just responding to it). If a person is that concerned with having lots of money to spend on themselves, they're not ready for a significant relationship.

Also, as a husband and a dad, I can say having kids doesn't have to "end your fun". As my daughter grew up I got the chance to see a lot of movies I'd have been too embarrassed to admit wanting to see. I have a blast playing video games and watching old movies with her. She's also an enjoyable person just to spend time with.

I LOVE being a dad - I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[AvitarX]

Shit, did I miss something in biology class?

All these replies imply that getting married gets people pregnant, when in my general experience the opposite is true if anything (getting pregnant causes marriage).

IMO, marriage is a social contract between 2 people, and the recording of said contract to the government.

It does not cause pregnancy, and it does not cause expensive divorce any more than sharing space for 5 years in my state.

I feel reading replies that the fruits of abstinence only education are making their way to the message boards.

And I guarantee that even in the child stage of my life, my wife will deal with my childish antics better than a random person (this is not because we are married, it is part of the why, but still).

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[stei7766]

Yeah..but, then she gets fat...

Warmth in the winter my friend...

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Anonymous Coward]

I love him like nothing else in the world, but God; my back, my knees...

and that was just the conception!

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut...The....Fuck...Up...Already.

Fuck you and your moralistic approach to life and everything else. Marriage is an obligation as is child rearing. And more often than not: It SUCKS. And yes, having a kid and a wife is an enormous time sink, which means that anything you wanted to achieve essentially gets shelved until you're too fucking old to act on it.

The grand parent post here is absolutely 100% on target. It's you and the other "marriage minded moralists" who are full of shit, promoting the idea that the only way to be a complete human being is to be in a state of dependence to another. Marriage does not make more richer, it does not give you more time and children only make it worse.

Life alone for awhile, accomplish something (isn't that what anyone would want in a mate, anyway) and then -- if and only if you are ready to shit away the rest of your life -- get married.

The parent post is the exception. The grandparent post is closer to the rule.

Women and children ARE albatrosses.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[glassware]

I'm sorry for your loss. Please accept my condolences.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[foo fighter]

What, you can't get married and have kids with someone who likes raving and orgies?

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Jason Levine]

it is your last place to be where fun/childish behavior is sanctioned and acceptable.

You also are strapped with potentially a lifetime ending anchor of a kid

Let me guess, you don't have a kid? I have two and let me tell you, I'm able to engage in much more fun/childish behavior than when I was in college. Watching cartoons, playing with toys, seeing old favorites (movies/shows) through new eyes, etc. It's all perfectly appropriate when you're a dad/mom. Yes, you're going to have to act like a grown-up sometimes ("No you can't throw that ball around in the house! You'll break something." "No you can't watch that movie now. It's your bedtime.", "No, you can't play GTA. You're only 6."), but the act-like-a-kid moments and the act-grown-up moments tend to balance themselves out.

That said, I wouldn't advise anyone to rush into being a parent. It is a big responsibility and if you mess up, you're not just messing up your own life. But, once you are ready to be a parent, it isn't a life-ending event. It's just the beginning of something much bigger.

Man, that last sentence sounded cliche. Oh well. It's Friday. Work is almost over. It's nearly playtime!!!!

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Anonymous Coward]

Palm releases its first innovative product in a decade and the topic of discussion is college and marriage. Good luck Palm! :-)

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[squidfood]

I'm having more fun now than I ever had in college, and that's really saying something.

College was great, single, partying, etc.

Twenties were better, married, two incomes, clubbing, out on town all the time but no braindead hookups, etc...

Mid-thirties...kid, back getting sore, stress at leaving it too long for another kid, the two incomes and time going to kid, savings for kid, and house (to stay within means had to do major fixer upper)... missing friends from both college and twenties in same boat... not so much.

Though legos with the kid does offer some (not inconsiderable) solace.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[jkoke]

Exactly! My kids love it when I act like a kid. I get to do things I hadn't done in years -- snowball fights, backyard football, flips on the trampoline. And video games! My kids are addicted to Rock Band.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[beonarri]

And finally you'll be saying "BLAAAAAGGHHH" and possibly while grabbing your throat/heart/stomach.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[jenn_13]

wow... no bitterness here or anything... Really, who ever said that marriage is supposed to make you a complete person? In order to be a decent wife (or husband, as the case may be), you need to already be a complete person. And continue to be that complete person afterward. Some people don't want to be married, and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But some others of us love being married, and that's fine too. So, how about that new Palm phone? ;)

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes it's impossible to live by the means of one. If you're from a big city, and all of your family is there, and you too would like to raise a family there, it is neigh impossible to live on just one income.

I'm still young, but my wife and I could never afford our townhouse and meager life amenities if we had children and didn't have her income. It's just not possible.

Solution: I guess we could move to a cheaper part of the nation, but then we'd be far from our family. Does that make family life better? I'm not so sure.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[foo fighter]

That's what life insurance is for.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Hucko]

Thank you for reminding me that my wife is an awesome catch. I, it seems, am an extremely lucky man.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[indiechild]

That means your married friends are wussies, like the majority of men. Either they didn't choose their woman correctly in the first place or (more likely) they just wussed out after marrying and became more and more wimpy -- in popular culture, this is known as being "pussywhipped".

Women despise wussbags, and will withhold sex as her attraction to the man drops and she becomes more and more resentful. Men need to learn what pushes women's attraction buttons.

Getting married is not a license to slack off and get complacent.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[AmberBlackCat]

Now that I've thought about it, if I just spent 30 years paying for that lawn, I might tell some people to get off it...

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife isn't allowed to work, so I'm paying double what I would if I wasn't married. And like the "Two Income Trap" says (mentioned elsewhere), it's pretty much expected these days that a family is duel income, so you have less in reality (extra shitty on me being the only earner).

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[jddj]

I think that situation (about which I fret) varies with the personalities involved. He and I are quite close now, and I hope I can model my own Dad's love and acceptance throughout the time we have together, however brief or long.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[commodoresloat]

Additionally I vacuum half as often

Big deal; I'm not married and I don't vacuum at all! Of course, the floor's a mess....

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[ignavus]

"I hate being in college sometimes."

No...stay there as long as possible...it is your last place to be where fun/childish behavior is sanctioned and acceptable.

Hardly. I'm in my 50s and I can still post to Slashdot "where fun/childish behavior is sanctioned and acceptable".

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[ChunderDownunder]

And if you like the thought of kids, being an uncle is the next best thing, as per having a 7 yr old nephew and a 3 yr old niece:

• You get to watch TV/ play video games/act your shoe size and not your age
• You can hand them back after 3 hours
• Less financial burden
• No disciplining - that's still their parents' job

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[pnevin]

You don't get married, you end up using a Palm. QED.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Abcd1234]

Hah, only if you're an idiot. I've been out of school for 6 years now and I would never dream of going back (at least not as an undergrad). Late nights, early mornings, incredible stress, terrible teachers, worse TAs, hours upon hours of assignments, labs, and exams, not to mention all the project work, and the only respite the odd drunken party with my friends?

Dibs-the-fuck-out. Anyone who looks wistfully looks back on college/university either a) doesn't remember what it was actually like, or b) didn't work very hard when they were there.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Abcd1234]

If a person is that concerned with having lots of money to spend on themselves, they're not ready for a significant relationship.

I absolutely agree, but I think maybe the GP just worded things poorly. Ultimately, the real point is that having a significant other or getting married does not, by definition, lead to being "completely locked down into full 'adult' life". Case in point: my wife and I were married when we were 24, and rather than being "locked down", we've spent that time traveling, buying a house, and generally enjoying ourselves. The idea that getting married *must* translate to a house, two cars, and three kids, is incredible juvenile, and betrays a staggering misunderstanding regarding the nature of a good marriage.

'course, that should be hardly surprising given the divorce rate. The idea that one's spouse should also be one's best friend and favorite companion is, I think, alien to many.

Also, as a husband and a dad, I can say having kids doesn't have to "end your fun".

Umm, of course it does. It just opens the door for different kinds of fun. But if your idea of fun is, say, traveling the world, or regularly going out to R-rated movies with your significant other, or inviting friends over for a bit of drinking and carousing, or any number of other things, then damn right having kids will "end your fun". Or, at least, I hope so.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Abcd1234]

Seconded! Err... that is, my wife is awesome, too. :)

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[fahrbot-bot]

That's what life insurance is for.

True, if one of you dies, but what if one just loses their job? Or is disabled, in an accident of your own making (can't sue someone else), and/or ill, but not enough for disability insurance (if you have any).

Obviously these are concerns for the lone bread-winner too, but if both incomes are required then both must worry about these things. I think the Two Income Trap concept has some valid points worth considering.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Moridineas]

Dibs-the-fuck-out. Anyone who looks wistfully looks back on college/university either a) doesn't remember what it was actually like, or b) didn't work very hard when they were there.

Or went to a college that was a good fit for them? I loved both undergrad and grad school... (and more for the academic parts than anything else)

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[Abcd1234]

Or went to a college that was a good fit for them?

Uhh... how does a "good fit" obviate any of what I described? I'm sorry, but if your college/university experience wasn't stressful and challenging, both personally and financially, then I really don't know what the hell you were doing there.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[LinuxLuver]

worse thing I ever did was buy a house and get a mortgage. I should have rented instead. For 20 years that mortgage was a cancer sucking our lives away.when I think of the mountain of money we paid in interest it makes me feel I'll. We could have saved the cash to buy a house outright for less.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Moridineas]

It's obvious--if you enjoy what you study, your colleagues, and your professors, then your work as a student is (and should be) enjoyable.

What you ACTUALLY wrote in your original post was:

Late nights, early mornings, incredible stress, terrible teachers, worse TAs, hours upon hours of assignments, labs, and exams, not to mention all the project work, and the only respite the odd drunken party with my friends?

Late nights, early mornings, stress, etc I think speaks more about you than the college, it's true. But, "terrible teachers" and "worse TAs"? That's entirely your college selection.. Good teachers DO make a huge difference, and I virtually never had to interact with TAs at either of my schools. So yeah, I can see how if you were miserable in that regard, you wouldn't be happy. Goes right back to what I said about college fit.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Abcd1234]

It's obvious--if you enjoy what you study, your colleagues, and your professors, then your work as a student is (and should be) enjoyable.

Oh, I never said it wasn't enjoyable. I said it was tiring and stressful, and as enjoyable as it may have been, I'd never want to repeat the experience, as I can enjoy myself doing many other things that don't *also* involve a massive workload. :)

Good teachers DO make a huge difference, and I virtually never had to interact with TAs at either of my schools. So yeah, I can see how if you were miserable in that regard, you wouldn't be happy. Goes right back to what I said about college fit.

No, *that* has to do with the program you're in. I, for example, have a BSc in Computing Science. And there are few students who can make it through the labs and projects without assistance from a TA (I was actually one of the lucky ones in this regard, having a fair bit of programming experience before I ever attended a University class). So bad TAs (which is most of them... the average TA is just a grad student who has better things to do) can be a serious issue.

So, you are correct, there may be other programs that aren't nearly so intense. Say, a nice English degree. :) But IMHO, if you come out of a science, math, or engineering degree without having experienced a fair bit of stress due to the workload, then I question the quality of the degree program.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Abcd1234]

I highly doubt that. Calculate the amount of money you would've paid out in rent during that time. Do you honestly believe that wouldn't amount to as much, or less, than you paid out in interest? If the answer is yes, you either bought at far too high a rate, or neglected to take the opportunity to increase payments, pay lump sums, and so forth, which can have a truly massive effect on total amortization.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o

[Abcd1234]

Err, that is, "...as much, or more, than you paid out in interest? If the answer is no...". :)

How many iPhone killers is that?

[danaris]

Thus far, I have yet to see an "iPhone killer" do anything of the sort.

If Palm wants to do so, they're going to have to do everything the iPhone does and do it better. That means the interface and the integration, as well. The past decade of iPod dominance has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither a laundry list of features nor a very appealing price can compete with cool factor and a really nice user experience.

Dan Aris

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they want a killer phone... just add a gun in it :D

or use old sony battery

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... Who said anything about an iPhone killer?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[aliquis]

Yeah, why would this be better? Unless it's open it's crap. I will just wait for more android/openmoko phones.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[TheRaven64]

Who said it was an iPhone killer? In terms of hardware, the phone is very nice - the OMAP 3430 is much nicer than the iPhone chip, and supports OpenGL ES 2 (the iPhone only supports 1.1). In terms of software, who knows. The preview sounds promising, but I doubt Palm have as nice developer tools as Apple, although they may well have a less hostile set of T&Cs for using them.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[danaris]

Uh... Who said anything about an iPhone killer?

The submitter.

Did you even read the first line of the summary?

Dan Aris

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[bogaboga]

I can say that it's just one more "iPhone killer", though I think it's a little bit late.

If the battery is replaceable then I could give it chance, but the now crowded smart phone market does not help matters for Palm.

Ohh wait, the Asians are yet to spit out their knock offs and once they do, all players will struggle big time.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[mewshi_nya]

Older Palm OS phones are pretty open, as far as apps go. Can put pretty much anything on there.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[jellomizer]

Chances are if they come too close to be an iPhone killer they are using some of apples patents.

While I do like seeing competition for the iPhone and iPod, It seems that a lot of people seem to miss the little details that Apple likes to put in its product, that makes it that much better.

For example I will use OS X and Ubuntu with AWN. They both have a fancy dock. AWN has way more features then the Mac OS X Dock. However it isn't really that usable. Things such as if you run a new app. I want to right click the running application and say keep on dock. Or just being able to drag and drop an App into awn from your file system browser... And get the correct Icon. Being able to group all open windows of the same application together. I am not talking about eyecandy, (like the OS X animations when you zoom in) but actual usability that people tend to miss when trying to copy the idea.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Hal_Porter]

You know, you'd seem cooler if you signed your posts

Da Naris.

Who da Naris? You da Naris!

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[mdwh2]

If Palm wants to do so, they're going to have to do everything the iPhone does and do it better.

This is an unfair requirement - the Iphone after all doesn't do everything that every other phone does, after all! Missing features are accepted as "not something I'd need" or hand-waved away as "Grumpy featurism". So the same should be true of the Palm - it's okay to miss features, as not everyone may need every feature. As long as it just works, that's all that matters. It's the double standard - Apple products are okay as long as they have a "cool factor" (your words, not mine), but other products are held to some impossible standard of "must be able to do everything that any other phone can do, and more".

The only reason there's yet to be an Iphone killer is the same reason that there isn't a Nokia killer or a Motorola killer - no phone company is in a dominant position (and certainly not Apple - not even close I'm afraid), and no company has yet to produce a "killer" phone to put them in the dominant position.

The past decade of iPod dominance has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither a laundry list of features nor a very appealing price can compete with cool factor and a really nice user experience.

Ipod, yes. We're talking about a different market here.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[e2d2]

The CPU can support OpenGL ES 2, but the article doesn't mention that at all. Is there confirmation of that webOS will integrate this and expose it to the developer?

I'm interested because if this is so then it's the one common framework across the iPhone, Android, and then webOS.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[nicolas.kassis]

but can I turn it into a guidance system for my driverless car?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

The past decade of iPod dominance has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither a laundry list of features nor a very appealing price can compete with cool factor and a really nice user experience.

You left out "insanely zealous fan base willing to pay twice as much for a shorter laundry list and more vendor lockdown than half a dozen competitors".

You want to know why the iPhone didn't die a quick and merciless death in the marketplace? The little iconic logo in the corner. Nothing more.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Simon Brooke]

Thus far, I have yet to see an "iPhone killer" do anything of the sort.

If Palm wants to do so, they're going to have to do everything the iPhone does and do it better. That means the interface and the integration, as well.

The device has a keyboard. It isn't a good keyboard, but even so it's a whole lot better than the keyboard on the iPhone - and the lack of a keyboard is a significant part of the reason I don't have an iPhone. The contacts management software which was demo'ed is way better than the iPhone's. And if, as claimed, the device has good Microsoft Exchange support, then for many commercial users it's one better than the iPhone on that count as well.

Sure, it isn't a better music player. It may not be a better movie viewer. But the iPhone, despite being very pretty, isn't actually a very good telephone - contacts management is poor, reception is poor, battery life isn't good, sound quality is so-so. It's a great phone for people who don't use a mobile phone for their work - but most people do.

Of course, the iPhone's killer app is the iTunes store. For non-technical users it is quite simply the easiest way to locate, buy and install software to the phone. Palm (and Google and RIM and Microsoft) have to equal that, and it will not be easy.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Lumpy]

It dont matter. Palm pissed off all smartphone owners with their crap that was the 600,650,680 and the 700. I'm done with their low grade dog food phones that last 1 year MAX.

They can make the perfect phone and most people will not buy it as the Treo line has a bad rep that will haunt it until death.

I just wish the G1 was actually built decently. I'd love a unlocked android phone, but they feel like they are plastic toys that will break. Android I think is the only thing with potential to kill the iPhone, if they put it in some decent hardware.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[e2d2]

Have yet to spit out their knock offs? That machine has been up and churning out knock offs for a while now. Just do a Google search for iPhone clone and check out all of them, it's insane.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[drinkypoo]

I am not talking about eyecandy, (like the OS X animations when you zoom in) but actual usability that people tend to miss when trying to copy the idea.

The OSX dock is actually fucking retarded, because icons will appear under it, and the only way to get them is to lasso them AND ANOTHER ICON and then drag both of them.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[beelsebob]

What I find disturbing is that people consider this to be "the most important product announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show." When as explained in the article, it's something that's as good as a product that's already been on the market for two years.

There seems to be an unhealthy amount of Apple hate in that statement - either the iPhone is a good product and has been out for 2 years, making this unimpressive (though good that there's competition); or the iPhone is an awful product, and this being "just as good" is thoroughly unimpressive!

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[need4mospd]

Thus far, I have yet to see an "iPhone killer" do anything of the sort.

My Jitterbug disagrees.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[IceCreamGuy]

but I doubt Palm have as nice developer tools as Apple

From Ars:

Any web developer can use CSS, HTML, and JavaScript to develop applications for the OS; there are no new languages to learn

I'm no developer, but can't you just pick your favorite IDE and go to town with that? I would imagine there'll even be some devs who just use Nano or Notepad.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[nine-times]

Yeah, and I don't get this:

Palm announced what promises to be the product that finally matches and even betters the Apple iPhone

What does that even mean? Match and better the iPhone in what sense? Will it be smaller/lighter, have a brighter screen, better apps, better integration with the largest music retailer in the US? Will it be easier to use and more responsive? Give me something.

I see in the article that it will be "more than a bundle of apps bolted on top of a phone", and have support for Exchange and Facebook. Nothing really new there. It seems to me like this "news story" amounts to an ad for an unreleased product.

On the other hand, it's nice to hear Palm is finally maybe going to actually release a new OS. WebOS is a stupid name, but the videos make it look ok.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[aliquis]

But that can be done on WinCE and Symbian devices to I guess? Maybe it's just that iPhone suck then.

But something very hackable with new menues, mediaplayers and future development for years would be cool.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are confused. By stating "If Palm wants to do so, they're going to have to do everything the iPhone does and do it better." I believe danaris was referring to the fact that if you want to compete directly with a product, you should do what it does and do it better. In addition, I might add that a ___-killer should do something ___ does not do, and do it rather well.

Further, The only reason there's yet to be an Iphone killer is the same reason that there isn't a Nokia killer or a Motorola killer is an incorrect statment. That's like comparing Apples to Oranges (NPI). To say Nokia Killer or Motorola Killer, you would need to say Apple killer not iPhone. However this product is not meant to "kill" Apple as a whole, but a product they produce, the iPhone. If you said no one has made a Nokia N95 killer or a Motorola RAZR killer, then that would be a better comparison.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[hitmark]

im continually surprised how fast the iphone became the (media agreed) watermark for mobile phones.

apple, the company that can do nothing wrong...

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[bytethese]

I think you are confused. By stating "If Palm wants to do so, they're going to have to do everything the iPhone does and do it better." I believe danaris was referring to the fact that if you want to compete directly with a product, you should do what it does and do it better. In addition, I might add that a ___-killer should do something ___ does not do, and do it rather well. Further, The only reason there's yet to be an Iphone killer is the same reason that there isn't a Nokia killer or a Motorola killer is an incorrect statment. That's like comparing Apples to Oranges (NPI). To say Nokia Killer or Motorola Killer, you would need to say Apple killer not iPhone. However this product is not meant to "kill" Apple as a whole, but a product they produce, the iPhone. If you said no one has made a Nokia N95 killer or a Motorola RAZR killer, then that would be a better comparison.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[hitmark]

hmm, i really need to have a look at that macheads documentary...

altho, the "imac" book was a bothersome enough read (come on, the layout was something of a badly maintained scrap book).

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

... or turn on auto hide for the dock or move it.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[julesh]

If Palm wants to do so, they're going to have to do everything the iPhone does and do it better. That means the interface and the integration, as well.

Of course, Palm are the long-standing masters of handheld UI and desktop integration. For a long time, nothing could beat the Palm handhelds for simplicity and effectiveness of UI, and their desktop software integrated well with most popular desktop productivity software.

True, they've lagged behind a lot recently, but it'll be interesting to see what they've come up with anyway.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[beelsebob]

Yep, battery life on the iPhone is awful...
iPhone standby - 300 hours, talk - 5 hours 3G or 10 2G
Blackberry storm standby â" 300 hours, talk - 5.5 hours 3G or 6 2G
Nokia n96 standby 200 hours, talk - 2.7 hours 3G, 4 hours 2G
G1 standby â" 200 hours, talk - 5.5 hours 3G or 6 2G

Looks like the iPhone wins on every count.

The keyboard is a matter of opinion, personally, I'd rather type on an iPhone keyboard than any smartphone keyboard I've used.

The reception on the iPhone is excellent, and the problems in america with reception were quickly identified as being AT&T's fault (their 3G network wasn't up to having double the amount of data transfered over it).

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[HardCase]

Well, it may not be an iPhone killer, but it's also not going to be a Blackberry killer, either. It's just going to be another touchscreen phone that's lost in a sea of touchscreen phones that aren't made by Apple or RIM. After going through the personal agony of owning a few Palm devices (pre-Treo), I, like many others, have given up on Palm. They're big on talk, but that's about it.

On the other hand, since my expectations are pretty damn low, I guess they shouldn't have too much trouble meeting them.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[samkass]

Funny, when Apple announced that you could develop on the iPhone with CSS, HTML, and JavaScript from day 1, developers revolted and demanded a "real" SDK. It will be interesting to see how that goes for Palm.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[iserlohn]

I would agree with you, only that I have a G1 now. The only thing the kept me from getting one before was the poor appearance from pictures. On daily use, however, I've found the build quality and the hardware itself is good and not toy-ish at all. If it came with a glossy black front and a chrome back then it would be even better, but you have to consider the number people putting rubber gimp masks on their iPhone to protect their little precious from getting hurt, so what's the point?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[jellomizer]

That has never happened to me, in 8 years of using OS X. I am not saying it isn't a problem, but it seems like a rare bug to me. There are bugs then there are usability issues.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[ByOhTek]

Battery is user replaceable according to the article.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[thomsomc]

The very best part about this new WebOS is that the software part is so simple. The entire OS is basically a browser, and all the apps running on it are a mashup of web languages like HTML, CSS, Javascript, and some calls to the WebOS libraries. This is, by far, the thing I'm most excited about. I don't know a thing about coding apps for Linux, know only slightly more about building apps for WinMo, but I know for sure that I can build beautiful web apps, and I can't wait to play around with making my own media player from scratch using their libraries :-)

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[ByOhTek]

Actually, marketing and proprietary nature could easily be more to blame for iPod Dominance. Check some reviews of the Cowon X5 vs. iPod of it's time. I'm pretty sure creative has come out with a few things that were better at the time also.

It's moderately superior player. However it doesn't have the marketing, and more importantly, like most/all other things on the market, it can connect to iPod periphs.

I know a lot of people who've gotten iPods, not because they are better at most things, but because they can easily get things to plug into their iPod (or iPods can plug into the things).

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[icebraining]

Window grouping is already planned (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/awn/+spec/task-grouping), as is reformulating the launcher code, but you can't expect the same from 10 guys coding for free than you expect from a heavily paid product like MacOS.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[JasterBobaMereel]

I already have an iPhone killer ... ....it's called a phone - longer battery life, makes and receives calls, can be used on any network

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[mdwh2]

What I find disturbing is that people consider this to be "the most important product announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show." When as explained in the article, it's something that's as good as a product that's already been on the market for two years.

Indeed - a product that people think is good because it can do what other phones have done for years? It's like the Iphone release all over again ;)

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[samkass]

Perhaps, but at this point they're coming out with a product that more or less matches what the competition did 6 months ago. Does anyone doubt that this year's hardware from Apple is going to blow Apple's previous year's hardware out of the water? So what's the window of opportunity for this knock-off to "kill" the iPhone? To me it seems more of a desperation move to keep slightly relevant, by at least staying the game with a product in the same generation as everyone else.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[KlaymenDK]

In terms of software, who knows. The preview sounds promising, but I doubt Palm have as nice developer tools as Apple, although they may well have a less hostile set of T&Cs for using them.

I would be very surprised indeed if this thing was not capable of running the Garnet VM, with which you can go on using whatever IDE you're using now. I've been using a couple, and most are quite nice. (I can't compare it to the iPhone IDE, however, because my only Mac is about 15 years old...)

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[julesh]

On the other hand, it's nice to hear Palm is finally maybe going to actually release a new OS.

Yes. Does anyone know if this is the Linux-based system they've been talking about for years, or is this something entirely new?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Daengbo]

You can drag an icon to AWN to add it. If you want an app from the menu, you'll have to "add to desktop" then drag and drop or find it in the filesystem.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Sancho]

Erm, except for 3G usage, where the G1 and the Storm beat it, apparently.

And frankly, that's all I use my iPhone for.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[stokessd]

You left out "insanely zealous fan base willing to pay twice as much for a shorter
laundry list and more vendor lockdown than half a dozen competitors".

By that logic, Apple has a zealous fan base that consist of like 75% of the MP3 owners. However only like 10% of the computer market (if you are being very conservative), so does that mean that these huge droves of apple fanbois are abstaining from buying an apple computer?

I'd argue that you've got about as many hardcore mac fanbois on the iPod as you do in the computer market that will buy anything apple sells, that should be in the single digit percentages overall. The rest of the 75% dominance of the iPod is from an actual good design that outshines the other mp3 players.

The iPhone is no different, there is a small percentage that buys it because it's from Cupertino, the rest of them are buying it because it eclipses all other smart phones out there for them.

Sheldon

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[N1AK]

Yeah, why would this be better? Unless it's open it's crap. I will just wait for more android/openmoko phones.

Take a seat, breathe deeply... The world doesn't revolve around you, in fact it doesn't even register than you exist and it certainly couldn't care what phone you are waiting for.

People who know what 'open' even means in terms of software are a tiny proportion of the market and the fact that you don't think a closed phone can be good is almost entirely irrelevant to how this will be reviewed.

In fact the fact it looks pretty ugly will be a far more important factor in how it is reviewed than how open it is.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Corbets]

Who said it was an iPhone killer?

Read the headlines much? ;)

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[jabithew]

There's another reason the iPhone has a good popular perception (over here in the UK at least).

Walk into a phone shop and I guarantee they'll either have no phones or the iPhone available to use.

Huh?

The iPhone is the only phone I've seen with working demo models on the high street. All other phones have only plastic carcasses nailed to the wall. Even the G1. How am I supposed to make a judgement about that?

This is in London and Reading, FYI.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[xouumalperxe]

To say Nokia Killer or Motorola Killer, you would need to say Apple killer not iPhone. However this product is not meant to "kill" Apple as a whole, but a product they produce, the iPhone. If you said no one has made a Nokia N95 killer or a Motorola RAZR killer, then that would be a better comparison.

The issue here is that Apple's product line is tiny, for better and for worse. Insofar as phones are concerned, saying "iPhone killer" or "Apple killer" is essentially equivalent. You can't aim at replacing Nokia or Motorola in the phone market by making a RAZR or N95 killer.

In a way, this is very much equivalent to Apple position in the computer market: if you say you purchased a MacBook (Pro), there are at most 3-4 machines you could mean. If you instead said you bought a Pavillion, how many people will be able to tell that was an HP machine, let alone have a chance at even guessing the specs?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[mdwh2]

Did Palm claim it was an "Iphone killer"? I only see reference to "phone killer", and the stuff about Iphones may just be PC Pro's take on it.

If you said no one has made a Nokia N95 killer or a Motorola RAZR killer, then that would be a better comparison.

I meant "Motorola phones killer" - i.e., killing the phones they produced, not necessarily the companies.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[SlowMovingTarget]

Thus far, I have yet to see an "iPhone killer" do anything of the sort.

Yeah! Personally I want a phone that blows the electronics on all iPhones within a 500 feet radius. You know, kind of an EMP that only acts on devices associated with smugness. The down-side would be that it would also disable BMWs, Priuses, and non-fat latte machines.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a load of this guy

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

but you see, we are not respecting the opinions of tools like yourself.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a great phone for people who don't use a mobile phone for their work - but most people do.

What can't it do? I use it for work every single day.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[aliquis]

and the fact that you don't think a closed phone can be good is almost entirely irrelevant to how this will be reviewed.

Until the open ones get functionality their closed one hasn't.

In fact the fact it looks pretty ugly will be a far more important factor in how it is reviewed than how open it is.

Yeah, the round look wasn't appealing either, and I doubt anyone getting an iPhone (for style) would consider this one.

Anyway I personally want plenty of options and applications, but in a scenario without them on both any-phone and iPhone I doubt the any-phone would do user interface and integration better than the iPhone but what do I know. I don't even know if there is an SDK which allows normal apps nowadays for the iPhone or not.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Sancho]

The device has a keyboard. It isn't a good keyboard, but even so it's a whole lot better than the keyboard on the iPhone - and the lack of a keyboard is a significant part of the reason I don't have an iPhone.

I've used several smartphones extensively, both with and without keyboards. I've had the most direct experience with a Treo 650, an HTC Apache, and an iPhone.

When I first started using each device, the hardware keyboards were without a doubt, much easier to use. After getting used to the iPhone keyboard, though, I have to say that it's perfectly adequate for text entry. One of the keys is to let it autocorrect for you. 90% of the time, it corrects to what I meant to type. Most of the failures are due to the use of acronyms that I haven't bothered to capitalize (and it will learn those.)

The contacts management software which was demo'ed is way better than the iPhone's.

That's not hard to imagine. Nevertheless, the iPhone was one of the first smartphones (and definitely the first one I encountered) to have a "favorites" list. This let me really cut back on the cruft while still having everyone in the corp and their dog in my phone.

But the iPhone, despite being very pretty, isn't actually a very good telephone

reception is poor

There were problems with reception on 3G at first. Those were fixed in an update. I now never have problems getting a full 3G signal, and I don't get dropouts anymore. This is in the US.

battery life isn't good

It's quite on par with other recent smartphones.

sound quality is so-so

What do you mean by this, exactly?

It's a great phone for people who don't use a mobile phone for their work - but most people do.

When the iPhone first came out, they definitely weren't targeting business people who use their cell phones constantly for work. They were targeting the every-person. With the 2.0 software release, they started targeting business users more heavily, and they've got a little ways to go to be sure. I think it's an overall well-balanced device, though.

Of course, the iPhone's killer app is the iTunes store. For non-technical users it is quite simply the easiest way to locate, buy and install software to the phone. Palm (and Google and RIM and Microsoft) have to equal that, and it will not be easy.

I don't think that they'll be able to equal the App Store for a long, long while. Apple's got a rather large portion of the "smarter than a normal cellphone" market. The same thing that keeps people writing apps for Windows will keep people writing apps for the iPhone.

All that said, I picked the iPhone for two reasons. One is the browser, and the other is the mail client. At the time, no other phone came close to Safari on the iPhone for rendering quickly and correctly. As it is, I've only seen one other browser come close--the 9.x release of Opera Mobile. It also uses a viewport with smooth zooming and Opera's fantastic rendering engine. It's quite a bit slower, though, and uses quite a bit of memory.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[edmicman]

Looks like the iPhone wins on every count.

How do you figure that? If I'm looking at 3G talk time, the Storm and G1 both top it....

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

My prediction is that Android will not kill the iPhone for some time. Partly because the dev tools aren't as polished as Apples but to be honest as a potential developer myself, the toolset is less important than the API's. Unfortunately the Android API's are an area that seems somewhat deficient in a number of places (real-time low latency PCM audio anyone - how can something so fundamental have been so badly done?!). Anyone wanting to write any half-way serious game or audio based app is stuck using a shitty "send-this-file-to-the-output" style API.
There are other areas too where Apple just seem to have put a lot more thought into how things hang together - it's like the API's for the iPhone have been developed by people who have their usability as a prime concern, which sadly, with what I've seen so far, I can't say for Android.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[LWATCDR]

It does look good but. I REALLY DON'T WANT TO BE LIMITED TO JAVASCRIPT!
What I don't like about Android is that I am limited to Java. But I like Java a lot more than Javascript.
The iPhone offers I think objective C and maybe c++. It compiles to native code as well. That interests me more than even Java from a programing point of view.
I just hope they offer C or C++. Also what about legacy apps? Tell me they are not throwing away all those Palm apps that people love. Those old apps have been the only thing keeping Palm afloat.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[ivan256]

Having gone from a Treo 700p with a 4 year old battery to an iPhone, I have to say that the iPhone battery life is crap. I would charge the Treo on Saturday. As in, use the phone all week, and charge it on the weekend. I need to charge the iPhone every night, or it will be dead part of the way through the next day. I may use the iPhone a bit more, but not 7x more.

The keyboard is subjective, yes... But the Treo keyboard was better in my opinion.

I still prefer the iPhone to my old Treo, but I wish Palm had released this new phone about a year sooner. I'd have rather gotten this, instead of the iPhone.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[registered_after_8_y]

Indeed, technically almost all manufacturers have "iPhone killers", but I have still not seen one that matches the ease of use and the app store. For example Nokia's upcoming N97 is technically far superior to the iPhone, but being built on Symbian it will never be better than an osx based phone. Palm have not exactly convinced with their previous models, and it seems that this PcPro article is just another marketing department win..

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[jddj]

Palm Announces Killer New Phone

This is Palm we're talking about - any new product from Palm is supposed to kill Palm, not the iPhone...

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Constantine XVI]

The big difference here is that with webOS;
1) The apps are actually stored locally
2) Palm is apparently allowing access to the hardware via CSS, HTML, and JavaScript (details are scarce right now), something no one else does right now

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[PriceIke]

Having a slideout keyboard is ALREADY better than the iPhone. Uses multitouch-like gestures to surf the Web and navigate the device. Decent camera in it. Elegant hardware design. User-replaceable battery. I'd say Palm has come the closest so far to creating a real competitor to the iPhone. Now we need more information on how it handles media and so forth, but it's looking damn good so far. I've always admired Palm products, particularly their OS (my Tungsten T3 is still my primary handheld) .. if they were to come out and say the new webOS is backward compatible with PalmOS 5 then they've got my money the day this thing is released.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Sfing_ter]

i disagree, one of the benefits of the Palm is that it does not do the iTunes thing. Owning a piece of hardware should not require you to join a "special" club no matter how "cool" they make it seem. Palm apps have been available for a long time now from any number of vendors. The fact that many of the features the iphone has are "enhanced" features/specializations of previous palm/handspring devices is pretty funny when the fanbuoys begin gushing. If you want to join a special club to get access to specific content that should be your decision.

As I tell the people that have an ipod and an iphone when they ask me if their new computer should be a mac - 'Of course, you've already made the decision'. That's when they ask if they can have Word... sigh.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[hierophanta]

nothing gets me excited like new menus!!

[I think its the hardware that deserves our attention (after all software is just software and will typically be available across many phones)]

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

The *entire* OS is Linux, do not mistake the OS and the softwareplatform)

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Fri13]

The OS is still the old same one. Linux from 1991. It might be totally new software platform but still same old Linux OS is used what is used on multiple other devices and systems.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[StreetStealth]

There's a huge difference here.

Apple was basically telling developers "you can make iPhone-optimized websites! They're just like apps, honest!"

Palm is telling developers "our SDK is based around web conventions that any web developer would already be familiar with."

Probably the biggest difference here is that with WebOS, you're actually installing an app to run locally. Pre-SDK iPhone was nothing more than websites that could disappear once you ducked into the subway.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[KlaymenDK]

Oops -- potential huge fail!

From Ars (emphasis mine):

It's apparent that this radical shift in platform will mean that all existing Palm applications will be rendered obsolete. During the presentation this morning, it was said, "There are a few hundred-thousand Palm developers and a few million web developers." If there was a dark spot during the launch it would be this, but it's definitely not going to extinguish the excitement felt on the floor for this handset.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[beelsebob]

Or in 2G usage where it handily beats them... 10% gain in 3G, or 100% gain in 2G...

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's only one iPhone killer, and that's a hormone imbalance.

What, too soon?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[db10]

but will it blend?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Space]

From http://developer.palm.com/
The Palm Mojo SDK

Besides the Palm Mojo Application Framework, the SDK will include sample code, documentation, and development tools. An Eclipse-based IDE is included, and you will also be able to use your choice of tools to build WebOS applications. The Mojo SDK is currently in private prerelease, and will be available later this year as a free download from the Palm Developer Network.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[drsquare]

If Palm wants to do so, they're going to have to do everything the iPhone does and do it better. That means the interface and the integration, as well. The past decade of iPod dominance has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither a laundry list of features nor a very appealing price can compete with cool factor and a really nice user experience.

Translation: no matter how good it is, it won't sell unless it's shiny and has 'Apple' written on it?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[PriceIke]

> I might add that a ___-killer should do something ___ does not do, and do it rather well.

Actually I would submit that a $DEVICE-killer needs to do something that $DEVICE does not do at all. Killer products are revolutionary, bringing a real innovation to the table. That's why the iPhone is such a market leader now, and you can make the same case for the iPod: they brought something to the market that nobody else was doing.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[itsdapead]

and no company has yet to produce a "killer" phone to put them in the dominant position.

You're assuming that "dominant position" means "top selling". There are other forms of dominance - one of which is illustrated by the fact that we're having this discussion at all. The iPhone has become the benchmark against which any new smartphone is judged by the press and blogosphere.

It's the double standard - Apple products are okay as long as they have a "cool factor" (your words, not mine), but other products are held to some impossible standard of "must be able to do everything that any other phone can do, and more".

Thing is, Apple don't try for the ultimate feature list: they decide which features most people will actually want, and implement them well.

E.g. the iPhone famously doesn't have MMS. My HTC Windows Mobile smartphone does, and I've sent exactly 1 MMS message which took half an hour of faffing around to discover that you have to set the camera to the right resolution for MMS before you take the photo (and then remember to un-set it when you want to take a good quality photo). I think WM has cut & paste (another area where the iPhone gets slated) but buggered if I could successfully copy an EMAIL address from a text message into the contacts... The WM media player is unusable (iPhone is excellent); the web browser is unusable (iPhone may not have Flash and Java, but IE Mobile barely has HTML). On WM I can use my own MP3s as ringtones, but from the number of missed calls I get, I strongly suspect that people are hanging up before WM has got round to staring the player. Oh, and the phone is so carefully designed that its impossible to pick up in a hurry without pushing one of the buttons thoughtfully positioned exactly where you natually hold it (another reason for dropped calls). Maybe the iPhone camera isn't the best: but if I gave a toss about picture quality I'd use a proper camera with a proper lens: I've yet to successfully take anything other than a blurry mess with WM.

...so until I've had my hands on any new "iPhone killer" and determined that the impressive feature list has actually been implemented by someone with a clue and some capacity for attention to detail (i.e. it isn't a Windows Mobile device with a lipstick-on-a-pig iPhone lookalike skin) I'll reserve judgement.

I did have a play with the Google G1, and really, really want to like it, but the hardware is frankly bizzarre, the "real" keyboard is so small and untactile that its no better than the iPhone's on-screen keyboard and the processor doesn't have enough grunt to run the (not bad looking) web browser smoothly.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Hel Toupee]

Thing here is that Palm isn't really going for an iPhone 'killer'. What they have is an iPhone 'competitor'. Palm finally has something _in the race_ again.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[ColdWetDog]

if they were to come out and say the new webOS is backward compatible with PalmOS 5 then they've got my money the day this thing is released.

Little oopsie here. FTFA it appears that this is something Completely New And Different. Maybe they'll make an emulator - shouldn't be all that hard and Bog knows there are zillions of Palm software bits out there. But I don't think so...

My T3 sits in my desk as the backup to my Blackberry. I'm missing a few little software programs but they've actually migrated to the web (medical calculators) and even if the Internet goes dark, I can just do the stupid calcs manually. Palm is dead to me. That from someone who started with the original Palm Pilot and used one since whenever in the 1990's they started out.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[PriceIke]

Crap.

http://www.everythingtreo.com/articles/2009/1/8/palm-webos-sdk-legacy-app-support-in-webos/

Oh well. Guess I'll stick with my T3 for a while.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[hierophanta]

uhh with 4 metrics you have only three numbers per. standby, talk time, 3g, & 2g.

moreover those look like manufacturer ratings - real usage is a bit different.

i know for a fact that you dont get 5.5 hours of 3g usage from *any* phone. moreover 200-300 hours talk time is also a joke (that must be your standby number)

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[bpeikes]

As for API, Palm was the first to really support their developers. I wrote apps for the first Palm, and although their API has changed, as far as I know, they stay out of the way of their developers. Hopefully they follow Apple's ridiculous control freak/greedy path. Palm never tried to squeeze developers, that's why there were so many great apps on the Palm and one of the reasons why Palm took the market by storm when no one else was able to crack the PDA market.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[mspohr]

From the Palm developer site:

And good news for Palm OS developers! There are a number of ways to migrate data from a an existing PDB file to your new WebOS app.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Homebrewed]

If Palm wants to do so, they're going to have to do everything the iPhone does and do it better.

How about the main function of the device-- making phone calls? This has been my gripe with all the Palm devices, the iPhone, and the Blackberry Storm. Phone clarity sucks. As a sysad, I use all the bells and whistles on my smartphone, and got one with a slide-out qwerty keyboard (now, I can ssh into a server and use vi), but the main thing I need the phone for is so that people can call me. And quite honestly, the only smartphones I've seen with high-quality phones are the Q and the various phones made by HTC and Samsung.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[ultramk]

The "rubber gimp masks" aren't to keep the phones from getting scratched, they are to keep a better grip on them. the damn things are slippery, especially with some of the wii-like games...

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[camperdave]

You know, kind of an EMP that only acts on devices associated with smugness. The down-side would be that it would also disable BMWs, Priuses, and non-fat latte machines.

Sorry, but... I'm not seeing the downside.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[ultramk]

What is the "iPod market" exactly? People with pulses? People who aren't deaf?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[onecheapgeek]

Fanboy math. Either that or he lives in a 2G-only area.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[tim447]

The real difference between the Palm Pre and the iPhone when it comes to developers, is that all Palm's standard apps that come with the phone were written with javascript, CSS, and HTML. They're "eating their own dogfood", so to speak. The automatic integration with the rest of your online life (facebook, mail accounts corporate and personal, im, sms, etc) is something brand new. As is the way they've worked out multitasking - well thought-out to work especially well with the finger input method. (Not to mention copy-paste ability! Who would have thought that would be such a special thing.)

This phone looks exciting, both in photos, and watching it in action. I for one will probably get one when it comes out - I was close to making my Treo 755p my last Palm, but I'd say this has brought me back to the fold.

Next stop, the all-important price point. If they want to compete with the iphone, they're going to have to be around $200 with contract...

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[bpeikes]

I actually don't think the iPhone is a very good music player. The interface is terrible. With all that screen real estate you'd think they could have an interface that's the same as iTunes instead of a brain dead list of lists with no way to search.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[danaris]

Having a slideout keyboard is ALREADY better than the iPhone. Uses multitouch-like gestures to surf the Web and navigate the device. Decent camera in it. Elegant hardware design. User-replaceable battery.

What was I saying about laundry lists again?

Dan Aris

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[hobbit]

+1, Spot on

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[thekm]

Ipod, yes. We're talking about a different market here.

really?... Apple's phone was brought out in the same way they brought out the iPod, and it seems to have had a pretty good start indeed

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[BrokenHalo]

I really only have two particularly major concerns with the iPhone.

(1) something that needs charging every single day is a real handicap, and

(2) I have shared temporary accommodation with iPhone owners while travelling outside major population centres here in Australia, and the iPhone has not stood up to comparison with other phones (Motorola and Nokia) for reception quality, or even availability.

If the Palm offering addresses either of these, I might just consider it the next time I have to change handsets (which is fairly infrequent; I usually wait until they are broken).

I don't need another MP3 player; 8GB storage just isn't enough, and I have a 160GB iPod with which I am perfectly happy. But if Palm can bring themselves to provide an interface with Linux and Mac boxes simultaneously, they've made a sale here.

(Yeah, I know, goodluckwiththat.)

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Halo-]

2) Palm is apparently allowing access to the hardware via CSS, HTML, and JavaScript (details are scarce right now), something no one else does right now

Yeah... what could possibly go wrong with that idea? :)

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Wheely]

Have to disagree here. I bought a first generation iPhone because it meant I didnÂt need to carry my phone and my Creative Zen with me on the train to work. I had never had any Apple gear at all. After using it for a bit I found the iPhone to be the only phone I had ever owned that didn`t make me want to throw it down the toilet. I loved using it.

As I was Linux only I bought a Mac mini so I could run iTunes and then bought a Mac book pro for some reason.

I have discovered I hate OSX and pretty much everything Apple with a passion but the only thing that would make me stop using the iPhone (and therefore the Mac) would be a phone that behaved in a similar way but didn`t require me to crack the firmware all the time so I can use the phone supplier of my own choice.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[darkvad0r]

I read in one of the many reviews for this phone (I don't know which one though, I already read so many...) that the SDK will let you access the main functionality through JavaScript but all the rendering is done by WebKit so that means that OpenGL ES 2 is off the table for the moment. That said, they may be readying another more advanced SDK for game and graphic intensive applications, nothing sure ATM.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Wheely]

Have you tried the keyboard on the iPhone though? It looks like it would be a piece of crap but with the dictionary turned on it guesses pretty much what I meant to type about 90% of the time. The upshot is it ends up being the most accurate mini-keyboard I`ve ever used.

You can SMS and type e-mail fast, easily using three or four fingers and the result usually isn`t far off what you meant.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[crazycheetah]

WebOS has a Linux kernel. So, really, there's a degree of open in there. It's just whether they're ever going to take it farther that would be the question. Who knows.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[danaris]

The iPhone is the only phone I've seen with working demo models on the high street. All other phones have only plastic carcasses nailed to the wall. Even the G1. How am I supposed to make a judgement about that?

Wow, that sounds messed up. I go into a Verizon store in small-town Upstate NY and I can poke at real working phones of at least a dozen different models. Naturally they're all heavily tethered to the wall, but I can pick them up, look at them on all sides, and see what the software acts like while I'm deciding.

Dan Aris

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[jargoone]

The submitter.

And, uh, the article.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[ckaminski]

I'm still loving my 700p, but it's an unstable mess compared to the 650p I traded up from.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[lymond01]

Thus far, I have yet to see an "iPhone killer" do anything of the sort.

The article headline simply says "Killer Phone". The story goes back to an incident on the Palm assembly lines. A young man who had only recently witnessed the birth of his first son mysteriously vanished during his midnight shift at the Palm Pre manufacturing plant. On the night of his disappearance, his newborn son, a natural wailer normally, was silent until dawn. Indeed his mother, cradling him in her arms, felt the hairs on her neck stand out as the child seemed to have a curious grin on his face and would give a baby's chuckle now and again.

In the morning, after a long, dark vigil, the mother put the giggling baby back in his crib, only to hear a strange beep coming from the blankets. Shuffling through the soft sheets, she found a prototype of the Palm Pre.

It having an easy-to-use touchscreen, she was able to quickly thumb her way around the icons of the phone. It was then she found the Photos icon in the top right corner. As she pressed the button, her son began to wail as if a limb was broken, but she couldn't take her eyes from the revealing photos. Her husband lying with another woman. Her husband in different positions with this woman. At dinner with this woman. At the river....all the while her son cried louder and louder until, sliding the photo of her husband holding the phone away and snapping a picture of him and his mistress locked in a deep kiss, her child's crying suddenly ended.

The next photo began a slide show of what happened at the Palm Pre processing plant on the midnight shift, eventually ending with what was left of her husband and the woman after attempting relations on a Palm Pre conveyer belt.

And her child began to giggle.

At least, that's how I heard the Palm Pre got its moniker as "Killer Phone".

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Archangel Michael]

"let alone have a chance at even guessing the specs?"

Exactly right!

I used to sell cars. Cars and computers are often similar in how they are sold. Take a look at a window sticker of a new car, and see all the "options" and "Upgrades" listed. Computers are marketed the same exact way ... "ATI VIDEO UPGRADE" is the same as "Alpine Stereo" or whatever, it is better than what the "stock" option is.

However, I'd compare Apple vs Dell/HP/Gateway etc as comparing Honda vs GM/Ford/Chrysler.

Honda sells Accords, there are only a few ways one can get an Accord. They have Two engines, three trim models. Their sticker is empty compared to a Taurus or whatever. Taurus has three engine options and who knows how many trim levels, and beyond trim levels you have all sorts of weird option packages and upgrades.

The limited choice of Apple and Honda are part of what makes it a GOOD choice, it is a very known quantity. If you say you have a MacBook Pro, people know you have one of a couple of options. It really is narrowed down. You say you have a Pavillion, I doubt you could get anyone to guess the specs.

The difference is differentiation by Experience (Honda/Apple) vs Differentiation by Spec (HP/FORD)

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[stei7766]

I was on the fence about the G1...then I played with one.

Sure it has some flaws, but theyre all software so that can be fixed (and WILL, unlike anything apple related where it depends on what Steve had for breakfast).

I was especially nervous about the slide open feature...but its very solid. The phone feels solid in the hand, and the touch screen is every bit as responsive as the iphone (no multitouch yet, but again thats a software issue).

And I feel that the android market will eventually surpass the app store, there seems to be a lot of excited developers out there.

All in all, I find it to be an outstanding phone which does everything I need and more.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[lymond01]

Erm, except for 3G usage, where the G1 and the Storm beat it, apparently.

I've never tried the G1, but I think one should stay away from comparing the Storm with anything. Even Blackberry will (hopefully) be shuffling that alongside the file that holds Windows Me and the Edsel.

And as far as battery life goes, I have a first-gen iPhone...I leave wireless on all day long and make only a couple calls a day. I use the web and check email frequently. Like that, it'll last 2 days before its battery dies. If I beat on the web -- say I'm a passenger on a trip or something and decide to surf the day through, it'll last about 10 hours. The longest I've ever had the battery last was about 2.5 days, and that was with almost no use whatsoever.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Super_Z]

I have 2 Palms lying around - had them for years. I never bought a single app for them. I've had an iPhone for 4 weeks - and I've already bought 2 apps for it.

As I tell the people that have an ipod and an iphone when they ask me if their new computer should be a mac - 'Of course, you've already made the decision'. That's when they ask if they can have Word... sigh.

Yes?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[ivan256]

Yeah, I had a 650p for 4+ years. The keyboard finally wore out, and they replaced it with a 700p (with the battery from the 650p). That's what prompted my iPhone purchase.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[lisaparratt]

The old Palm platform is a horrendous mire of shite, no loss to anyone - it's still primarily based round 68K native code, even if it is run under an emulator now.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[heelrod]

It has everything to do with Marketing. That is all. That's why you see seniors in airports with their ipods and iphones. Because they watch TV!

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[mzs]

And another nice aspect was that at some point or other I did my development on Mac, Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD. With the iphone you are tied to a mac. Plus the only thing you needed approval for was 32 bit creator and program codes. This entailed logging into a website and asking and they would do a select in their DB and say fine or not. Apple approves or denies everything, even if you get to do dev at all. That was a fun time, but man were the first couple of revisions of the network stack buggy!

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[ckaminski]

Except for the fact that Garnet is an aging platform that's struggled (and pretty much succeeded) in remaining relevant in the wireless networked world, the Treo family is a pretty swank set of phones (reliability issues aside). I haven't found anything else I'm comfortable with yet, though the Blackberry Storm might just be it. J2ME and all my favorite Treo features!

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[jargoone]

I've had the most direct experience with a Treo 650, an HTC Apache, and an iPhone.

When I first started using each device, the hardware keyboards were without a doubt, much easier to use. After getting used to the iPhone keyboard, though, I have to say that it's perfectly adequate for text entry. One of the keys is to let it autocorrect for you. 90% of the time, it corrects to what I meant to type.

My experience almost mirrors yours, and I couldn't agree more. I went from a Treo 650 to a 680 to an HTC Tilt to an iPhone. The first time I used a friend's iPhone, I had all sorts of typos. Tried it again later, and it was better enough to get me to finally buy one. One week later, after realizing I should just type and not correct, and I'm probably 2x as fast as I ever was on the Treo. Nonetheless, I understand the concern over the lack of keyboard, because it turned me off for a long time.

I certainly don't love everything about it. There are probably 50 things I've said "I could change this on the Palm or the Tilt". But I'd never go back.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

How in the world can the G1 beat the iPhone on 3G usage when T-Mobile has yet to roll out a nationwide 3G network?

You may have a point on the 3G capabilities of the Storm (although it's an atrocious device in actual usage), but while the G1 is a decent handset, it doesn't have the network support to be a good internet enabled phone. Which really is too bad, because I like T-Mobile, and their inability to roll out a modern network is what drove me to one of their competitors.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[walter_f]

The past decade of iPod dominance has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither a laundry list of features nor a very appealing price can compete with cool factor and a really nice user experience.

Whatever happened in the past in a particular market (music player hardware) will not be sufficiently reliable ground enough for predictions regarding the future in a different market (high end mobile phones).

Just my 2 cts.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Hel Toupee]

Except for the fact that Garnet is an aging platform

Good thing they're releasing a brand-new OS with this thing too, then. They're calling it Web OS, and it is quite modern, and has all the relevant features.

BB Storm still has a virtual keyboard - which is the dealbreaker for me. Sure, it clicks when you press a key, but you still have to watch the keyboard to see _which_ key you clicked.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Sancho]

The longest I've ever had the battery last was about 2.5 days, and that was with almost no use whatsoever.

When I'm on holiday or sick and not taking calls, my iPhone 3G will last for almost a week before getting tired and asking for food.

But I was going solely on the stats provided by the poster to whom I replied. Stats were posted, and an erroneous conclusion was drawn.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[giffnyc]

Amen, brother.

I've been carrying a WinMo phone (the HTC Vogue, called the Touch by my carrier, Sprint, in the US). The hardware is nice to look at and touch. The OS is so feature laden and so random in its interaction design that I am about to go back to my Palm 755p. At the very least its ancient single tasking design and 1990-era touch interaction are SIMPLE enough that I will not be constantly frustrated when doing 90% of my phone use, i.e. talking or messaging.

Why not an iPhone or a RIM product? Early termination fees, a cheap "insider" rate, and a great data network make me loathe to switch, at least until my contract is done. Although Sprint carries Blackberry service, it is a ninth circle of hell ordeal to deal with the switch and maintain my cheap data plan. They also only carry older Blackberry products -- no Bold available.

Symbian is not a real option on this US carrier, either.

I work with the iPhone, in fact have written apps in Objective C. I've done with same for Palm and (god forgive) BREW. I agree with a lot of developers -- Objective-C is actually a relief after a lot of C++ work, makes a lot more sense. The XCode environment is pretty nice. The documentation is first rate. And as for buying a pricey Mac, well, I've had a lot of laptops running everything from FreeBSD+Openstep to Vista and this one is the most stable, sensible, versatile I've ever had. YMMV.

Further proof of the parent's point - I don't think its useful to rate the phones (or the development envirnment) by toting up features -- featuritis is one of the reasons I avoid most Microsoft products. the iPhone -- and the new Palm OS -- seem to have taken usability and overall user experience based on real world use cases, as their guiding design principles. That's why people are comparing the two so much.

I look forward to getting a Pre at launch.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[netsharc]

Well, the Wii also uses Javascript, and it exposes the hardware via JS objects like wii and sound (IIRC), just like the JS objects document, window. So depending on how much they expose, the device can be really open..

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Sancho]

Read my post in context with the one to which I replied. He was talking about battery life. I'll quote the relevant portions:

Yep, battery life on the iPhone is awful...
iPhone standby - 300 hours, talk - 5 hours 3G or 10 2G
Blackberry storm standby Ã" 300 hours, talk - 5.5 hours 3G or 6 2G
Nokia n96 standby 200 hours, talk - 2.7 hours 3G, 4 hours 2G
G1 standby Ã" 200 hours, talk - 5.5 hours 3G or 6 2G
Looks like the iPhone wins on every count.

Only the poster missed the part where the iPhone did not win on battery life while using 3G (when compared to the Storm or G1.)

I have an iPhone, and I love it. But we've got to be fair when comparing things.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[ckaminski]

Which I sort of find a spurious argument anyway. The only keyboard I NEVER had to look at was the one on my Audiovox phone with SMS only (back before they charged for SMS). It had a big knob on the 5 button, so I could find that and every other key without having to even look at the phone.

With the Treo and the blackberry, I *HAD* to look at the keyboard, because the damn things are built for tiny women to use, and not 6' giants with meathooks for hands.

So if I have to look at the screen to see if I'm typing without error, then the keyboard might as well be right there too.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[stuntpope]

This has only happened to me when dragging trash and I miss the trash can before releasing the mouse button. I can wind up with an icon partially under the dock. Never has gone completely under the dock, but at any rate, I could always hide the dock to then grab and move the icon to another spot on the desktop.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[lysergic.acid]

except that the G1 is already made in Taiwan, as are the majority of "non-Asian" phones sold by T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint/Nextel, AT&T/Cingular, Sony-Ericsson, Siemens, Vodaphone, O2, Orange, etc. that are just rebranded handsets made by Asian ODMs.

and considering that Asia has far more advanced cellphone networks than the U.S. and generally receives new cellphone features & wireless technologies before us, we're likely the ones knocking-off their phones, not the other way around. heck, Asian manufacturers were selling touch phones long before the iPhone was released.

besides, the cellphone carriers are ultimately the ones who decide what phones people use here in the U.S.--there have been Chinese iPhone knockoffs for quite a while now. but those knock-offs aren't sold outside of their home markets and would never receive the approval of U.S. cellphone carriers.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

2) Palm is apparently allowing access to the hardware via CSS, HTML, and JavaScript (details are scarce right now), something no one else does right now

That sounds really scary. Adieu to the idea of sandboxing web apps.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[LWATCDR]

Maybe but I really hate javascript. It has been a while since I used it. C++ and Java are to me much better languages.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[ahoehn]

Thus far, I have yet to see an "iPhone killer" do anything of the sort.

I think this will come down to 3rd party apps. Right now, besides having a very slick UI, the iPhone has an amazing library of 3rd party apps. Android I think has the potential to compete in that arena, but current versions of Android aren't so slick as the iPhone UI.

The new Palm Pre UI looks great - different than Apple's, but perhaps as slick. They kept saying that it would be easy to develop for (Java/HTML/CSS), but I haven't found much more than that. We'll see how developers embrace the platform.

The advantage of Android is of course that it can be put on hardware by any manufacturer - and that it's pretty open. We'll see in 6 months or so how things shake out.
 

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[aztektum]

Say what you want about the iPhone or Apple in general, for all the effects of the RDF and hype they make other players work to compete. Competition is a good thing.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[wootest]

Apple built its own apps using one approach and left a side effect of implementing a web browser as an excuse to not offer an actual SDK - web apps were second class citizens. Palm, from what I can tell, actually build their own apps using this technology.

It's about the even footing; being able to use the primary SDK is fine, even if I don't see HTML and CSS as having the flexibility I'd like for the UI.

(For the record, the SDK iPhone apps are still far too constrained, but at least now we get to get at some of the hardware. Try coding Rolando for MobileSafari.)

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Achromatic1978]

Anecdote, blah blah. My wife owns an iPhone 3G. I own a Nokia N95. Looking at call count and duration stats, we're on about the same time. I know she's recharging more often than me. Battery life estimates are widely varied. Some people like to claim/believe "But Apple actually gives honest numbers and your usage may actually exceed!" - that's called the RDF at work.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[FrozenFOXX]

I dunno, I made every Apple fanboy in my building jealous by just letting them touch the screen on my G1. I'd never say the G1 and iPhone should be considered head-to-head since they appeal to two different crowds but that's reality.

Maybe other people have had other experiences, but apparently the G1's selling at a fantastic rate already, so I think you'd already got your "iPhone Killer" if you want to call it that. Seriously, given the amount of market (especially in business) dominance BlackBerry commands I think people need to come up with a BlackBerry killer long before we even start to think about needing an iPhone killer.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[iluvcapra]

Treo family is a pretty swank set of phones (reliability issues aside)

In my experience with a 270 and 650, that's a pretty big thing to set aside, really about a third of the whole experience.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chances are if they come too close to be an iPhone killer they are using some of apples patents.

So... you're saying that Palm - one of the oldest surviving manufacturers of PDAs - must have copied Apple in order to make their latest device?

Despite the fact that (a) the usual opinion here is that patents are evil, (b) Palm will have their own patents that Apple may be infringing.

So.. in short: your assumptions are weak, your opinion is worthless.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

people aren't "missing" those details. It takes a lot of work to establish that consistency - something that distributions have a hard time doing it seems. Now for a company selling a product, then I just call laziness.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[angst_ridden_hipster]

I dunno. I'm still using my four-year-old Treo 650.

It's been to hell and back, several times*.

I'm hoping to make it last five years, and then upgrade to whatever's the best thing in smartphones.

* I even got some great VGA-res pictures of the moon rising over the lake of fire.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[angst_ridden_hipster]

Isn't Android v. iPhone really the same thing as Linux v. MacOS?

I suspect they'll coexist for a long time.

The old PalmOS and maybe WinMo and maybe even RIM will be the victims -- at least here in the States. Elsewhere, there are so many other choices to content with, so it's harder to play armchair quarterback.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[SleepingWaterBear]

For example I will use OS X and Ubuntu with AWN. They both have a fancy dock. AWN has way more features then the Mac OS X Dock. However it isn't really that usable. Things such as if you run a new app. I want to right click the running application and say keep on dock. Or just being able to drag and drop an App into awn from your file system browser... And get the correct Icon. Being able to group all open windows of the same application together. I am not talking about eyecandy, (like the OS X animations when you zoom in) but actual usability that people tend to miss when trying to copy the idea.

You might want to check out Cairo Dock. I tried AWN for a while, but found it lacking; I think that Cairo Dock has most if not all the features you mention. If you're using Ubuntu, make sure to use the Cairo-Dock Repo, the version in the default repo is out of date and ridiculously buggy.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[stmfreak]

In addition to doing everything the iPhone does and more, they're also going to have to have a metal housing and a glass screen.

I've started seeing some full touch screen knock-offs, but they're plastic screens, plastic body and generally feel cheap. It's not just coincidence that the two hottest selling phones in recent history were metal (RAZR, iPhone) at least to start.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

you can also browse through the pics that people take, which can be interesting.

and at the verizon stores here you can buy ringtones on their phones, save as a sound, and then text the sound to you.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[ricegf]

If Palm wants to do so, they're going to have to do everything the iPhone does and do it better.

Um, copy and paste?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[jellomizer]

Yes. I am saying that.
When companies get old they often stick to the old ways of doing things. Then a competitor comes out with something that catches them with their pants down and have to go catch up.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[IamTheRealMike]

Yes audio is seriously lacking. However the Android guys clearly know that and the very next OS release is said to have a much more powerful audio API. It should be an over-the-air software update, so hopefully most users will end up having it.

I'm not sure what you mean by the iPhone APIs being more usable. I haven't ponied up my $99 to find out what they're like, but the Android API is very well thought out. The way app components are loosely coupled is, I think, quite interesting and could potentially lead to a lot of really interesting and useful apps. There are already some unique apps out there (like Locale) but the API is pretty unusual, and people are still figuring out how to best exploit it. The iPhone API in contrast seems much more traditional - nothing wrong with that, but it might prove limiting later.

I won't go into what I think of Objective-C. Suffice it to say that the version of Obj-C they shipped is not even garbage collected. I'm not even sure it's worth trying to compare the platforms usability for developers when there's such a massive and fundametal lack on the iPhone side. I mean it's the 21st century, are we really expected to put up with memory leaks and heap corruption in our phone software too?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Sentry21]

Speaking as someone who shows off his iPhone at every opportunity, who has used Macs for 2/3 of his life, and who stood in line for the iPhone 3G when it was available in his country...

The Palm Pre looks amazing. The interface is beautiful, the gestures are simple, and from all the videos and hands-on I've seen, it's fast. Like, really fast. It's way faster than my iPhone is, and it's far, far better at multitasking, which is probably the biggest failing of the iPhone so far.

Until yesterday, I was wishing Palm would just die and get it over with. Now, if this phone does what it looks like it does, it might well save Palm.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[CAIMLAS]

I would think it would be fairly trivial to throw in a "PalmOS compatibility layer" ie emulator to run the existing software transparently.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said it was an iPhone killer?

Read the headlines much? ;)

The headline: Palm Announces Killer New Phone

Next time, try reading it yourself.

P.S.

Much much?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Snowblindeye]

no phone company is in a dominant position (and certainly not Apple - not even close I'm afraid), and no company has yet to produce a "killer" phone to put them in the dominant position.

Thats right. To put some numbers on it in terms of OS marketshare (Q3 2008):

• Symbian OS: 46.6%
• iPhone OS: 17.3%
• RIM BlackBerry OS: 15.2%
• Windows Mobile: 13.6%

Source: Wikipedia

Especially in the US people tend to underestimate Symbian, because Nokia isn't that well represented here. Sometimes I wonder if the have given up on this market.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[James McP]

Bet you had a GSM Treo. My boss and I both got Treo650's within a month of each other, mine was the slightly older Sprint version compared to his ATT GSM. His had the disabled BT DUN and several other ATT-modified features.

His was unusuable for multiple reasons. First off, ATT's connection to the internet sucked. If he pulled an updated off ATT's website it nearly maxed out the bandwidth (Was that GPRS or HSPDA? I forget now). If he tried to hit our corporate email server it took 5-10 minutes. My phone, configured with his email account, would pull the same mail down in less than 30 seconds (he got a *lot* of mail.) His would crash when one of the ATT apps told him he had an SMS from his wife.

You can see the problems if you compare the number of updates for the Sprint software (6 last time I looked) vs. the ATT version (19, I think).

He finally got a blackjack. It played nicer but email still took forever to download and it wigged out every time he tried to look at email attachments. He generally didn't use it as anything but a phone.

I'm not going to say my 650 was perfect; I'd crash it about once a month when two 3rd party apps would fight for dominance. If I didn't like having a wiki tied into almost every app or the app that let me use the original Jot handwriting recognition I could have stopped the crashing.

I retired my 650 a few months ago for a Centro. I miss the 650's large battery but I love the Centro's size. My only real dislike of the Centro is the lack of text input (rectified by Tealscript). I can still crash the Centro, but they still get tracked down to 3rd party apps.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[brianez21]

Nevertheless, the iPhone was one of the first smartphones (and definitely the first one I encountered) to have a "favorites" list.

My aged Treo 650 had a favorites list on the main screen of the phone app. Disclaimer: I own an iPhone now.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Sancho]

I must have completely overlooked that, then. Damn :)

Not like the Treo is an acceptable smartphone these days. Software-wise, they're just ancient. :( It's really a shame, because I liked PalmOS about 10 years ago.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[rbanffy]

Well... They can make an Eclipse plug-in, bundle a couple GNU cross-compilers and everybody is pretty much all set.

Xcode is great, but it's not that much superior to everything else to make people jump to it.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[rbanffy]

"Chances are if they come too close to be an iPhone killer they are using some of apples patents."

Apple and Palm probably have a cross-licensing agreement. Remember PalmOS uses a lot of Macintosh (classic) technology.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Lars T.]

You know, kind of an EMP that only acts on devices associated with smugness.

Just use a hammer on anything you own.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[GooberToo]

The only thing I've seen which has a hope of being an iPhone killer are running Android. Right now, the G1 is about the only offering but about a half dozen others, by different carriers, will be coming out in the very near future. Additionally, the G1 already has superior hardware when compared to the iPhone 3G. Heck, even Garmin is getting into the phone business with an Android offering.

Android is already proving to be a competitor with the iPhone. The only thing holding it back is software. The next major Android release should finally place the G1 (and other Android phones) ahead of or on par with Apple's iPhone in capabilities, performance, and ease of use; which frankly really isn't that bad today. The fact that current hardware already exceeds the iPhone and applications can do thing on Android which are simply no allowed or impossible on the iPhone should give Android phones a boost for market share.

If you want to look at pros and cons, I previously posted about it.

Considering Android and the limited carriers (T-Mobile), the G1 already has a pretty descent size market. Once it's available from multiple carriers with a richer selection of applications and capabilities (provided via SDK and TOS), the iPhone will finally have real competition.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not really any different from a native app written in any other language that you download and install on your phone.

Obviously, the hardware access isn't going to be available to random websites that you visit in your browser.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[GooberToo]

Unfortunately the Android API's are an area that seems somewhat deficient in a number of places (real-time low latency PCM audio anyone - how can something so fundamental have been so badly done?!). Anyone wanting to write any half-way serious game or audio based app is stuck using a shitty "send-this-file-to-the-output" style API.

It's coming. Don't hold your breath but several serious API short comings should be addressed in the next major Android release. Android is without a doubt, very usable and easy to use. Is it an iPhone? No. Is it within reach of meeting or exceeding iPhone user's expectations? Yes, absolutely. The best thing here is, it's only software. To get ahead of Android and it's current (and forth coming) offerings will require iPhone users to buy yet another phone. That leaves current Android owners, versus current and future iPhone users, in a must better position; especially as Android continues to mature.

usability as a prime concern

That's not the first time I've read such a comment yet no one seems to be able to clearly state what that means. If you mean on screen keyboard, well, it's coming but I always wonder what stupid things people are doing that they require one handed typing. Considering the phone is already plenty usable, albeit with short comings, what does that mean? If it means latency, improvements and optimizations are coming. Per the Google developer's I've spoken with, high, immediate priorities include usability improvements, optimizations, reduced latency, improved battery, reduced footprint. And once you learn you can already create Android applications which are not possible or not allowed on the iPhone, the application future for Android gets really exciting.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you can think of the iPhone as a 7th generation iPod, that just so happens to be a PDA and a phone as well. While I'm sure the majority of iPhone owners bought it as a smartphone, I wouldn't be surprised if a significant percent also factored in the fact that it could replace their beloved iPod music player with another Apple product and have one fewer device to carry around, which is a much smaller step than switching to a new desktop OS.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[greywire]

The past decade of iPod dominance has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither a laundry list of features nor a very appealing price can compete with cool factor and a really nice user experience.

Dan Aris

I think the past 20+ years of Windows-PC dominance has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that a laundry list of features and an appealing price can beat the sh*t out of cool factor and a really nice user experience..

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[LunarCrisis]

I would assume that would be turned off for non-local applications. . .

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[tcolberg]

But if Palm can bring themselves to provide an interface with Linux and Mac boxes simultaneously, they've made a sale here.

What exactly do you mean by "interface"? From the way I've heard it described in the video demos, the 8GB will be accessible via microUSB cable as standardized USB mass storage. If you meant interface like a PIM manager, I think Palm's goal of working in the cloud is to move away from desktop syncronization.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Planesdragon]

Yeah, why would this be better? Unless it's open it's crap.

The Pre is at least as open as Android is, for exactly the same reasons.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[commodoresloat]

Does anyone doubt that this year's hardware from Apple is going to blow Apple's previous year's hardware out of the water?

Yes. I love Apple, but it doesn't look like they have much up their sleeve at the moment.

So what's the window of opportunity for this knock-off to "kill" the iPhone?

Two things: MMS (duh), and copy-and-paste (double duh). It's not the stuff the iPhone can't do; it's the stuff it won't. The slide-out keyboard is an added bonus.

No shit: I've been holding on to my Treo for a long time now; been watching the iphone but those two things have kept me from upgrading. Now I'll be able to upgrade without even having to switch my carrier. Win.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I read the rss link as "Palin announces killer new phone" and was expecting just that.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Jorgandar]

I guess i disagree somewhat. Nintendo was losing the console wars until they made Wii. And Wii doesn't necessarily do everything PS3/Xbox does and better. In fact in a lot of ways is way less powerful. However they still compete and win. Instead of playing the sony/microsoft game, trying to outdo them with more powerful hardwear and super-killer graphics, they changed the game. They went back to gaming basics - simple, fun to play, easy to play, and easy to learn with their wii controlers. It was an instant hit because it appealed to "the rest of us".

That's what apple has done. It wasn't about the best hardware or even the most features. They have the coolness factor.

You dont beat a leader by playing their game, you change the game. I dont think an iPhone knockoff like this appears to be will work. They need to reinvent what a phone is. my 2 pennies.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Savione]

I live on a mountain range, and one major reason I didn't get an iPhone until 3G was that the normal Edge signal doesn't reach here. 3G works fine, and I find reception to be much better than my old Verizon phone, where I would have to walk around my office looking for the sweet spot.

I like the iPhone's battery life. Especially desirable is the fact that I can fully charge it during the 15 minutes it's plugged into my car on the way to work every morning.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... you obviously have no idea what you are doing on a WinMo phone, and since I work at a AT&T store, I can most certainly tell you that TONS of people send MMS. Apple includes what they want, not what consumers want. You should wake up and smell the roses, you are off on pretty much every point and show your ignorance on the subject.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[ignavus]

Maybe we good supporters of the capitalist system like to see some competition in our markets. Otherwise, Apple might rest on its haunches and stop innovating. Remember Microsoft and IE: that is what happens when everyone accepts a monopoly as the norm.

I want to see lots of Android phones competing with one another. I want to see other firms bring out "iPhone killers". Apple make over-priced luxury goods - and competition brings down the prices, and forces them to keep coming up with new ideas. That is what capitalism is about: not worshipping at the shrine of Apple every time they bring out a new expensive product.

Competition drives capitalism. Not worshipping a monopoly.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple hate is becoming fairly in vogue among the mom's basement, can't afford it crowd. I.E. - Digg.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[samkass]

Yes. I love Apple, but it doesn't look like they have much up their sleeve at the moment.

You must read different rumor sites than I do. I keep hearing about the stuff that Apple's recent chipmaking acquisitions have cooking regarding multi-core ARM chips and new PowerVR GPUs.

As for MMS and copy-and-paste... they come up every once in a rare while, but in the meantime the app selection more than makes up for it. If you already have a Treo on another provider I can see why you wouldn't want to switch, though. But this is hardly going to "kill" the iPhone... your situation is hardly an overwhelming segment of the market.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Belial6]

The one feature that I wish my iPhone had that Apple decided to leave out is Stability. I count count the number of times that Apple first party apps have crashed, and the entire phone has crashed on me at least a dozen times. To be fair, it has gotten better with more recent OS updates, but it still is not entirely stable.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Hucko]

So living in USA can have an advantage! :( Australia does exactly the same as Britain; I've been looking up and down the east coast.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've seen what the typical legacy PalmOS application looks like you wouldn't have given that comment any serious thought. It's seriously primitive stuff.

The iPhone launched with no back catalog. Heck, it still trails Windows Mobile and Blackberry in the sheer number of available apps. But that isn't stopping it from murdering the competition. Sometimes it's better to not rest on your laurels.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[okmijnuhb]

Exactly, apparently there's no subway in Cupertino where the iPhone is developed.
Even the New York Times application doesn't cache all the articles for browsing on the subway.
What's up with that?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[dangitman]

Apple was basically telling developers "you can make iPhone-optimized websites! They're just like apps, honest!" Palm is telling developers "our SDK is based around web conventions that any web developer would already be familiar with."

How is that a "huge difference"? it's basically the same statement with different wording.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Hucko]

Curious. I too have been linux only since 2003, but I recently used a Mac for 2 days and loved it. Not enough to give up linux but enough to vehemently encourage my Microsoft touting family to change to Macs. (I'm still working on my delivery... 1 out of 18 or so converts isn't great.) Given a choice between the two and I'll promote Apple first. Though linux would suit all bar my financial advisor brother -- personal macros in excel stopping him...

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Hucko]

Wrap a coil around the head and turn it into an electro-magnet?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[aliquis]

I'd pick either of Sandisk Sansa Clip, Sandisk Sansa Fuze, Cowon D2, Cowon O2, Cowon S9, Sony NWZ-S600, Sony NWZ-S700, Sony NWZ-A800, Sony NWZ-X1000, Archos 5, iRiver P7, iRiver P35 and whatever one chinese one with modified firmware was called over iPod. And the only iPod which got anything at all going for it is the Touch.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[aliquis]

with cool factor and a really nice user experience

I'll fix that for you:
Most people have no idea what other players offers beyond the iPod, they only know about the iPod and they have only used the iPod (or eventually seen some other cheap crap players and not other premium players) so they choose the iPod. It's not because it's better, it's because it's seen more everywhere.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you used the iPhone keyboard for an extended amount of time? It really is spectacular, especially with its intelligent word correction software. As for the mobile phone usability issue, the iPhone's contact management, reception and sound quality are well superior to the two Samsung phones I previously used. The iPhone is the first Apple device I've ever owned (being a long time Apple hater) and after using it for 6 months, there's no significant complaints I have about it.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[commodoresloat]

True that; I know a couple others still desperately clutching their treos like me but you're right this won't kill the iphone for most. It's not just the provider for me; I dig the iphone but copypasta is an everyday thing for me, not once in a rare while, and I don't see how the app selection makes up for the lack of a basic functionality. Yeah it does have a lot of cool apps, true, but I'd be constantly frustrated if I couldn't copy and paste a url or send a photo ... and I don't really like the iphone touchkeypad; I prefer the tactile feedback.

As for rumor sites, I don't read them at all; if Apple has all this stuff cooking, that sounds great, but if they're going to continue to handicap it from basic tasks I can't get too excited.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[danaris]

It's not because it's better, it's because it's seen more everywhere.

But how did it get that way in the first place? It's not like the iPod was the first mainstream MP3 player.

Dan Aris

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[aliquis]

Because it WAS better. Some people liked the Rio Karma but except that they did offer better UI, easier syncronization/transfer of files and was the only store around.

But that don't mean it's the best around now ..

Same thing with Sonys players, they have always had awesome sound and battery life, and decent UI I assume. But they required Sonicstage which sucked and they liked Atrac and didn't do MP3 even further back in time so they seriously sucked.
But they have changed and they don't suck now, though there is more interesting players out there if audio quality, nice UI and good batterylife is your most important points. Still good players though.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[mdwh2]

I agree that "killer" usually refers to just having one unique feature, rather than doing everything better. A "killer app" for example would be something that has people buying the product, even if it has flaws in other areas.

That's why the iPhone is such a market leader now

Evidence? Ipod, yes, Iphone no. And what's the Iphone's killer feature (please - give me the specific feature, none of this vague subjective Just Works or "It does it in a way that's special/better/magic/cool/makes-me-feel-good-inside/not-been-done-before-but-I-can't-tell-you-why"...)?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[mdwh2]

In case you didn't see it, see my reply to the comment above: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1086449&cid=26386539

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[mdwh2]

I make no comment on how good the Palm phone is, but I see no evidence that it's only as good as 6 month old phones. On the contrary, the article claims they better it (and it's not clear that Palm themselves refer to the Iphone, anyway). All new phones compare themselves to the phones on the market, because that's the only way people can judge them. But it doesn't follow that products never get any better! Obviously, they do.

I somehow suspect that Palm have worked out that phone manufacturers (not just Apple, you know) will be releasing new phones too.

Apple themselves joined the market late (and far later than Palm) - did anyone complain that "it seems more of a desperation move to keep slightly relevant, by at least staying the game with a product in the same generation as everyone else"? After all, the Iphone could only compare itself to existing phones too (and if anything, it was a generation behind, not supporting 3G until later).

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[mdwh2]

Copy-and-paste is a fundamental UI feature. Given that the UI is the only thing that is supposed to be special about the Iphone, it is a relevant point.

MMS usage may be rare, but it should still be there on those rare times I use it. I don't want to have to go "Oh, I can't do that - I'm an Apple user". Perhaps I'd accept compromises on a budget phone, but not at the Iphone's price level!

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[mdwh2]

You're assuming that "dominant position" means "top selling". There are other forms of dominance - one of which is illustrated by the fact that we're having this discussion at all. The iPhone has become the benchmark against which any new smartphone is judged by the press and blogosphere.

Yes, I don't deny that Apple are kings when it comes to hype and getting free media attention.

But really - when we talk about killer products in the market place, we're talking market share, and not how many "bloggers" blog about it. If you want to say that lots of "bloggers" hype the Iphone on the "blogosphere", then you will have no disagreement from me.

Thing is, Apple don't try for the ultimate feature list: they decide which features most people will actually want, and implement them well.

Thank you for proving my point about the double standard. The OP criticised Palm for not having an ultimate feature list (insisting it do everything the Iphone does, and more). But here you argue that for the Iphone, what features it has or doesn't have doesn't matter, so long as people think it's done in a cool way (I say "cool", because no one ever explains how it's done better, instead just referring to subjective preferences "I like it better, I don't know why, it Just Is").

(But to comment on what you say: I've only sent a couple of MMS, but I was glad I could, rather than having to go "Sorry, I can't do that - I'm an Apple user" and then wondering why I'm having to make compromises on a phone that costs far more than the phone I did get. Which has copy and paste, video recording, Java, and a good enough web browser.)

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[mdwh2]

Thanks for the info, that's useful to read.

Not to mention that this is only restricted to "smartphones", but these days the boundary between "smart" and other phones is a lot more blurred - most phones can run applications (Java, but it's still useable), browse the web, do email and so on. This market is (presumably) far larger, and the Iphone is a tiny player in it - but they won't show up on this chart, because they have their own custom OS, or aren't considered "smart" phones.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[mdwh2]

Eh? Where did I say "iPod market"?

I mean the "mp3 player market", as opposed to the "phone market".

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Ilgaz]

Well my Sony Ericsson P1i does have a very good working (benchmarked) OpenGL ES 1.1 but only some game programmers (not more than 2-3) and Opera 9.5 beta folks used it. Thing works great but somehow nobody used it.

What you should wonder these days in light of iPhone is, will Developers make use of it? Will they trust to Palm?

As a smart phone user, I am watching the Developer tools for a planned device way more than I used to do after iPhone. If I planned to buy Palm, I would really watch how they treat developers, what developers think of them etc.

Unanswered and legitimate posts staying on SE UIQ3 developer forum for months explains recent crash of UIQ3 way better than media.

I bet Sony Experia X1 does beat Nokia, iPhone, Palm in hardware specs but we don't even hear about it.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Ilgaz]

Lets not forget that Adobe giant's Air framework and Flash 3 lite (free,installable) will make to all smart handsets one day. What will Palm only code do when it happens?

Air works offline, built on the frameworks web developers really know about and will have a gigantic userbase if Adobe really learned their lesson. Java is going to that point too.

If all industry decided on one standard, widgets have huge potential but what will a developer code for? Opera 9.5 Mobile? iPhone? Yahoo? Nokia? Here comes Palm now with another spec.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Ilgaz]

Why don't they ship plugins for OS X XCode, MS Visual Studio along with that IDE? Portable Developers doesn't really like Eclipse for some reason as far as I have seen. People loved XCode for developing on iPhone for example and still there are Windows developers asking for MS Visual Studio support.

Is it really hard to make XCode/Visual Studio support?

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[ultramk]

I was referring to where you said: "Ipod, yes. We're talking about a different market here."

I disagree. The potential user for an iPhone is almost identical to the potential user for an iPod. Cell phones are completely ubiquitous, and the non-enterprise market utterly dwarfs the enterprise market. If you created a Venn diagram of people who use cell phones and people who use MP3 players, there will be an enormous overlap. (i.e. almost 100% of people with an MP3 player are going to own a cell. Somewhat lower percentage in the other direction.)

Almost everyone I know has an iPod of some type, which is what I was trying to get across. The few exceptions are people who simply don't enjoy music/audiobooks/whatever.

As far as the rest of your original comment, I think the part on which the disagreement rests is that the iPhone has a lot of mindshare right now, in fact a lot more mindshare than it has marketshare. If you ask a random person off the street, "what's the best cellphone you can buy", there's a good chance you will hear "iPhone".

That is a really difficult barrier to entry for a new product. It isn't really fair, but this is what happens when a formerly dominant company (palm) exits a market, and tries to reenter it years later. They have to prove themselves all over again.

Of course, one thing that doesn't help is that some of us who were serious Palm fans back in the day had big-time issues with syncing and support that left a bad taste in our mouths. Even if it were the best phone in the world, I would have a hard time learning to trust them again.

Also, anyone who has come to rely on Visual Voicemail will have a hard time going back to navigating audio menus.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[EnglishTim]

Remember that Palm's been around for some time making handheld computers. Apple abandoned handheld development for quite a time between the Newton and the iPhone so it's a fair bet that Palm have quite a few patents that would cover the iPhone, just as Apple has some that would cover the Palm Pre. My guess is that they'll do some kind of cross-licensing deal, if it even gets that far.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[itsdapead]

Thank you for proving my point about the double standard. The OP criticised Palm for not having an ultimate feature list

I suggest that you go and read the OP again. It does not say what you think it says. Nowhere does it mention the "ultimate feature list" - just "everything the iPhone does" (not to hard if, as you seem to think, the iPhone is missing so many features) and "do it better" (not "do more").

I say "cool", because no one ever explains how it's done better, instead just referring to subjective preferences "I like it better, I don't know why, it Just Is"

Yes, that's what people often say when they encounter "good design", which includes things like logical and consistent layouts, responsiveness and not cramming in a mugs eyeful of features, half of which are barely usable.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[TheRaven64]

Why do you assume I'm talking about the IDE? The thing that makes development on Apple platforms nice is the frameworks they inherited from NeXT. The developer tools are just icing, it's the APIs that matter. The iPhone uses OpenStep Foundation and a significantly cleaned-up version of AppKit (removing the NSView / NSCell distinction, and a few other things). It is far more fun to work with than anything I've seen competing platforms produce.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[mdwh2]

Nowhere does it mention the "ultimate feature list" - just "everything the iPhone does"

Forget I said "ultimate feature list" if you prefer - what I mean is, the double standard is that the Palm is expected to do "everything the Iphone does", whilst it's okay for the Iphone to miss out features that other phones have.

(not to hard if, as you seem to think, the iPhone is missing so many features) and "do it better" (not "do more").

This doesn't make sense - the OP claimed that the Palm must, at least, do everything that the Iphone does, and not the features that it is missing. And hardness or not is irrelevant - if implementing features isn't hard, why is the Iphone excused for not doing so?

Yes, that's what people often say when they encounter "good design", which includes things like logical and consistent layouts, responsiveness and not cramming in a mugs eyeful of features, half of which are barely usable.

Anyone can make claims like this. I claim the Palm will be the best phone, because it's designed well, it just works, and although it doesn't do anything new, it does them in a way that's better. See? It's marketing buzzwords that contain no information or evidence on what is actually different.

Good design most certainly can be described in objective terms - at least, this is the case for every other product. But again, the double standard is that Apple is excused from this.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[ryanov]

I've had a 700p since sometime in 2006. There's plenty else to complain about with this phone, but phones that last 1 year MAX" is not one of them.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[ryanov]

Aside from space on the phone and EVDO capability, I wish I were still using a 650. The camera was much better in low light (let's face it, I'm not using Palm's camera for high-res photos anyway) and it was always more stable.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[NuShrike]

It's nice it's using the Omap3430, the successor to the one used in the (king of GLBenchmark) Nokia N95. Not only that, it's a next-gen ARM Cortex (verison 7) architecture that can scale from 600MHz to 1GHz dynamically.

Doesn't hurt that it should have a more advanced 3D GPU from PowerVR that powered the Nokia N95, and the iPhone.

Good thing Palm didn't get stupid and go with a super-sluggish and driver-less Qualcomm SoC, but locking with Sprint seems rather silly. The iPhone sure didn't launch with CDMA to establish itself as a device for world consumption.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Barence, the submitter, said it was:

Palm announced what promises to be the product that finally matches and even betters the Apple iPhone, and certainly looks to be the most important product announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[Refrag]

The device has a keyboard. It isn't a good keyboard, but even so it's a whole lot better than the keyboard on the iPhone - and the lack of a keyboard is a significant part of the reason I don't have an iPhone.

Have you used the iPhone's keyboard? I bought an iPhone on day-one (my Sony Ericsson T610 died a week before the iPhone's release) and while I was waiting on an AT&T salesperson to ring me up, I checked out their demo units. I'd never typed on a phone's QWERTY keyboard before in my life since I was coming from a T610.

I decided to jump in with both thumbs and immediately fired up the Notes application to test out the keyboard. I quickly typed out a sentence as fast as I could and when I looked to see how close my results were I was only off by one letter.

The iPhone is what has made me realize that I have NEVER touch-typed in my life and that all this time all I was doing was typing by muscle-memory. I can easily type on the iPhone without looking at the keyboard at all with great results. And, the excellent bonus for me is that I'm not pounding my thumbs and fingers into hard little keys that make my fingertips sore if I use the keyboard too much.

And if, as claimed, the device has good Microsoft Exchange support, then for many commercial users it's one better than the iPhone on that count as well.

How so? I have two friends that use their iPhone with their work Exchange accounts and they have no complaints.

the iPhone, despite being very pretty, isn't actually a very good telephone - contacts management is poor, reception is poor, battery life isn't good, sound quality is so-so

How would you improve contacts management? I think the iPhone is close to perfect in that arena. I don't have Exchange but I do have MobileMe so I get the same sort of updates to my contacts over the air that my friends get through Exchange. I can quickly get to the right contact in my list of 55 and if I want to I can search search my contacts easily by name and company.

I don't have an iPhone 3G, but I have no issues with the battery. I'm a fairly heavy user (podcasts, music, web browsing, e-mail, Twitter) and I can get two-days use out of it at times. Worse case scenario for me is that I need to recharge at the end of the day. Obviously, the 3G has shorter battery life if you're using the 3G radio, but that isn't unique to the iPhone.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[mdwh2]

Okay, so if we take the market as being "phones + mp3 players", then the Iphone is an even smaller product in that market.

As far as the rest of your original comment, I think the part on which the disagreement rests is that the iPhone has a lot of mindshare right now, in fact a lot more mindshare than it has marketshare. If you ask a random person off the street, "what's the best cellphone you can buy", there's a good chance you will hear "iPhone".

And your evidence for this claim is?

Even if it were the best phone in the world, I would have a hard time learning to trust them again.

Same reason I don't touch Apple with a bargepole - their previous products (mainly the original Mac OS, not to mention Quicktime) were abysmal.

Re:How many iPhone killers is that?

[itsdapead]

Anyone can make claims like this. I claim the Palm will be the best phone, because it's designed well, it just works, and although it doesn't do anything new, it does them in a way that's better.

Well, that's quite clever since you can't actually buy the Palm yet and all people are going on is a video demonstration and, if you're lucky, a few minutes "hands on" at CES. Whereas the iPhone has been available for some time, and has been the subject of in-depth comparative reviews which frequently come to conclusions such as:

While the iPhone is not the most feature-rich device, this group of experts found that when it comes to usability, iPhone does, indeed, live up to its hype.

Link

I'm not judging the Palm just yet - it looks promising - but since the launch of the iPhone there have been lots of phones with impressive feature lists and iPhone-inspired aesthetics which - as with the HTC in the review above - fail to cut the mustard when it comes to actual usability.

Good design most certainly can be described in objective terms.

Yes, and terms like logical and consistent layouts, responsiveness and avoiding feature creep are objective, as is "for fsck's sake don't try to cram in every last feature that some man and his dog has asked for". You'll see these coming up in in-depth reviews of Apple stuff. Its just that such decisions and principles - especially the reasons why things have been left out - may not be immediately obvious to an end user.

killer phone

[FireStormZ]

quick its coming right at us /ned

Two important points ...

[daveime]

1 - Is is shiny ?

2 - Will it blend ?

Re:Two important points ...

[steveo777]

The pictures look shiny... only one test left..

Re:Two important points ...

[notsaenej]

...sigh...honestly a score of 4 on a two year old joke? And if someone replies with "Whatcha talkin 'bout Willis?" I'm going to stuff myself in a blender.

Re:Two important points ...

[Cjstone]

Whatcha talkin 'bout Willis?

Re:Two important points ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Whatcha talkin 'bout Willis?"

Re:Two important points ...

[daveime]

Better a 4 year old joke than a reference to a 23 year old sitcom, that wasn't particularly funny apart from a pouting black shortass with one catchphrase.

*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[VShael]

There have been plenty of phones on the world market better than the iPhone for some time now.
The iPhone wasn't even the best phone in the world when it came out.

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[dunkelfalke]

hear hear.
the currently best pda phone is imho htc touch hd.

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[DrDitto]

Like what? The Nokia N95? The iPhone has beautiful industrial design, a great touchscreen, and an intuitive, polished OS (unlike Symbian). And I don't even own one! I have an Android G1 phone since I'm a T-mobile customer. Android is pretty nice, but it is not quite up to the polish of the iPhone.

If the world market was cornered with wonderful products, then you would see companies like Google and Apple developing Android and iPhones. They see opportunity. I agree.

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[mdwh2]

I am in full agreement. Sure, the Iphone is a nice phone, but it's just one of many. To be fair, the fault is with PC Pro rather than Slashdot who are just quoting this nonsensical statement ("finally matches and even betters the Apple iPhone").

Although in a way, it's a cunning statement - whilst fans would want to accept PC Pro's belief that the Iphone is the Best Phone Ever, they can't agree with this statement without admitting that the Palm is better than the Iphone. For the rest of us, who have been using phones long before the Iphone joined the market late, we'll just ignore the statement and judge the Palm against the market as a whole.

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[mdwh2]

We could endlessly debate what we think is better, but the point is that "killer" usually refers to market share, and not what some people on a forum think is best. One might refer to making an Ipod killer, because the Ipod is currently the dominant mp3 player - it doesn't matter whether one thinks the Ipod is good or not. But this isn't true of the Iphone - you could think its the best phone in existence, but one refers to an "X killer" to refer to wiping it out in the market place. If Palm are settling themselves on only comparing themselves to the Iphone's market share, then they're never going to be a major player anyway.

Otherwise, you might as well get people referring to new computers as a potential "Amiga killer", because they like Amigas, and are waiting for something better to come along.

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[nicolas.kassis]

But Palm doesn't have the brand that apple does so it won't get popular. Creative Xen is an example. More features but no brand.

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[cowscows]

Palm built a brand once. Then they squandered it. They could build it again.

Apple went through the same pattern.

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[iserlohn]

Having been a forever scarred user of WinMo phones before, the Touch HD to me is like a fighter jet piloted by Sideshow Bob.

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[Frools]

Just FYI the N95 is NOT touch screen.
None of the current n-series are, although iirc there is a new model due with touch screen

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[blueZ3]

I think that would be hard for Palm to do.

Back when I got my first Palm (a IIIe) in 2000 or so, Palm was the epitome of gadgety-goodness: simple to use, long battery life, and open to development. I'm not even trained a programmer and I tinkered with Palm programming (heck, for a couple of months I was actually working on a Palm program for an employer). I owned that original IIIe, a IIIc (with color!), a T-3 and two Treos. Palm devices were simple, fast, and reliable--with a user interface that wasn't cloned from a desktop metaphore (curse you, Bill Gates, and your idiotic WinCE, too).

Unfortunately, as the world of mobile computing moved on around Palm (and my Palm devices), Palm stood still. The Treo was still using the hideous Blazer browser and the applications and interface were stuck in the 90's. I kept hoping against hope that Palm would come out with their forever-promised-but-never-delivered Linux OS, but it never happened.

When my second Treo died an untimely death in an unfortunate swimming pool accident, I bought "just a phone" and never looked back.

I think that for most people interested in Smart Phones, Palm says: old-fashioned, poorly supported, and not really up-to-snuff. Much like American car manufacturers have to fight the poor-quality, unreliable image long after their cars have become competitive, Palm will have an image problem for quite some time.

Too bad, really. They were giants, once.

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[wvmarle]

It is quite interesting and impressive though that Apple, a newcomer in the mobile phone scene, simply seems to set the standard against which virtually any smartphone is measured these days.

I don't think many companies ever managed to pull that off. Enter a new market, and become the reference point for the competition.

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[mdarksbane]

I'd argue that it has more to do with slashdot's US-centric coverage. They aren't comparing the iPhone to the global market, but to the Storm, the G1, and the windows mobile smartphones on the market in the US. Here the iPhone is pretty much the second smart phone to have a large appeal (after the blackberry, and that was still only really for businessmen) and arguably the best major phone on the market currently. It is definitely the best selling *within the US.*

Yes, the US is aeons behind other countries when it comes to cell phones. Blame the wonderful monopolies we have. You have to be a real phone nut here to buy an unlocked phone, and some of the major providers
don't even let you do that.

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[fishdan]

As a former Palm employee I must add: I used to have a railroad, Made it run. Made it race against time...

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[zzottt]

Thank you for the wonderful mental imagery first thing in the morning... I almost lost my coffee fighting the laugh.

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[Fear the Clam]

Palm was screwing Mac users even before they imploded. I'll never buy another Palm device.

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[lymond01]

I'll bite. While the iPhone lacks in some areas, I find its interface and usability far beyond any Blackberry, Palm, or Nokia phone I've ever used. And if I have to choose between an experience where everything I use is smooth, versus everything I uses is meh, but it also offers MMS and a central message storage area...I'll go with smooth.

So what's better than the iPhone? (It'll just be a matter of preference anyway -- I'm one of the lucky few who loves the iPhone keyboard.)

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[Just Some Guy]

Palm built a brand once. Then they squandered it. They could build it again.

Oh, they still do - just perhaps not the brand they'd want. See also: "Vista".

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[Anonymous Coward]

...PC Pro's belief that the Iphone is the Best Phone Ever

Not true, no Apple product has ever made the PC Pro A-List!!! As a long time reader I can confirm that PC Pro has a clear anti Apple bias. Yes there is the odd fair comment from individual columnists - for example the excellent Jon Honeyball - but it seems to me that there is an editorial policy designed to provoke a strong reaction. And hats off to Tim Danton, the editor, because it's a policy that seems to be working.

In fact it didn't surprise me to see that TFA was also written by Tim Danton who is responsible for most of the back-handed compliments to Apple.

My point is that if you want fair and unbiased opinion don't buy PC Pro because they ain't as honest as they used to be.

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[iluvcapra]

To be fair, we've never seen Sideshow Bob pilot a fighter jet, and he was able to handle a Wright Flyer competently, so this would indicate that he at least would have some aptitude for it.

Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone?

[mdwh2]

It'll just be a matter of preference anyway

Well that's exactly the point - you prefer the Iphone, whilst I and others are happy using other phones. Claims like "Finally matches the Iphone" need backing up with objective reasons, not subjective preferences like "it's smooth, and not meh".

No GSM support in the US?

[thammoud]

Only Sprint. I don't think switching will even be a consideration for a lot of people. Palm always finds a way to screw themselves. Too bad, looks like a great phone.

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[Amouth]

very true.. we use at&t not by choice but rather fucntion.. they are the largest GSM provider in the US.. and the rest of the world is GSM.. meaning one phone works just about every where..

from a biz perspective.. any company that has people travel overseas this isn't even an option..

truely screwing them selves

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[Enry]

Verizon has at least one phone (Blackberry 8830) that works on both CDMA and GSM.

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[danaris]

My wife has a Mototola Z6c (I think that's the model, anyway) that's marketed as being a worldphone, because it does Verizon CDMA and GSM, with a slot for a SIM card. She uses it in China, and it works great.

But it would be greater if we didn't have to specifically go looking for a special phone so she can use it in China and at home...

Dan Aris

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[Rizz]

The Sprint Simply Everything line of plans are absolutely fantastic and well priced. All Sprint has needed was a phone to match (ala a Instinct with a real web browser). Maybe this is it?

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[steveo777]

I noticed that. I'm pretty excited for this phone (especially after I tried and returned a 3G iPhone), but until it's a GSM phone I won't touch it.

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[bruce_garrett]

This. I own an iPhone and I've been so disappointed with its PIM functionality that I'm still carrying around my Sony Clie. There is no native notepad sync on the iPhone. The security model is too coarse...I either lock the entire phone or leave everything open. And I can't sync the iPhone with my Linux box. I could go on...but the point is I need that PIM functionality more in a smart phone then I need the entertainment stuff.

I am dumping my iPhone when the contract is up this July. I was really looking forward to this new Palm device. But...Sprint? No thank you. I guess my last hope is Android now...

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[edmicman]

Why not? Apple banked on people switching to AT&T when the iPhone wasn't available on CDMA networks...why wouldn't people in turn drop GSM for other networks for other phones?

It's too bad we can't have one stupid network here and use any phone on any network, though.

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[powerlord]

But it would be greater if we didn't have to specifically go looking for a special phone so she can use it in China and at home...

Umm ... have you considered switching to AT&T or T-Mobile?

Both run GSM networks in the US, and quite a number of the phone on each are "world ready".

You'll still have to swap out the SIM card for a local one (unless you want to be gouged for roaming long distance), but its an option.

Verizon might theoretically have more coverage in general, but I have rarely found anywhere I've travelled that hasn't had reception with T-Mobile.

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[danaris]

Verizon might theoretically have more coverage in general, but I have rarely found anywhere I've travelled that hasn't had reception with T-Mobile.

I know some people in our area who tried T-Mobile, and got practically no service. I don't know where you generally travel, but we live far from any major metropolitan areas, and rarely frequent them. We're not exactly in the sticks, but we're relatively rural.

We have been seriously considering switching to AT&T, thoughâ"partly for the iPhone, partly because they're slightly more permissive than Verizon with what you can do with your phone, and partly because they're GSM. We just haven't taken the plunge yet.

Dan Aris

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, all Sprint needs to do is to stop being Sprint. You know, the company with the most dropped calls, the company with the least coverage in the US, the company that has "fired" customers for daring to contact customer support, the company with the most billing snafus (which just may be why people are calling customer support in the first place)...

Sprint's "Simply Everything" plan isn't well priced either. It's $100 a month, and that's not including those fees that they love to sneak in there.

And it's not really "unlimited" - attempt to use it as such, and you can expect to be "fired" from Sprint. They just won't tell you what the limits are before they terminate support. (It apparently turns out to be something like 1000 minutes and 50MB transfer - go over those limits, and forget about using your phone any more.)

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[Dr Kilovolt]

Specifically, no unlocked GSM? I'm not interested. I like my T-Mobile service, and I won't consider an iPhone until I can *legally* get an unlocked one, either.

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[saintlupus]

I need that PIM functionality more in a smart phone then I need the entertainment stuff.

I'm with you. I wanted a smartphone that could sync properly with my Linux box, and wasn't a complete pain in the ass to use to update the calendar and the to-do list. It seems so simple.

I ended up buying a Treo 650 for fifty bucks on eBay.

--saint

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[ricegf]

I'm certainly disappointed as well. I want an unlocked phone that accepts my SIM card. I have no intention of switching carriers just to use a particular phone, even though my contract with AT&T is long expired.

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[rbanffy]

It's Sprint for the launch. They didn't say how long it would last.

And you are not counting the international GSM version that's bound to come some day. Palm has been selling unlocked Centros lately. Mine was GSM and unlocked.

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[fm6]

The Centro was also CDMA-only at first. (The initial partner was Sprint, if I remember correctly.) This is the only way you can introduce a new smart phone that's intended for the U.S. market, where CDMA is far and away the leading technology. Unless you have money to burn (which Palm certainly does not!) you introduce the phone for one kind of network and start production on the next version later.

The exception is phones that are designed for one particular network and never have versions for other networks. I could be mistaken, but I think most phones actually are designed that way.

This is a natural result of the fact that the U.S. chose not to standardize on a single cellular technology, unlike most of the rest of the planet, which uses GSM. (Some Slashdotters will remember attempt at CDMA imperialism just before the U.S. invaded Iraq.) This is a bone of contention in many corners. For example, Vodafone, a British company that owns 45% of Verizon Wireless, would very much like to see Verizon migrate to GSM, since that Verizon's infrastructure costs would then benefit from the huge economies of scale already seen by Vodafone's GSM operation in other countries. And of course Palm would save big bucks if they didn't have to create multiple versions of each new phone.

Somehow, our continuing resistance to the metric system comes to mind!

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[nxtw]

The Centro was also CDMA-only at first. (The initial partner was Sprint, if I remember correctly.) This is the only way you can introduce a new smart phone that's intended for the U.S. market, where CDMA is far and away the leading technology. Unless you have money to burn (which Palm certainly does not!) you introduce the phone for one kind of network and start production on the next version later.

CDMA (as in cdmaOne and CDMA2000 with 1xRTT) is technologically superior than GSM/GPRS/EDGE. It took a long time for UMTS to catch up. The US's biggest GSM carrier didn't even start deploying it until the past 3 years, and as a result the CDMA carriers had a 2-4 year head start on 3G services.
Unfortunately CDMA as implemented by US carriers is lacking user friendly features (namely SIMs). From what I understand, the signalling protocols on top of the air interface are much closer to the old U.S. analog AMPS system - of which Verizon had tons of until the FCC permitted carriers to shut off analog service last year.

CDMA's market share in the US isn't nearly as big as you suggest. There are at least 107 million customers using GSM/UMTS networks (AT&T and T-Mobile) and there are probably somewhere around 130-150 million customers using CDMA (I can't find any good numbers; Sprint Nextel has 50.1 million customers, but some of these are on the old Nextel network.)

There's no special network-specific implementation needed for devices on Verizon and Sprint's CDMA networks as of now. New mobile communication bands have been opened up (AWS and 700 MHz). I believe T-Mobile is the only nationwide carrier who has launched service in one of these new bands.

The exception is phones that are designed for one particular network and never have versions for other networks. I could be mistaken, but I think most phones actually are designed that way.

You are mistaken. Many phones are released on the different US CDMA carriers with different firmware. GSM (non-UMTS) phones are treated the same way.

Handset design differences are minimal when differences in frequencies do come up (among CDMA networks or among GSM/UMTS networks); usually a handset for a market will differ in the version of the chipset inside and perhaps the antennas. The software will be different as well.

This is a natural result of the fact that the U.S. chose not to standardize on a single cellular technology, unlike most of the rest of the planet, which uses GSM. (Some Slashdotters will remember attempt at CDMA imperialism just before the U.S. invaded Iraq.) This is a bone of contention in many corners.

GSM and UMTS is all that's used in most of Europe and has the majority of the entire world market. But CDMA has significant deployment in Asia, incuding China. Japan and Korea used/use networks in compatible with those elsewhere (some CDMA based), although both countries now have UMTS on the 2100 MHz band like Europe.

Qualcomm is the owner of many patents on WCDMA, which is used by UMTS. They also make many of the baseband chips going into WCDMA phones. So, in a way, everyone is now using American (W)CDMA technology.

Just about all the carriers will be moving over to the same technology when they start using LTE.

And of course Palm would save big bucks if they didn't have to create multiple versions of each new phone.

They don't have to. They could choose to exclude 2/3 of the US market, like Apple did. The iPhone 3G works in nearly every country, including China and South Korea.

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[fm6]

CDMA (as in cdmaOne and CDMA2000 with 1xRTT) is technologically superior than GSM/GPRS/EDGE.

I've heard that argued (mainly by CDMA technology vendors). The biggest claim I've heard is that you can cram more calls into a smaller airspace than with GSM. I suppose the absence of that famous GSM speaker buzz is also a factor.

I don't have to expertise to judge the validity of these arguments, but I suspect that cell networks lose more in extra hardware costs than they gain in CDMA's various advantages. CDMA has something like 10-20% of the global users that GSM has. That's got to hurt when you're buying equipment.

Also, when you compare CDMA and GSM, you should really look at the baseline, not the recent bells and whistles. My first phone (2000) was CDMA, and my biggest disappointment was that there was no SMS. Texting has been big with GSM from day one. In many third world countries, the cell networks get more income from texting than they do from calls. I heard an interview with one Philippines politico who was disconcerted to find that his children could text faster than he could type!

Unfortunately CDMA as implemented by US carriers is lacking user friendly features (namely SIMs). From what I understand, the signalling protocols on top of the air interface are much closer to the old U.S. analog AMPS system - of which Verizon had tons of until the FCC permitted carriers to shut off analog service last year.

Two issues here. First, I suspect that the lack of SIM cards (or the equivalent) is by design. U.S. carriers are notorious for making it difficult for customers to change carriers, and for wanting to bundle all their services and hardware together; SIM cards interfere with both objectives.

Second, the signaling protocol is symptomatic of a country having to support legacy infrastructure. Not an issue with countries that don't have the legacy infrastructure, either because they didn't have the resources to build it (developing world) or because they were slow to modernize their telecom system (western Europe).

It occurs to me that a system without SIM cards would never fly in Europe. People there travel across international borders a lot, and having to carry separate phones for every local network would be a pain.

There's no special network-specific implementation needed for devices on Verizon and Sprint's CDMA networks as of now

I have no idea what you're saying here. Are you saying that there's nothing particularly special about GSM versus CDMA devices? If so, why aren't there any inexpensive GSM/CDMA phones?

Just about all the carriers will be moving over to the same technology when they start using LTE.

If I'm reading the Google article you linked correctly (possibly not) LTE will be implemented on top of GSM and CDMA, much as TCP/IP is currently implemented on top of diverse network layers. That doesn't remove the compatibility issue at the bottom of the stack.

They could choose to exclude 2/3 of the US market, like Apple did. The iPhone 3G works in nearly every country, including China and South Korea.

That's not a realistic alternative for most companies that aren't Apple. Apple's whole business model revolves around creating technology that works they way they want it to work, and hoping that it will catch on. This is typified in their computers (the only vendor that still doesn't officially support third-party OSs), their PDAs (that one didn't quite work out!), their MP3 players (that one certainly did) and now their phones.

If Palm were to function that way, they'd have to write off their relationships with Sprint and Verizon. That's never going to happen, because if it doesn't work out, they don't have other product lines to fall back on. Plus, their contracts with these companies probably helps pay their development costs, either through direct subsidy or the fact that these contracts make it easier to find financing. Probably a bit of both.

Re:No GSM support in the US?

[nxtw]

I've heard that argued (mainly by CDMA technology vendors). The biggest claim I've heard is that you can cram more calls into a smaller airspace than with GSM. I suppose the absence of that famous GSM speaker buzz is also a factor.

CDMA is clearly technologically superior; this is why the current TDMA-based GSM systems are being overlaid with UMTS/WCDMA networks. CDMA has less latency in data services, faster data rates (in the latest revisions), much cleaner handoffs, and no 20-mile distance limits. CDMA2000 1xRTT (which was deployed around the same time as GPRS and EDGE) isn't quite as fast as EDGE, but has about half the latency.

Modern UMTS/WCDMA have all the technical advantages with the user-friendly features of GSM.

Also, when you compare CDMA and GSM, you should really look at the baseline, not the recent bells and whistles. My first phone (2000) was CDMA, and my biggest disappointment was that there was no SMS. Texting has been big with GSM from day one. In many third world countries, the cell networks get more income from texting than they do from calls. I heard an interview with one Philippines politico who was disconcerted to find that his children could text faster than he could type!

The situation from 9 years ago doesn't matter. SMS was introduced by CDMA carriers around 2000-2001.

Are you saying that there's nothing particularly special about GSM versus CDMA devices? If so, why aren't there any inexpensive GSM/CDMA phones?

No. There's nothing special about US CDMA phones for different carriers and US GSM phones for different carriers. Verizon, Sprint, and ex-Alltel phones don't use special hardware exclusive to one carrier. Until the implementation of 3G, T-Mobile and AT&T phones didn't use special hardware either.

If I'm reading the Google article you linked correctly (possibly not) LTE will be implemented on top of GSM and CDMA, much as TCP/IP is currently implemented on top of diverse network layers. That doesn't remove the compatibility issue at the bottom of the stack.

The article clearly states that LTE is an air interface, not something to be implemented on top of GSM or CDMA. A signalling & authentication system would be implemented on top of LTE - something that might be implemented in sofwtare.

In fact, development of the next generation of CDMA2000, UMB, was discontinued in favor of LTE.

Looks cool, but...

[MikeRT]

It'll probably be too little, too late. Palm could have been the superpower in this area by building a new OS based on BeOS when they bought Be's assets. In fact, if they had forked BeOS by creating a proprietary new mobile OS for their products and ditching the original BeOS as a BSD-licensed product, they could have put both Microsoft and Apple on the defensive in the operating system market.

Re:Looks cool, but...

[yttrstein]

BeOS lost the OS wars long before Palm bought it. They lost by doing the worst thing that they could have possibly ever done:

They made a lightning fast, small, good looking, stable, awe-inspiring operating system that didn't actually run anything useful.

Re:Looks cool, but...

[modulo]

What you are talking about (a new OS based on BeOS) is Cobalt, which nobody wanted, not even Palm.

BeOS had some nice ideas, but if it was really that great they wouldn't have gone out of business.

Case in point: it was supposed to be so great with video, but personally, on a PIII 750, I found that mplayer on Linux performed a lot better than VideoLAN on BeOS. If the situation was reversed, I would have bought it. Alas.

Re:Looks cool, but...

[mdwh2]

But, but ... you could dual-boot it with Windows! Isn't that a good enough solution when you want to run software that's not on your OS?

Re:Looks cool, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

lightning fast, small, good looking, stable, awe-inspiring operating system that didn't actually run anything useful.

sounds like all the things everyone wants in a mobile, just add app store.

Re:Looks cool, but...

[linhares]

WTF? Ubuntu is NOT good looking! Oh wait...

Re:Looks cool, but...

[MikeRT]

They made a lightning fast, small, good looking, stable, awe-inspiring operating system that didn't actually run anything useful.

They actually did have some good apps like Gobe Productive and E-Picture. They weren't up to the same level as Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop, but they were a start. In addition, some major producers of high-end audio software were porting their products over before the platform died due to funding issues.

Furthermore, as an open source project, it wouldn't have mattered. Many people who wanted desktop Linux would have turned to BeOS and brought it up to speed. Most of us would have ended up switch to open source BeOS by now instead of considering or actually switching to MacOS X.

Re:Looks cool, but...

[Khopesh]

What are you talking about?

Palm was at one point positioned to dominate the PDA and smartphone industries. They were never anything useful on the desktop (even software-wise). Buying BeOS was a painful mistake, specifically in that it was not well-suited for the embedded market whereas PalmOS was king.

Be's embedded system (BeIA) was crap, but Palm (actually PalmSource, a spinoff of Palm, Inc.) still tried exactly what you requested (Palm Cobalt), which was also crap. In fact, I'd attribute Palm's demise to their adoption of bad OS platforms (Cobalt and WinCE), failures to update their most core platform, and general mis-management (until Pre, they hadn't innovated anything useful for ~6 years).

Palm lost its edge, mostly beaten to a pulp by WinCE and Blackberry. Now that there are even more contenders, it's that much harder for them to come back. The Palm Centro, which cost them almost nothing to develop (it's a Treo with a smaller/trendier form factor), was a great re-entry tool for them, but they still need something on the high-end to compete with Apple iPhone, Google Android, and Nokia Qt Extended. The Pre is it.

Re:Looks cool, but...

[fm6]

That was actually the plan. The sad fact is that BeOS just didn't provide the basis for a good mobile OS.

I'm unimpressed by this new phone. Even if I weren't, I've been disappointed by Palm too many times to care. My first PDA, a Palm V, was great overall, but even it had stupid physical design flaws. (When your up button turns on the device, you don't want it sticking out so far!) Every Palm product since then has been less and less usable, and crammed with feature bloat that added to cost and reduced battery life without contributing to the overall usability of the device. Now their product line is dominated by smartphones that are descended from the Treo invented at Handspring — and Handspring always had even worse awareness of usability issues than the core Palm team!

I just gave up on my Centro. It was shoddy all the way through: the muddled UI (how can a phone not have one-button access to the dialer?!), the too-flexible stylus, the MicroSD slot that was hard to access and eventually stopped working, and (last straw) the headset port that malfunctioned, forcing the device into permanent handsfree mode. I will never go near any Palm product again.

Re:Looks cool, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, i know a lot of people with the Centro. it seems like a nice little phone.

Re:Looks cool, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

just gave up on my Centro. It was shoddy all the way through: the muddled UI (how can a phone not have one-button access to the dialer?!)

Umm, you can set the Phone button to bring up the dial pad by default.
Look under "Phone Display Options..."

I'll take your Centro if you don't want it anymore.

Palm can't compete with appstore

[Anonymous Coward]

The phone could very well be TWICE as good as the iphone, but it will not be a serious competitor because it doesn't have the appstore and the programs in it.

Re:Palm can't compete with appstore

[mewshi_nya]

No, it just has thousands of apps available online (it *can* run older Palm apps, right?), and it's trivial to make an appstore with that. Hell, there's one on my Centro; granted, it's not by Palm, but it's there.

Re:Palm can't compete with appstore

[rbanffy]

It's not like you can't download Palm software from thousands of different places.

Sure the store is great, but so is choice.

ipod to zune and iphone to Palm's killer new phone

[utahraptor]

I love analogies.

Killer phone

[Huntr]

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

From the TFA

[denzacar]

For example, Duarte cattily said: "By popular demand we've allowed you to remove the back and replace the battery," which was greeted with much enthusiasm from the largely American crowd.

Re:From the TFA

[UnknowingFool]

I couldn't find out any details about battery life of the Palm. One of the arguments that Apple has given was that making the battery non-removable gave the iPhone longer life.

Re:From the TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! This is what it has come to thanks to Apple. Replaceable batteries are now considered a novel feature and "greeted with much enthusiasm". Now if this newfangled smartphone also allows you to copy and paste it deserves to be called killer. Not really killer, but iPhone killer.

Re:From the TFA

[GodKingAmit]

yeah, the presence of an access door greatly affects the battery life.

That "excuse" is just typical apple BS for wanting to charge you to replace the battery.

Re:From the TFA

[denzacar]

One of the arguments that Apple has given was that making the battery non-removable gave the iPhone longer life.

Very much a bullshit answer from Apple.

Only ways it could be so is if:
a) they sacrificed easy replacement by making the battery a non-standard shape in order to maximize battery size.
b) they made iPhones and iPods hermetically sealed to minimize the foreign influence to the delicate battery technology based on a rare Amazon breed of electric butterflies who generate static electricity by flapping their tiny wings.
Hence - the name for the battery from the deformed buttery, which was the name Benjamin Franklin had for some of the early Leyden jars in which he kept his butterflies when he accidentally discovered that they can be used to power his iPod.

FYI - both iPod and iPhone batteries come in the very rare and controversial shape of a rectangular block.
And there are no butterflies inside.
Not even the very tiny ones.

Re:From the TFA

[UnknowingFool]

There's the door. There's the compartment. There's the battery external shielding. There's the part where you have to design the device around an accessible door. All these things add up to compromises in battery size and capacity. Whether that trade-off is enough to forgo a removable battery is another question.

WebOS -- "WEB"-OS

[wsidegangstarr]

The OS is the only real potential gamechanger here, and I'm not so sure about it. Engadget( http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/08/palm-announces-web-os-platform/ ) claims that WebOS is designed to be simple for programmers and is based on HTML, XML, and CSS. Don't know about you, but I just can't wait for another feature limited mobile OS. Also, the prospect of a data breach on an OS designed around a write-up language and online functionality ruins my day.

Re:WebOS -- "WEB"-OS

[Hal_Porter]

WebOS is designed to be simple for programmers and is based on HTML, XML, and CSS.

Next!

Re:WebOS -- "WEB"-OS

[larry bagina]

Konfabulator and Dashboard widgets are based on html/xml, css, and javascript, too. It doesn't need to be limited or require internet access.

Re:WebOS -- "WEB"-OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh dear god, save us from the tyranny of antiquated standard non-standards

Re:WebOS -- "WEB"-OS

[MobyDisk]

HTML + CSS is not a programming language.
HTML + CSS + Javascript is a bad, poor performing, cobbled together language.

Re:WebOS -- "WEB"-OS

[SuperKendall]

I think the idea of using Javascript with a custom API is actually not a bad one, as long as whatever SDK is offered has extensive tie-ins to the OS. There's been enough work around speeding up Javascript now with Squirrelfish and Google's stuff that the performance of that doesn't even concern me a great deal for most apps...

However I am right there with you on wondering what the security implications are of using the same model for your browser as your applications. The model they have of having to install the application may provide the answer in that in normal browsing no extended features are offered, and you have to agree to install an application... but potential holes in that firewall make things a little more risky.

The phone looks very interesting, but the reality of how good it really is I think awaits the release of the SDK. But I do think this is the only phone Palm could have released and still maintained itself as a separate entity - if they had gone Android they would have been absorbed before too long by one of the other cell phone makers.

Very interesting...

Re:WebOS -- "WEB"-OS

[john_chr]

I gather that the UI runs on top of a custom Linux kernel. Also the browser in the Pre is based on webkit.

Re:WebOS -- "WEB"-OS

[CAIMLAS]

Well, it's not that simple.

Sure, they could make a functional operating system with the exported API providing programming via a web language. Yes, it would make for a lot of likely-useful data applications (you know, tools you can use to work).

However, I don't think it'll really "launch" - it's not going to get all that far off the ground as a successful product. Personally, I think both smartphones and 'netbooks' are converging for the same market space: fully-functional computers which have a myriad of connectivity options. We got a bit closer to that with the iPhone and the WinMO mobiles, but this Palm looks like it's a step back.

So why does the HTML/XML/Javascript/CSS combination sour me? Simply, because they limit you and aren't "real computer" applications. Yes, it'll be easy to cobble together custom applications for your organization allowing you to get good use out of them, and there will certainly be a lot of apps for data management which would spring up. But there are a lot of actual "computer tools" which appeal to the geeky which won't be available at first glance and, potentially, won't be available at all without some irritating under-the-covers hacking of the OS.

Killer Fast Phone

[andrewd18]

"Our new Palm phone will be faster than ever, now that we've switched over to Reiser4!"

Let's get serious.

[AltGrendel]

What we really need is an MS Exchange killer app.

Re:Let's get serious.

[nicolas.kassis]

Zimbra

From the Story

[ProppaT]

"Our touch is special, it goes beyond the screen"

About time. Something to "tickle your fancy," if you will.

Can Palm do anything right?

[Paul Carver]

I absolutely loved my Palm Pilot Pro and gladly paid for the Palm III upgrade module for it. I eagerly bought a Palm V but I was disappointed when I got a Tungsten E and even more disappointed to discover that the 802.11 add in card simply wouldn't work with the Tungsten E.

My Palm TX is a huge disappointment and I would have returned it (or never bought it in the first place) except that I have a major need for one specific specialized application that uses 802.11.

I've heard awful things from people with Palm based phones.

Palm has bungled one generation after another. I've just lost any confidence in them being able to do anything competent.

Re:Can Palm do anything right?

[dimonic]

I was a Handspring Visor owner, and got hooked on entering my billable hours as appointments in the calendar. I moved to a Teo 650, and loved it bar I had to buy some software and customize my firmware (to "see" the 4GB SD) to use it as a real music player (Audiogateway for Bluetooth, pTunes as a player). That phone was stolen (by some thieving motherfxxxx may he/she rot in hell forever). I replaced it with a Centro (and didn't have to replace my firmware - but still needed the software). I love the Centro now. It has one or two issues, but for what I actually use it for, it is the best phone on the market (and pretty cheap in the US, I hear).

Re:Can Palm do anything right?

[gklinger]

Might I inquire as to the nature of your disappointment with the Palm TX? I'm a long time Palm (and Sony Clie) user and I feel that the Palm TX, anachronism aside, is the best Palm-OS device I've ever owned. Unfortunately, it will probably be the last Palm-OS device I ever own.

Re:Can Palm do anything right?

[csnydermvpsoft]

I share your sentiment with Palm's last few generations. I currently own a Tungsten E|2 and a Zire 72, with the Zire acting as a backup. The fact that I even need a backup PDA is a shame, but the Tungsten is simply not reliable.

Here's a list of things that have gone wrong with the Tungsten:

1. Power button stopped working (I installed software that allows me to remap another button as a power button - the fact that this software is available says how prevalent this issue is, going all the way back to the original Pilots)
2. Internal speaker doesn't work (headphones do work)
3. Wildly inaccurate battery meter (yes, I've calibrated it - multiple times)
4. The screen emits a high-pitched whine
5. The OS is buggy, including filesystem corruption issues
6. Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS), where the device refuses to power up

There is a person by the name of Chris Short that repairs Palms for reasonable rates, and I sent him mine a year ago. He fixed #'s 1, 4, and 6 (#2 hadn't materialized yet) and replaced the battery (which led to much better run times but no solution for #3). The power button has since failed again.

Even with all of these problems, however, I'm still planning to buy another Palm when my current ones crap out. I'm no a masochist; instead, I appreciate the history that led to the Palm OS platform - early Palms were fairly simple PIMs, rather than full-fledged computers. Every OS revision, while adding features, stayed true to that pedigree. While my Tungsten has many significant flaws, it is still a much better organizer than just about anything else on the market.

I hope that Palm stays true to their roots with this new OS release. If so, I'll definitely consider their offerings, while trying to stomach the idea of giving more money to a company that sold a seriously flawed device with only a 90-day warranty.

Re:Can Palm do anything right?

[ElmoGonzo]

I got the 802.11 card working with my Tungsten E but it only supports WEP which limited its capability. The docs say that it fits other models using WinMobile and WPA was supported on that. It also sucked the battery down deeply. I've had a Centro for about 6 months now and couldn't be happier. At last, a PDA with a replaceable battery!

Re:Can Palm do anything right?

[ricegf]

I dunno - my wife and son love their Treos, and my daughter loves her Centro. I use a cheap phone along side a Nokia N800 - but I use the Palm emulator on the Nokia more than I'd like to admit.

Despite the unceasing prophets of doom, Palm has leveraged their ancient Garnet operating system for more years than any sane person would have expected.

Now that they have what looks like a very nice, modern, web-oriented OS, are you sure you want to bet against them?

Re:Can Palm do anything right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of curiosity, what is it about the TX that you dislike? I've had one for a few years now, and use it for email, music, web, chat, and some programming, and I've never really been disappointed with it - I would say that I personally got my money's worth for it.

Re:Can Palm do anything right?

[YouWantFriesWithThat]

that was an interesting read. coincidentally i just was given a new-in-the-box tungsten E2. i am trying to figure out what to do with it right now. Loaded a PDF reader on it with a couple books (unfortunately i went with the Adobe reader, which is terrible...i am going to try out PalmPDF this weekend). I also downloaded FileZ, since there is apparently no way to examine the file system natively.

so do you have any suggestions for good apps, games, or interesting things to do with it for someone who doesn't need a PDA for it's primary use (i.e. contact management)

Re:Can Palm do anything right?

[tcolberg]

PalmPDF, FileZ, TCPMP (audio/video player), GrxViewLt (photos), and ScummVM are all free, essential apps that I run on my Tungsten T3. There's also a program called NESEm which is an 8bit Nintendo emulator. It was soooo worth the money I paid.

I'm just hoping that my T3 survive until I can get the Pre on a carrier that I can tolerate. Maybe I'll do what a previous poster mentioned and buy a Treo 650 for cheap and have it tide me over.

Re:Can Palm do anything right?

[Abcd1234]

As a TX user of a couple years now, my biggest complaint is centered around the fragility of PalmOS itself, a fragility that seems to be exacerbated by the NVRAM persistence approach they used. The result is a device that will on occasion, randomly crash, or worse entered the dreaded reboot cycle (please dear god reboot correctly this time!). Heck, I've had to hard-reset my TX numerous times, losing all the apps and data on the device, and I've gotten to the point where I keep the software load on mine to a bare minimum (TCPMP for movies, Aeroplayer for audio, PalmFiction for ebooks, Snapper for email, and a couple other utilities)... and I never start up Blazer if I can avoid it (it hangs as often as not). And I avoid putting important data on it, just in case.

On top of all that, the sound quality out of the headphone jack is noisy, particularly if you have low impedance headphones (I get a constant loud his on my Shure plugphones... I need an inline volume adjust to mask it out), and the touchscreen can be annoyingly inaccurate.

The flipside is that it has a nice, big screen, a good form factor, decent battery life, and it's powerful enough to do anything I want on it. It could just be so much *better*!

Re:Can Palm do anything right?

[Hucko]

Thank you! After abandoning my zire72 because it had stopped 'charging' and spending months looking for a solution, I have just attempted to fire it up again and it lives. Your comments re SDS made me hope and what do you know? it was easier than I thought. I have my 3yo zire back.

Re:Can Palm do anything right?

[Anonymous Coward]

You heard awful things from people with Palm based phones? What have you been smoking?

Re:Can Palm do anything right?

[YouWantFriesWithThat]

thanks for the advice...GrxViewLt is a great photo viewer, and TCPMP is very good at playing video...both are so much better than the built in media software. now i have to try out ScummVM

good luck on keeping your PDA alive.

Re:Can Palm do anything right?

[LittleBigScript]

What is your problem with the Palm based phones? The Treo is one of the best devices I've ever used.

Before we know if this is a joke or not....

[linuxpng]

What Palm OS does it run? If it's the same thing my treo 650 ran, it's a joke.

Re:Before we know if this is a joke or not....

[linuxpng]

NM, I see right in the summary. I'm guessing it's still a joke.

Re:Before we know if this is a joke or not....

[Fri13]

It runs Linux Operating System version 2.6.x and with few software what gives the touch-screen capabilities it makes together a software platform called WebOS (not an operating system but a software system).

Re:Before we know if this is a joke or not....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing you didn't read, um... any of the summary or article, or you'd see it's an entirely new OS. Good job being quick to comment, though, it's really important to type up a bunch of uninformed shit really fast.

This could save Palm

[moosesocks]

Support Verizon, and I'll be the first in line for this. Why is it that we never get any love from the phone manufacturers?

I don't think it's *quite* on the level of the iPhone, though it certainly seems to have come the closest of any thus far. The UI looks a lot nicer than Android, and the hardware nicer than the iPhone (physical keyboard FTW).

As long as Palm make the price reasonable, and keep the application interface as open as possible, they'll sell a ton of these.

Frankly, I'm impressed, given that virtually everyone's been expecting Palm to kick the bucket in the near future.

Re:This could save Palm

[IceCreamGuy]

Support Verizon, and I'll be the first in line for this.

Sorry, Sprint exclusive, at least for launch. I'm right there with you in disappointment about that.

Re:This could save Palm

[edmicman]

Maybe they'll trade the Storm for the Pre within the year? I, too, hate that Verizon seems to get the shaft for almost every handset....they have the best coverage around here out of anybody.

I'm hoping maybe they'll get some Android phone (Motorola maybe?) that'll even things out.

Re:This could save Palm

[Anonymous Coward]

I, too, hate that Verizon seems to get the shaft for almost every handset....they have the best coverage around here out of anybody.

Well ... there is the fact that most of the world is using some standard that Verizon doesn't so if you're a mobile phone maker your choices are:

1) Make a phone for Verizon that you can sell in the US and no where else.

2) Make a phone for Sprint that you can sell in the US and a few places.

3) Make a phone for T-Mobile and/or AT&T that you can sell in most of the world.

Which would you choose?

Re:This could save Palm

[anethema]

Sprint operates on CDMA(for the most part) just like Verizon. Your choices 1 and 2 are actually the same.

Not to mention, the list of places is not just USA and Canada, but this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDMA2000#Countries_with_CDMA2000_operators

There are 11 companies offering CDMA phone networks here in Canada alone.

That being said, GSM is far more ubiquitous, but this is not the choice they made.

Re:This could save Palm

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't mod parent any higher, but yes: this looks like another great device that simply won't work in my market ("not Verizon" == "no service" here).

Re:This could save Palm

[Anonymous Coward]

Support Verizon, and I'll be the first in line for this. Why is it that we never get any love from the phone manufacturers?

Uh, maybe because your network technology (CDMA / EVDO) is not used by 90% of the rest of the world? It's not a free ride to replace the radio module. Unless there's a huge pull from Verizon itself (meaning that they plan to buy large volumes), it doesn't make business sense.

Re:This could save Palm

[Jonavin]

Sure, if you like to count MVNos and sub-brands of Bell. There are probably 11 companies that offer GMS/HSPA in Canada as well if you count MVNOs; granted more users are still on CDMA tech.

Thankfully, all the big players will be on HSPA by next year in Canada.

Re:This could save Palm

[commodoresloat]

Support Verizon, and I'll be the first in line for this. Why is it that we never get any love from the phone manufacturers?

They just figure you're already getting plenty of love from the rear end from Verizon every time you get their bill....

Seriously though Palm claims this will be open to any carrier eventually though it's not clear how soon that will be.

Re:This could save Palm

[Refrag]

Why is it that we never get any love from the phone manufacturers?

Perhaps it is because Verizon is notorious for crippling features that manufacturers build into their phones?

Also, Verizon did have a crack at the iPhone, but they turned down Apple.

Verizon's general suckiness aside, I really do like the Palm WebOS and think it might be a decent competitor to the iPhone. We'll have to wait and see what happens when it comes to market. But, it has some neat ideas.

However with Apple supporting round-tripping of photo meta-data with Facebook in the new iPhoto '09, I wouldn't be surprised to see Facebook integration with the iPhone's Contacts application in the next version.

Re:This could save Palm

[anethema]

Agreed, I am looking forward to this. Telus is moving to HSDPA sometime "Soon" supposedly, plus there is Rogers, plus the recent spectrum auctions. Just leaves bell, and I doubt they wont follow the money if it all works out.

Oh ffs

[Harold Halloway]

Can I mod down the original summary? 'Finally'? I've got an Android G1 and it beats the pants off the iPhone.

Re:Oh ffs

[T.E.D.]

Agreed. My HTC Touch Pro does everything this Palm device is reported to do as well.

Re:Oh ffs

[pohl]

My iPhone shipped without pants, so there was no need to buy a separate phone to beat them off.

More detailed links

[IceCreamGuy]

From Ars: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090108-palm-launches-new-handset-pre-operating-system-at-ces.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090108-resurrection-on-video-hands-on-with-the-palm-pre.html
More details and analysis than the PCPro story.

iPhone killer sure...

[macbuzz01]

...but does it run BSD?

The OS is the thing.

[Dynamoo]

Really, the OS is the most important part - the Pre is just a platform to run webOS.. and that looks *really* good, at least on paper. It isn't just eye candy, there's a huge amount of innovation in the interface and the way it manages personal information.

If this had been around 12 months ago then perhaps webOS and the Pre would have been a contender, but since then we've seen Android and MS are polishing up their new versions of Windows for this year.

I guess the question is.. would I buy one? The answer is "no". But only because I prefer the 800 pixel wide display of the Nokia E90. I wouldn't refuse one if someone gave one to me though ;)

Re:The OS is the thing.

[Fri13]

Well, without Linux OS it would not be so great phone. It really does look good but I wanna know where we can get Source Code for the OS (Linux) and modifications what they have done. (I can google myself thank you).

videos

[crabbz]

Some videos of the new platform are up at palmcentral. The second one shows a live demo. Looks nice.

but can you make phone calls with it?

[Gothmolly]

Can I open it up, punch buttons, and make a phone call? Can I drop it w/o it shattering? Can I lose it, without losing my entire personal identity?

Re:but can you make phone calls with it?

[Joe Snipe]

no, none of those things.

Killer?

[dancingmad]

I'm a Mac fan, but generally use the best tool I can and I don't have an iPhone or an iPod Touch, so I don't believe I really have a dog in this fight (for the record I have a Blackberry Curve [which is so=so at best], but mainly live in Japan and so have one of last year's au/WIN phones).

But this article's summary reminds of CmdrTaco's famous predictions for the original iPod. I read TFA and the phone pictured there doesn't look like an iPod killer. It doesn't even look like a phone from the last five years - it looks like fat, bulgy little free-with-service American phone from 2000 or 2001.

No one is going to beat Apple on specs. For better or for ill, the company is brilliant at style and presentation and those are huge factors in the iPhone's successes.

Moreover, the iPhone is out NOW and macrumors and other Apple sites are already beginning to rumble with information about the new iPhone software - the iPhone is moving ahead, with that and the App Store and where is this Palm phone?

A cell phone is a status symbol once again and until a good phone matches the iPhone in that arena, it's not going to kill it. I don't expect this Palm phone to, to be sure.

Re:Killer?

[YourExperiment]

No one is going to beat Apple on specs.

Just about every other phone on the market beats Apple on specs, and has done since long before the iPhone came out.

The iPhone has a paltry 2 megapixel camera, no flash, no MMS, no copy and paste (is that fixed now?) and a non-standard headphone socket.

For better or for ill, the company is brilliant at style and presentation

That is certainly true. The iPhone is one of the most stylish phones around, the interface is a thing of beauty, and I can't see anyone improving on that any time soon.

Re:Killer?

[mdwh2]

No one is going to beat Apple on specs. For better or for ill, the company is brilliant at style and presentation and those are huge factors in the iPhone's successes. ... A cell phone is a status symbol once again and until a good phone matches the iPhone in that arena, it's not going to kill it.

I don't disagree that it's hard to beat Apple on specs where "specs" equals style and status symbol. But I would suggest that the major companies that routinely sell far more than Apple are already doing a reasonable job of beating them.

Moreover, the iPhone is out NOW and macrumors and other Apple sites are already beginning to rumble with information about the new iPhone software - the iPhone is moving ahead

Well phones had been around for years before the Iphone was released. People had to wait around for extra features such as 3G. I don't see that being a problem for Apple. And hang on a mo - Palm have been in the market for years, far longer than Apple. This is a new phone. How is that any different to Apple releasing new software for their phone? Couldn't we say there's no point them releasing the new Iphone software, because other phones are "out NOW"?

I don't understand - are you assuming that if a company releases its first phone, it will only be as good as other the first phones from other companies, because they have to catch up? This is firstly clearly false (wasn't true for Apple, obviously), and secondly irrelevant (this isn't Palm's first phone).

Re:Killer?

[AndyboyH]

You're right about still no copy and paste, but just FYI*, the iPhone 3G has a standard headphone socket.

(And just for pedantry - the original did too, but it was recessed by about 3mm (iirc) so a load of headphones with bulky surrounds to the actual jack plugs wouldn't fit without trimming them down.)

* /me waits for the wisecrack about the 90s calling and wanting their abbreviation back...

Re:Killer?

[YourExperiment]

You're right about still no copy and paste

Ah, I thought I read they'd added this in an update. How hard can it be FFS?

it was recessed by about 3mm

Yeah - I don't count something as a standard headphone socket unless I can plug standard headphones into it. :) I wasn't aware they'd fixed this on the 3G though.

Re:Killer?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one is going to beat Apple on specs.

Yes! The iPhone has touchscreen. TOUCHSCREEN!

Re:Killer?

[dancingmad]

I'm sorry, my post was poorly worded. I agree a ton of phones have better specs than the iPhone but they won't beat Apple's machine based on that - it's style, form, and how that interacts with function that is Apple's forte.

FAIL!

[PortHaven]

It's "rounded" and looks like a blimp.

Nothing looks sophisticated or stand out. FAIL!!!!

***

Re:FAIL!

[MBGMorden]

That is the first thing I noticed when I clicked on the link. This phone looks like something that would have appeared trendy 12 years ago. It doesn't look modern at all.

And based on my personal experience, a huge deal of importance is tagged to how cool these phones look. And strangely, though I see a non-trivial amount of guys with smart phones, girls seem to be nuts over these things. Seems like I can start up a conversation that most 20-something girls are deeply interested in just by noticing her phone and talking about it. They've become their own weird little sub-culture of nerds.

better phones

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone is all about the hype. I doubt any phone can match that. From hardware point of view - there are dozens of phones better than iPod. As for software - iPhone is the best on the ease-of-use field but does not at all offer as much variety and flexibility as WinMo based phones.

Phones to look for (better than the palm):
htc touch HD, samsung omnia, asus glaxy7, ericsson x1

Re:better phones

[slyn]

-The iPhone is all about the hype

I hate it when people say that. Apple (in the release of its 2nd gen iphone) released a phone with 3g, a sdk PLUS a centralized location for downloading, rating, and reviewing the apps made for the phone, GPS and location services, "real" internet + basic email services, 8+ gigs of storage, and native applications for: google maps, downloading itunes music, and watching youtube videos. Oh yea, and did I mention its _thinner_ than a Motorola Razr?

Since its release over 10,000 applications have been developed for the phone, and there have been over 300,000,000 million downloads from the app store (developer incentive much?).

The phone integrates with (maybe not the best, but certainly) the most popular music management/downloading software in the world in iTunes, and in doing so has support for calendar, address book, music, movie, photo, audiobook and podcasting syncing.

Being a close cousin of the iPod family, it has access to the largest 3rd party accessory market for any mp3 player and probably any cellular phone too.

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: the iPhone is a platform, not a phone. As everyone in the entire tech world has pointed out multiple times, there are phones with better hardware features. Newsflash: Its the software stupid.

When I got my iPhone 3g the software was still 2.0, and let me tell you, it was far from perfect. Safari crashed all the time, battery life was only average, the keyboard would lag when typing, and you had to reorganize every application when you updated it.

What makes the iPhone different from every other phone I've seen on the market is that IT GETS UPDATED. The 2.1 software came out and mostly fixed the problems I was having. Battery life got better (with the exception of when using GPS, which is inherent to GPS hardware from what I understand), typing lag was reduced, and Safari crashed probably 90% less than it did in 2.0. But then it was updated again in 2.2. Battery life got better again, typing lag is now non-existant, safari crashes about 90% less than it did in 2.1, updating applications now leaves their icons in the same place.

Is it perfect? Hardly. Will it ever be perfect? Probably never. Is it a great phone? Easily the best I've ever seen and used. And it will only get better as new apps come out, old apps mature and add features, and the underlying OS becomes more stable and snappier.

Compare this to say, the Pre, which while it looks like it has potential, is untested other than first impression reviews, has 0 3rd party applications for it, and probably won't be out till the middle of the year (first half of 09 is the only information on its release date).

Hardly "all hype".

Re:better phones

[Americano]

As for software - iPhone is the best on the ease-of-use field but does not at all offer as much variety and flexibility as WinMo based phones.

This is the crucial point you're missing. Most of the hundreds of millions of phones sold every year are not being sold to people who get a hard-on when they read the hardware specs on their phone. "Oh my god, a microSD slot! I just came."

Like it or not, Apple's success with the iPhone is all about the software. It's easy to use, it performs well, and it does things natively that users want it to do, and has a good-sized application store to make it do even more. It is not the highest-powered hardware, certainly. It may not scratch the itch that geeks have to be as customizable and open and powerful as they like. But most of the population is not made up of geeks who think in these terms. As such, there will always be a significant market for easy-to-use, which you concede the iPhone offers.

Technical details absent

[rwa2]

I tried for some time last night to sift out Palm Pre details that Slashdot might actually find interesting, but no strong leads.

The PC Mag article was the only one I could find that touches on anything beyond the press release materials from CES:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2338482,00.asp

FTA:
* Does it run Linux? Maybe, but only according to rumors.

* Will existing PalmOS apps run on it? Hard to tell from their mangled wording, but probably not. However, it seems like their new WebOS SDK /might/ make it somewhat simple to recompile for the new platform.

So, as a Palm addict, it seems like I still have a long time to try to keep my ailing TX working until I can find a suitable platform to upgrade to. (So far, the main contender for me is the Nokia N810, which runs Linux and actually has a Palm Garnet emulation environment available for it)

Re:Technical details absent

[KlaymenDK]

* It does run Linux.

* It does NOT support Garnet VM and the old PalmOS apps. This is actually a big deal for me and my beloved T3, but it's not out yet so I'm not panicking ... yet.

Re:Technical details absent

[foo fighter]

I was a Palm addict too. I had a T3 from their release until last spring. I got an iPod Touch for Christmas in 2007 and it slowly replaced my T3, especially after the launch of the App store.

It's definitely not a perfect replacement. The contact, note, and to-do apps on the Palm have no equal on the Touch that I've found. But the replacements are good enough and what they lack is more than made up by the Touch's superior web, email, and media apps.

The Touch hardware is great. Reminds me of my ancient Palm V as far as size and sturdiness goes. I really miss the T3's vibrating alarm, but I think Palm dropped that after the T3 too. I really like the Touch's keyboard and finger interface. I don't miss using stylus or physical keyboard at all.

I finally sold my T3 on eBay last summer and have moved solely to the iPod as my daily PDA now. The second gen Touch is even better than my first gen because it has a faster processor, physical volume controls, and external speaker.

Except for the lack of built in notes/to-do syncing, the Touch integrates with my Mac waaay better than my T3 ever did.

Touches are holding their value well on eBay, so I really recommend you go pick one up and try it out for a few weeks. You can always flip it for minimal loss if you really don't like it. I was a poster-fanboy for Palm, and now I've really come around to the iPod Touch.

Re:Technical details absent

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, webOS is entirely linux under the hood, with webkit used for the UI. It's been public knowledge for years at Palm's new OS would be linux based.

No, there is no backwards compat for old palm apps, but it won't take long for someone out there to port an emulator.

Re:Technical details absent

[Anonymous Coward]

Will existing PalmOS apps run on it? Hard to tell from their mangled wording, but probably not. However, it seems like their new WebOS SDK /might/ make it somewhat simple to recompile for the new platform.

See http://developer.palm.com/ -- "good news for Palm OS developers! There are a number of ways to migrate data from a an existing PDB file to your new WebOS app. Stay tuned for more information for developers with Palm OS applications who want to build WebOS applications."

Sounds like bad news. No Garnet VM/emulation, and their solution is some not-yet-available ("stay tuned") tool that converts PDB into something else -- JSON? Who knows. And is it enough to help developers convert data, and leave them on their own to rebuild the logic? Will Palm at least be smart enough to base the PDB converter on an easily & freely redistributable library so that developers can offer their customers relatively easy upgrade paths?

So, as a Palm addict, it seems like I still have a long time to try to keep my ailing TX working until I can find a suitable platform to upgrade to. (So far, the main contender for me is the Nokia N810, which runs Linux and actually has a Palm Garnet emulation environment available for it)

My TX digitizer is wearing out, so I'm in the same boat (no way am I going to buy another TX, or any wifi device that doesn't support 802.11g), though I'd wouldn't say I'm an addict. I've read that ALP is slow, but more importantly, Garnet is a dead end environment. At some point you'll need to ditch those Garnet apps, so why bother with emulation?

Developers can't even build 100% "Mojo" apps yet:
"Besides the Palm Mojo Application Framework, the SDK will include sample code, documentation, and development tools. An Eclipse-based IDE is included, and you will also be able to use your choice of tools to build WebOS applications. The Mojo SDK is currently in private prerelease, and will be available later this year as a free download [emphasis mine]"

The PDB converter looks pretty interesting to soon-to-be-former-Palm-users. It may be just the thing that ship-jumpers need to gain access to valuable data created by apps that have long since been abandoned.

I wonder how the established Palm developers feel about this. Hopefully they've got the SDK already, as I imagine it'll be tough to sell any new licenses for PalmOS apps.

Re:Technical details absent

[ricegf]

Since the Palm Garnet emulation environment comes from the same company that makes the Pre (right?), isn't it reasonable to expect they invested the effort in the emulator to help the Pre rather than Nokia's N8x0 line? Sincere question - it looks too obvious for anyone to have missed, so maybe it's me that missed something. Won't be the first time.

Re:Technical details absent

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. Palm makes the Pre; the old PalmOS, and the Garnet emulation you can get for the Nokias comes from the company that bought rights to the old PalmOS: http://www.access-company.com/products/platforms/linux/alp.html

There is no Garnet emulation for Pre -- see developer.palm.com for details. It's a whole new platform, apparently with ZERO backwards compatibility. It's no more a PalmOS device than are the Treos that run Windows Mobile.

Re:Technical details absent

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the Palm Garnet emulation environment comes from the same company that makes the Pre (right?), isn't it reasonable to expect they invested the effort in the emulator to help the Pre rather than Nokia's N8x0 line? Sincere question - it looks too obvious for anyone to have missed, so maybe it's me that missed something. Won't be the first time.

Wrong. The Garnet Emulator is made by ACCESS, a company which bought PalmSource, which was the company which Palm spun off and charged with maintaining the Palm Operating System. Long story short, Palm makes the Pre but it does not make the Garnet emulator. It does however own the Palm name and has a license to the Garnet source code. So there are basically two companies which might make a Garnet emulator for the Pre. ACCESS which owns the PalmOS and already makes a Garnet emulator for Linux-based Nokia tablets (remember, webOS and thus the Palm Pre will be Linux-based) is one. StyleTap which also makes a Garnet emulator for Windows Mobile and tried to make one for the iPhone (Apple's SDK policy forbids emulators) is the other one. Hopefully one of them will have a webOS Garnet emulator out by the time the Pre ships. Combine this with an easy migration part for Palm PIM data and PalmOS users will have a stew goin'.

Meh.

[cyn1c77]

Palm's just trying to stay afloat right now with lots of hype. Let's see how good the phone is when it actually gets here... And more importantly, let's see what carriers they tie it to.

Re:Meh.

[ryanov]

Two seconds of actual reading and comprehension would have answered those questions.

Re:Meh.

[cyn1c77]

Two seconds of actual reading and comprehension would have answered those questions.

No need to be a dick.

Unless I am mistaken, the article neither evaluates the quality of the finalized version of the phone nor states what US carrier it will be tied to.

Two seconds of actual reading and you would have known that.

Why it will fail

[kisa2000]

1. Mobile phones these days are computing platforms. The reason why Microsoft dominates the desktop market is because the vast majority of software runs on it (hey, Macs are cool too, but they don't have the range of PC software). Apple's iPhone has already claimed that victory - to beat the iPhone, one needs to provide an easy way of uploading software, and, IMHO, a way of verifying the quality of the applications.

2. Apple has the advantage that it could leverage off the existing developer base for the Mac - that is, the development environments aren't completely different. Try releasing any computing platform in which people have to learn *another* darn computer programming framework/language and see how you go. Computer languages take *years* to grow to a critical mass.

3. Every technology marketer is saying "blah killer" at the moment. Can you honestly imagine the Palm marketing executives saying, "our phone is pretty powerful, but we really will have to see if the community adopts it and develops worthwhile applications for it". At the same time, all the little journalist worker bees have to get page hits in this new online news world. "iPhone killer" turns up constantly, because it gets clicks. Your here and I am here aren't we :-)

Re:Why it will fail

[rudlavibizon]

I don't own a smartphone yet, because I don't want to have to carry anything that costs more than 100 euros in my pocket, but the way I see it the OS and it's apps on the mobile phone are different from your desktop PC. You don't need complex programs like photoshop or word on such a small device. Most of the stuff is pretty simple and will come off the web pretty soon. That means that it will be cheap or free (as in beer) or OSS. So in a while there will be nothing to differentiate significantly the handsets software wise and the only thing will be hardware (especially the looks of it, since we tend to take these things publicly) and easy of use. And price, of course.

Re:Why it will fail

[Overzeetop]

I beg to disagree on the cheap/free front. Most of the best business applications are fee based. I say this because although there exists free/OSS software to perform most of the functions that can be done, the most efficient and independent versions cost real money. I would be very disappointed to have to return to a pencil and paper calendar, for example. The best (imho) application for calendaring is a commercial program. Google might be an option, but you have to be connected to use the full functionality...and there just isn't data (or even voice) coverage everywhere, especially in the US where 80+% of the country's land mass has no digital service. Also, my phone is my GPS. There are monthly subscriptions for the GPS software from my provider, and Google earth is free, but both are critically flawed in that they require a data connection to perform properly. That's great, but I usually don't get lost in big cities; I get lost in the middle of nowhere and have to find my way back home. For that, you need persistent maps, and to get that you have to pay.

You don't need complex programs, I'll admit, but the programs you do carry become mission critical apps. They must perform in real time and there's precious little leeway. It may be fine to reboot your computer due to an exception while you go get a cup of coffee, but when you need to find information on a meeting that's about to begin or place a call, a 5 minute time-out isn't an option. (For the record, I've spend close to 15 minutes trying to look up the phone number for a restaurant that I was sure was less than 5 minutes from my location - I couldn't get it because the "free" browser didn't support Flash, and the company's website required flash to enter.)

Thanks but no thanks.

[handmedowns]

After purchasing two of Palm's high end smart phones in the past, I've learned my lesson. They *DO NOT* support their phones. As soon as there's even an idea of a newer phone coming out, they drop all support for existing platforms and no more updates are ever seen for yours.

For example, they're currently releasing updates for the Centro series (a $99 phone) but not their 750series (a $500 phone) that are just over a year old. Way to reward your business customers palm.

Palm never got their PalmOS to the point where it

[Hohlraum]

was all that solid. And they had 10 years and 5+ commercial releases to get it right? Now they are starting something completely new? Yeah, sign me right up for that. :/

That's the beauty of FLOSS. It might not be perfect but at least you are paying out of your pocket so some company can test out their software on you.

Palm didn't say that

[ConfusedVorlon]

to be fair to palm, they have been very careful about avoiding the term 'iPhone killer'

From Newsweek:
>>>
So: is it an iPhone killer? McNamee wishes people wouldn't ask that question. "Everyone in the cell-phone business has missed the point. They're all trying to make an iPhone killer. I don't want to compete with Apple. Why the hell would you want to get in the way of that machine? I look at the guys who are trying to compete with Apple and I think, Are you guys crazy? I just want to learn from Apple's experience."
>>>

Re:Palm didn't say that

[YouWantFriesWithThat]

Why the hell would you want to get in the way of that machine?

that is exactly right.

if apple wants to make a phone with one (or no) buttons, no card slots, a virtual keyboard, no MMS, no video, and a sealed case...let them. from what i hear from the iphone's detractors, there are a lot of people that like the phone, but wish that it had a few features included or done differently. you aren't competing with them if you make a n97-type phone with a good browser and well made email interface. get out of their way, let them make devices that offer the features that they decide people want. when forums fill up with tech savvy users that complain about the inclusion of this or the exclusion of that, take notice.

apple made a good phone, but it is not perfect for everyone. there is a lot of room in the market for someone to make a several hundred dollar phone that serves a different client base than the iphone.

Poop On A Stick

[zubikov]

Apple can put shit on a stick, brand it with the Apple logo and sell it for $299. Palm is the homeless man on the side of the street eating the shit off the stick.

OMG, Most killer best advertizement EVER SEEN ON S

[Anonymous Coward]

Lashdot.....

Wtf, be objective, and focus on supplying details instead of creaming yourself.

I presume you meant GPU?

[N Monkey]

The CPU can support OpenGL ES 2, but the article doesn't mention that at all.

I guess you meant GPU rather than CPU. 8-D

It would certainly put it ahead of the iphone since its GPU only supports OpenGL ES 1.1.

Re:I presume you meant GPU?

[lisaparratt]

It's an integrated solution, the GPU is part of the CPU.

Re:I presume you meant GPU?

[Snowblindeye]

I guess you meant GPU rather than CPU. 8-D

No, actually he didn't, he ment what he wrote.

The OMAP 3430 contains an ARM core as well as a lot of support functions, including hardware support for most video formats, image processing and also, as mentioned, OpenGL. Check out the link for an overview.

Re:I presume you meant GPU?

[Ilgaz]

PowerVR stuff can be called GPU, not? My SE P1i has PowerVR chip to do 3d.

Re:I presume you meant GPU?

[lisaparratt]

Most of the modern OMAP chips have the PowerVR chip integrated directly into the CPU, rather than as a separate chip.

Re:I presume you meant GPU?

[N Monkey]

The OMAP 3430 contains an ARM core as well as a lot of support functions, including hardware support for most video formats, image processing and also, as mentioned, OpenGL. Check out the link for an overview.

Yes the OMAP integrates several units (including the SGX GPU) that would have, a couple of years ago, been in separate packages on the MOBO. Just because they are now integrated onto the die doesn't mean that they are part of the CPU.

would you buy a cell phone with NO support?

[v1]

I have a T3 and I know a dozen people with palm pilots. If there is ONE thing we can all agree on, it's that palm's support for their product is next to nonexistent. If you have a problem with your palm pilot, you'd better start looking in the various independent forums for help from other palm users. If they can't help you, you're just plain screwed.

I don't care if palm DOES come up with a better product than the iphone, I won't touch it with a 10 ft pole. Right now I am trying to decide whether to ditch my T3 for a touch or for an iPhone, so I can keep notes and have my addressbook on the go. Syncing on my T3 has been iffy at best, and is currently totally nonfunctional unless I want it to breed duplicates and erase data every time I sync, and the palm desktop software hasn't been updated in years.

I know that the touch and iphone will sync flawlessly with my computer, and I won't get that sickening feeling every time I sync it, wondering what it's going to erase this time. I get asked from time to time for help with others' palm pilots, and I hate to give them help because I feel so totally helpless in trying to prevent the thing from self-destructing their contacts. All I can do is make backups continuously throughout the process. The inability to make a backup of the PP directly into its SD card makes initial syncing one of the most dangerous computer tasks I ever have to deal with. I've seen palm desktop sync from an empty computer TO the palm, totally erasing it, on numerous occasions, despite following directions carefully. It's almost random. And once the computer and the palm get sufficiently out of sync, it creates such a mess that you have to wipe one and pray it syncs from the non-empty one to the one you wiped. I can't stand that.

Stay away from palm, please.

Re:would you buy a cell phone with NO support?

[tcdk]

I'll probably stay away from this to... But as a former Palm Pro, V, T3 owner, I actually look back at the palm sync system with found memories, now that I have to live with abomination that is ActiveSync/MobileSync. Okay, I've never gotten a duplicate, but my device is routinely forgotten by activesync and I have to create it again. Sometimes I have the same effect you had, only with files sync. When the device is seen as new, it has to get a new name, and an empty directory is created for file sync - on first sync, the computer directory is empty and I have a lot of files on the Mobile. It seems random what Active sync decides should be the correct state on first sync....

Re:would you buy a cell phone with NO support?

[bpeikes]

Perhaps they'll change their tune. When Palm first started making PDA's their support was ridiculously good. Drop your Palm and break the screen? Call them, and they would send an empty box to you, and have it picked up same day. Had a new Palm in my hands within 2 days. Now, of course with phones it's different, and although I'm not particularly fond of my iPhone, I have to admit that I like the idea that if I have any problems I can waltz into a Apple store 24-7 (I'm in NYC), and have someone take a look at it. (On the other hand, last time I did that they couldn't figure out what was wrong).

Re:would you buy a cell phone with NO support?

[Dave77459]

I have a Treo 680 and now have had numerous sync issues. Now I have another: no USB sync support for the 680 when using Windows XP x64. I have to use bluetooth--ugh! So much for upgrading to a more powerful computer... but that's another story. In comparison, my wife has a new G1 and it syncs directly to Google stuff. That seems comparable to the WebOS, as far as I can tell. In fact, there is no syncing step because everything is always sync'd automagically. I love the Palm OS-ness of my 680, but it fails too often to do a core phone function like placing a call or letting me answer it. Time will tell how adept the Pre is at being a phone.

Re:would you buy a cell phone with NO support?

[The Conductor]

>The inability to make a backup of the PP directly into its SD card

It can if you cough up $10. Such is the nature of the Palm OS universe. Spport from Palm isn't so hot, but the open (and, well, elderly) nature of the platform permits wide-ranging aftermarket.

And as long as we are comparing to iPhone, it doesn't even have an SD slot.

Re:would you buy a cell phone with NO support?

[ryanov]

As someone else wrote above, there is more than one free solution to the same problem. No coughing required.

Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[Anonymous Coward]

"but I doubt Palm have as nice developer tools as Apple"

You mean where you are forced to buy an otherwise worthless but overpriced Mac just to do development on. And use a language no one but Apple uses instead of industry standards like Java, Javascript, etc that everyone already has years of experience with.

Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[ColdWetDog]

Sucks to be a VB4 developer, doesn't it?

Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez. Get over yourself. Objective-C isn't that difficult to get your head around if you've done any Java/C++/Smalltalk/Ruby/other OO development. They have some pretty good reasons for using it (the underlying OS uses it), and the tools and documentation that they give you to work with it (XCode/apple developer site) are excellent. As someone who develops software for a living (in Java) I'd be *THRILLED* if the docs that I had to work with from vendors that we deal with were a quarter as good as Apple's.

As for having to buy a Mac - do you think it's possible to develop for windows mobile without having a windows-based PC? I can totally understand Apple's point-of-view here - their time would be much better spent making the tools work, and work well rather than porting them to and testing them on other platforms.

Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot.

Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you can hear the emo retards all over the world laughing over their Starbucks at that zinger...

Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[Sloppy]

And use a language no one but Apple uses instead of industry standards like Java, Javascript, etc that everyone already has years of experience with.

If you have "years of experience" with Java yet think of learning Objective C as anything but absolutely trivial, then face it: you're a lameass programmer.

I don't advocate developers locking themselves into Apple's stuff, but damn, that has got to be one of the stupidest reasons to stay away from Apple, that I have ever heard. You would sound smarter if you had complained about the color of the plastic they use.

Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go away idiot.

Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking from deep experience developing for a number of mobile platforms (15+ years), the iPhone's development AND operating environment (note the combination) is by far the most advanced (and this is coming from someone who is not an Apple gearhead - just a developer who likes powerful platforms). Any capable developer who understands object oriented principles (e.g. Java) and understands one compiled language becomes quickly productive in developing iPhone applications.

As for having to buy a Mac, for professional developers, this is a small price to pay vs. the time spent doing development for a platform that can actually make the developer some money (the AppStore is a *real* revenue stream).

Unless Palm provides some sort of native code compiler for javascript (a la Google Chrome), this approach is a non-starter for entire classes of applications that are possible on the iPhone.

Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[Pulzar]

If you have "years of experience" with Java yet think of learning Objective C as anything but absolutely trivial, then face it: you're a lameass programmer.

Don't you have years worth of favourite code snipets in C++, Java, etc. that you've developed and reuse in your projects? Switching to Objective-C isn't about learning the trivial syntax differences, it's about having to rewrite what you have because almost nobody has any Objective-C code lying around.

Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just compile those files as C or C++. It's not a closed system. There's no reason you can't mix and match within a project as necessary.

Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[Kickersny.com]

As for having to buy a Mac - do you think it's possible to develop for windows mobile without having a windows-based PC? I can totally understand Apple's point-of-view here - their time would be much better spent making the tools work, and work well rather than porting them to and testing them on other platforms.

The difference is that a copy of OEM XP is ~$100. With Apple, you have to buy (and use!) an entirely separate machine. I already have a very high-powered development machine; why would I want two?

Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[gutter]

Right, nobody has any Objective-C code lying around. Despite the fact that both C and C++ code integrates with Objective-C easily.

You have clearly never tried it. I started iPhone development a couple of months ago, and I found 3rd-party BSD licensed code for basically everything I needed.

Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[willy_me]

Don't you have years worth of favourite code snipets in C++, Java, etc. that you've developed and reuse in your projects? Switching to Objective-C isn't about learning the trivial syntax differences, it's about having to rewrite what you have because almost nobody has any Objective-C code lying around.

You can mix Objective C and C++ so you point is moot. Well, mostly moot as there are certain restrictions that result from ObjC++. More info is available here.

Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[MidnightBrewer]

You could always try to get more value out of it by installing Linux or Windows on it and dual-booting. Also, there aren't many closed platforms out there (think consoles) that allow you to get away with developing without a hardware investment. There's no reason for you to not just buy an entry-level Mac mini and save a bunch of money. As for a programmer who is unable to adapt to the minor differences in a new programming language or architecture (try programming for the PS3 sometime), perhaps development isn't really what he should be getting into.

Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[Anonymous Coward]

As an iPhone developer from a Java background I can confirm Objective-C isn't that difficult. It is comparatively primitive, though.

It only makes me wonder how great Java would be if Swing had nice widgets, smooth contours, and fancy built-in animations. That's really all the iPhone SDK has that's so great.

As for Apple's documentation goes, it's OK. Some parts are decent. But many parts are awful. A far cry from what I'm used to from Sun and the third-party Java frameworks.

The iPhone SDK also suffers from a total lack of toolkits and frameworks. I know, haha, if only we could have as many as Java. But seriously, there is no support for web services on the iPhone at all. They don't even give you NSXML. The closest thing you can get is the third-party TouchXML, which is read-only. You'll be appending strings if you actually need to send an XML somewhere.

Actually that's a good segway into how much different the iPhone SDK is from even the Mac OS X SDK. For whatever reason Apple decided to make many core API's like AddressBook and KeychainAccess completely incompatible with the desktop versions of the same thing. I have no idea what's going on under the hood that's so special, but I can easily see how they could have built an Objective-C wrapper to make them work exactly the same.

Anyway. I think the Palm pre is pretty exciting. Javascript, HTML, and CSS suck pretty hard. I've been there, done that. But from the sound of what they're doing it could be a fun and productive development environment. I would definitely consider getting a pre if it came to other cellular networks in the US.

Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[fistfullast33l]

I dropped $700 on Mini and love it. The way I see it, the $700 is going to be easy to get back if you develop a decent app and charge a reasonable price. Even crappy apps on the iTunes Store make at least a few grand - more than enough to pay for the mini.

Also, it took me maybe a month to get comfortable with Objective-C and the iphone SDK. Any programmer worth his salt should be able to pick the language up and run with it, especially anyone familiar with the Java Swing and the Java2D Graphics API. They're very similar - hell all graphics APIs are pretty similar when you get down to it.

Basically, if all you can code is HTML and VB, then mobile phone development is not for you, including Palm, Apple, Google, whathaveyou. The smart developer is the one who learns all three and ports apps across platform to get the most exposure. That's my ultimate plan. If Android and Palm take off, then in my opinion that's only better for small developers like me who just want to play and make a little money on the side.

Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right?

[lurker-11]

As for having to buy a Mac - do you think it's possible to develop for windows mobile without having a windows-based PC?

Yes, it is; you can develop for WM with Mono on Linux. All you need to do is copy the .NET CF DLLs off of the WM device and point the Mono compiler at them.

Good News

[Anonymous Coward]

Good news, It's a suppository.

Re:Good News

[linhares]

is that you, Goatse?

Fastest?

[cbiltcliffe]

and what Palm described as the 'fastest ever' Texas Instruments OMAP processor."

Only if you hurl it from your car window on the freeway at 90 MPH.

Maybe that's where the "killer new phone" comment comes from, too....

Re:Fastest?

[Anonymous Coward]

that's just friendly fire from Tanenbaum doing field testing.

Re:Palm never got their PalmOS to the point where

[cbiltcliffe]

Wierd. I've had a Palm for years, and it's only ever crashed once, and that was when I was testing out some beta OSS app on it that I thought I might want to use.

What there need to be an iPhone killer?

[jotaeleemeese]

That would be a sensible aim if the iPhone was the market leader.

Now, show us some reference where the iPhone is shown to be leading the market.

From Nokia's Q3 report:

"Nokia estimated mobile device market share of 38%, down from 39% in Q3 2007 and down from 40%
in Q2 2008."

and later

"NOKIA MOBILE DEVICE VOLUME BY GEOGRAPHIC AREA (million units) Q3/2008 Q3/2007 YoY
Change Q2/2008 QoQ
Change
Europe 27.4 29.0 -5.5% 27.1 1.1%
Middle East & Africa 21.5 19.3 11.4% 21.1 1.9%
Greater China 19.8 18.9 4.8% 17.6 12.5%
Asia-Pacific 33.6 29.5 13.9% 36.4 -7.7%
North America 4.5 5.4 -16.7% 4.5 0.0%
Latin America 11.0 9.6 14.6% 15.3 -28.1%
Total 117.8 111.7 5.5% 122.0 -3.4%
"

From Apple's 2008 Q4 report: "Quarterly iPhone units sold were 6,892,000"

So Nokia is selling 117 million units, Apple is selling 7 million.

According to Nokia's report the global market for the period was 300 million units.

Again, why do we need to kill the iPhone?

That the iPhone is mentioned as the aim to be killed is a testament to the marketing skills of Apple.

The general public is not that stupid: we don't want network lockin (not in Europe, not in East Asia, the biggest mobile markets) and people are clearly finding the iPhone deals extortionate.

Certainly other companies need to do something about the mindshare that Apple is enjoying now, but I wonder how important that is going to be once Steve Jobs leaves Apple. His marketing based vision of the company will be difficult to be push by somebody that is not as charismatic as him (he has been described as a cult leader, which is not far from the truth).

Re:What there need to be an iPhone killer?

[Anonymous Coward]

The impressive part of the iPhone is that those 7 million units are pretty much a SINGLE UNIT!

Nokia's 110 million units are from 10-20 DIFFERENT UNITS!.

So, yeah, when you compare Apple to Nokia, Apple's not that big. But, when you compare iPhone to a specific phone (or family of phones) from Nokia, then it's a different story.

Re:What there need to be an iPhone killer?

[embsysdev]

Here's some data on phone OS market share. Symbian leads with 41%, but iPhone is a close second (32%). Palm is way, way behind (4%).

http://tamspalm.tamoggemon.com/2009/01/09/admob-stat-day/

Re:What there need to be an iPhone killer?

[jotaeleemeese]

Yeah, sure, lies, damned lies and statistics, the tools of the marketing gurus.

It is like that baseball player in a movie who is fired but claims it is unfair since he broke the record for triples for a month of August.

Re:What there need to be an iPhone killer?

[DJGrahamJ]

That 117 million figure from Nokia is spread out over a huge number of different products. Apple sold 7 million of ONE MODEL. As far as a single device I believe the iPhone is outselling everything else, even free RAZRs.

Re:What there need to be an iPhone killer?

[Macman408]

That would be a sensible aim if the iPhone was the market leader.

Now, show us some reference where the iPhone is shown to be leading the market.

According to some research from about 2 months ago, Apple has 17.3% of the smartphone market share, behind only Nokia at 38.9%. Going from 0% to 17.3% in 18 months is pretty impressive. Not only that, but Apple sells one model of iPhone (ignoring capacity and color differences). Nokia has many smartphones. I would not be surprised if the iPhone beats every particular model of Nokia's.

A few years from now, when Apple is selling the iPhone nano, iPhone classic, and several other models, they might well be crushing Nokia the same way they crushed everybody in the MP3 player market. (Or they might lose one for a change, you never know.)

Personally, I'm waiting for the iPhone Shuffle. Nothing more than an earpiece, a microphone, and a button to call one of your friends at random.

Re:What there need to be an iPhone killer?

[JWallyR]

Certainly other companies need to do something about the mindshare that Apple is enjoying now, but I wonder how important that is going to be once Steve Jobs leaves Apple. His marketing based vision of the company will be difficult to be push by somebody that is not as charismatic as him (he has been described as a cult leader, which is not far from the truth).

While I agree that the numbers make the idea of an "iPhone Killer" somewhat silly, can we please put to rest this idea that Apple is driven by marketing? It's so far from the truth it's laughable. Apple makes products that are based on being designed for aesthetics and ease of use. The fact that they use well-designed marketing campaigns to promote their products is (and always has been) secondary to the design that goes into the products themselves. Besides, one would think that the landslide victory of the iPod in the personal music player arena would have driven home the fact that feature laundry lists aren't necessary for good appliance-type products, which is the other point that people who think Apple is all about marketing usually miss.

I'm not even sure what a good example of a marketing-based company is. Usually it seems more like shoddy companies just try to use marketing to shore up their shoddy products. My 2Â, anyway.

Re:What there need to be an iPhone killer?

[JWallyR]

Err my 2 cents, the 'cent' character didn't show up properly for some reason.

Re:What there need to be an iPhone killer?

[Lars T.]

That would be a sensible aim if the iPhone was the market leader.

Now, show us some reference where the iPhone is shown to be leading the market.

...

So Nokia is selling 117 million units, Apple is selling 7 million.

Yeah, you are right, Nokia sells more 1200s than Apple sells iPhones. Obviously that proves Nokia must be the smart-phone market-leader

Re:What there need to be an iPhone killer?

[mgblst]

I think you would be a complete idiot not to be impressed with Apples growth in this market. They also have huge mindshare, not simply because they are apple, but because they have produced a great machine. They came into a saturated market, and produced something unique and great, very hard to do.

Re:What there need to be an iPhone killer?

[isaac]

I'm not even sure what a good example of a marketing-based company is.

Coca-Cola. It's not like they're going to make a new and improved Coke so marketing is all they have.

-Isaac

Apple showed it is never too late.

[jotaeleemeese]

Apple was in the doldrums before Steve Jobs' come back.

Microsoft invested money on them for crying out loud.

Palm has a brand recognition that can be put to good use, if they come with a good product they could become big players again. Openness is key, they should remember how quickly Palm became ubiquitous thanks to the easy access to development tools.

Re:Apple showed it is never too late.

[Refrag]

Microsoft didn't invest money in Apple. Microsoft settled a lawsuit Apple had filed against them for stealing QuickTime code and that was part of it.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/592FE887-5CA1-4F30-BD62-407362B533B9.html

It's a long and rambling article but it gets to the truth towards the end.

Keyboard?

[jav1231]

I liked my Centro and full keyboard but after using my iPod Touch and my Instinct phone I just don't want a physical keyboard on my phone anymore. It's just going to add bulk.

Ah, low expectations

[danaris]

On the other hand, since my expectations are pretty damn low, I guess they shouldn't have too much trouble meeting them.

Aha, so you have discovered the secret to always being pleasantly surprised ;-)

Dan Aris

Re:Ah, low expectations

[HardCase]

Or at least reluctantly satisfied!

Re:Your what now?

[need4mospd]

Whooosh! It's called a joke.

Re:Your what now?

[danaris]

Aha, I see :-)

You win this round, it seems ;-)

Dan Aris

who has ever gotten support on a cell phone before

[manekineko2]

Maybe things are different in the world of smart phones, which I haven't entered yet, but in answer to your title question "would you buy a cell phone with NO support", I don't honestly think any cell phone I have ever had has ever had any meaningful support, so yes, apparently I would.

On my Samsung brand phone, their initial release was buggy as hell, T9 didn't work, Bluetooth was jacked, and all I could get out of either Sprint or Samsung support was that's how it's supposed to work, or maybe the problem is with your Bluetooth headset. Then they had the gall to release a software updated version, and sell it as a different product while claiming they couldn't give us the software update due to hardware differences. This was thoroughly discredited by industrious hackers, who managed to clone the firmware from the new one onto old models, and were selling the service as a fee.

The sad fact of the matter is that there is such a deathgrip on the American cell phone market, I go in now with lowered expectation and zero assumption I will ever receive anything that resembles customer service or support.

The Nokia U235 Nuclear Phone!

[rdforsyth]

All New! Nuclear Powered! It's literally a KILLER phone!!

sorry!

[goombah99]

Ooh, I can use it as an actual music player now :D

Now, if I could just *afford* it...

I hate being in college sometimes.

from the answer:
"Though the demonstration was impressive, notable absentees from the demo were video streaming and any in-depth show of the music player."

It also has an externally replaceable battery, so one guesses the individual batteries won't last as long as an iphone or else it's thick as a brick. (they don't give the dimensions or show it in profile)

No mention of the enterprise-like push apps that Rim and iphone now sport. No mention of corresponding desktop based easy-management software like itunes or me.com

and of course it is yet-another OS. is there an SDK?

Re:sorry!

[el_gordo101]

It also has an externally replaceable battery, so one guesses the individual batteries won't last as long as an iphone or else it's thick as a brick. (they don't give the dimensions or show it in profile)

Why would one guess that the battery won't last as long as the one in the iPhone? One would think that a user-replaceable consumable such as a battery would be a good thing

Re:sorry!

[The Wooden Badger]

Especially when Apple is involved.

Re:sorry!

[Random BedHead Ed]

and of course it is yet-another OS. is there an SDK?

Yeah, but what OS?

One thing I haven't been able to find anywhere is some set of details about this new "webOS." For years Palm had been rumored to be working on a Linux-based OS, but the only thing that's been said about webOS is that it allows you to develop using web languages. Great, but what's under the hood? Linux? Some update to the old PalmOS? Apple's Copland OS? Windows for Workgroups 3.11? I can't be the only person who hasn't accepted the company's vague statements that it just runs on "teh web."

Re:sorry!

[ncc74656]

what's under the hood? Linux? Some update to the old PalmOS? Apple's Copland OS? Windows for Workgroups 3.11?

No mention of backward compatibility, either. If you have to make a clean break with the Palm OS apps you've been using for a decade or more, it loses a big advantage it could have over the competition.

(In my case, that "clean break" happened about a month ago, when I replaced a Treo 650 with an iPhone 3G. So far, the iPhone does nearly everything the Treo did and a bunch of other stuff that it didn't...only annoyance so far is that the iPhone's notepad app doesn't sync to anything on the desktop. (WTF?) I've installed Evernote, but that seems to be a suboptimal fix.)

Re:sorry!

[dotgain]

Great, but what's under the hood? Linux? Some update to the old PalmOS? Apple's Copland OS?

Most importantly, it isn't Windows Mobile. I'm sure it's still well within' Palm's capacity to make a device seriously suck without it, but they'll have their work cut out for them.

Re:sorry!

[tcolberg]

Damn dude, google. http://developer.palm.com/

Apparently, it's Linux underneath with all the apps written in web languages, like HTML, CSS, and Java.

Re:sorry!

[Planesdragon]

"Though the demonstration was impressive, notable absentees from the demo were video streaming and any in-depth show of the music player."

PalmOS has had PocketTunes for years -- and Pandora already has a version for WebOS. Music player won't be a problem.

Video streaming? Don't know. Don't REALLY care.

It also has an externally replaceable battery, so one guesses the individual batteries won't last as long as an iphone or else it's thick as a brick. (they don't give the dimensions or show it in profile)

If you bother'd to look:

"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)] " (link)

The iPhone not having a user-replaceable battery is just dumb. It's the one thing on a device that WILL wear out, and it's also the one that gets the most benefit from being user-replaceable.

No mention of the enterprise-like push apps that Rim and iphone now sport. No mention of corresponding desktop based easy-management software like itunes or me.com

1: Did you even WATCH the presentation? Yes, it can do enterprise-push. The darn thing screams enterprise in the OS.

2: If you think iTunes software is "easy", then I'm certain Palm won't be a problem for you. They didn't mention it because, quite frankly, they're not focused on desktopy sync.

and of course it is yet-another OS. is there an SDK?

It's HTML5, CSS, and javascript. And yes, there will be an SDK packaged with an eclipse-based IDE.

Useless

[Count_Froggy]

As a long-term PalmOS (since 1996) user, this device is useless to me. Some of my client do not allow cell phones and other radio (excluding WiFi and Bluetooth) devices on premises for security reasons. So a device dependent on the Web, as is indicated in the email sent to me by Palm, won't be available when I need it; it will be out in the car in the parking lot (if it even makes it in past the security gate). There is no indication if I could import data from existing PalmOS devices or if it can run any existing PalmOS third-party applications. For a device and OS supposedly 'in development' as long as this one has, it seems grossly inadequate to hold on to existing customers. And, I'm not even going to mention Sprint!

Re:Useless

[Anonymous Coward]

So a device dependent on the Web
It's not dependent on the web, though Palm doesn't seem to make that clear. The on-board applications basically run on an embedded web server on the device. So, your calendar app will still work, even if it can't reach your Google calendar.

And no one has ever lied about having a killer pru

[Genevish]

And no one ever was wrong about the next product that would knock Apple out of the lead in a niche:

http://gizmodo.com/384440/rim-engineers-call-touchscreen-blackberry-apple-killer
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/08/songbird-the-open-so.html
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20081215/amazons-mp3-store-one-year-in-no-itunes-killer-probably-wont-be/
http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/10/facebook-to-launch-itunes-competitor/
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/appleaday/blog/2008/07/dells_ipod_killer_revealed_pro.html
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1027_3-5183692.html

Spelling Error.

[MrCrassic]

There's a spelling error in the summary. It's HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), not HDSPA (High Definition Spa?)...

Is everything about an iphone killer?

[drolli]

Symbian os still outsells ihpones grossly.

On the other hand, i remind whhat i love about my palm m105

-ran on 2AAA batteries for several weeks (if uses at phone book/clock/calendar). The baterries were available at the end of the world and it ran on rechargeable.
-monochrome display was readable in sunlight and had soft eye-friendly illumination
-the clock/calendar worked and did not crash (i had a z31 after that and found crashes in very basic functions)
-synchronization was easy
-memory was enough to have one or two dictionaries installed

I wonder how why palm wants to compete in the market where they are trying to compete now. would they produce a m105 with an e-paper display and in a more flat case and with flash, i would buy it without thinking twice. Would they integrate on of the power-saving an somple models with a few basic funcion (implemented decently) like email, simple web (no, youtube is not needed-and neither is flash) and UMTS (i need that since i live in Japan), i also would buy it.

 

Re:Is everything about an iphone killer?

[rwa2]

Word... I wish someone would concentrate on making a decent PDA again.

The reason Palm was initially successful was that the designers created something intended to compete with a pad of paper or daytimer. Now that they've been trying to compete with mobile computers, media players, and smartphones, they haven't really emerged as a market discriminator.

I do like the sound of the way their "synergy" UI sorta hearkens back to the day where their interface was designed around the user and not around the application. Hopefully that contribution alone will find its way into other UIs.

Looks like it is Launch Exclusive

[RootWind]

Looks like Sprint only has a launch exclusive, so you can be sure the Verizon and U.S. GSM iterations will soon follow a few months after.

Which PalmOS?

[argent]

I don't know if Palm is even currently selling anything that runs the original PalmOS. They throw in the towel on operating systems so often you need a scorecard to tell whether garnet/ruby/cubic-zirconium/mudstone is or is not vaporware.

The original PalmOS running under AMX was about as solid as anything I've seen on 1980-era hardware (the original Palm was running on a bug-compatible 68000 implementation). When they started playing musical-operating-systems and running applications under what appeared to be a port of UAE (an open-source 68000 emulator they used as part of their devkit) on ARM things just went to hell. "Oh, that's just temporary until we do BeOS... uh, no, I mean Linux... oh hell, we'll license Windows CE... hey, seen our NEW Linux variant yet?"

So, no, they didn't have "10 years and 5 commercial releases to get it right". They've been suffering from corporate AD&D since Hawkins returned.

Re:Which PalmOS?

[Joe Snipe]

They've been suffering from corporate AD&D since Hawkins returned.

They're trying to cast magic missile?

Re:Which PalmOS?

[ryanov]

I don't know if you're being extremely specific (original codebase vs. original UI) or what... but Palm still sells at least two original PalmOS phones, and really the only thing they've done is run Windows Mobile on some of their newer devices. They almost released Palm OS 6 (Cobalt), but never did. How is that anything like what you've described?

Re:Which PalmOS?

[argent]

PalmOS 5 is really a new OS, one that was never fully documented... they never had full native ARM support because they were waiting for PalmOS 6, and they lost a lot of functionality that was waiting on full ARM support.

While waiting they released one Linux-based device, and another one that they cancelled before release.

And then they dropped PalmOS 6.

And now we have this new WebOS.

That would be the case, but...

[WindBourne]

the new system will be buried amongst all the window-based phones. Customers will have to dig for it. Now, if the stores would quit taking payoffs while making razor thin profits, then this phone could be knifing into iphone. Sadly, it will take hitting somebody over the head with a shovel to change things.

Certainly

[WindBourne]

Buy one and simply flash it.

700p is a piece of junk

[Anonymous Coward]

Owning a Treo 700p has completely soured me on Palm. The 700p is a piece of junk and I don't think I could ever bring myself to buy another Palm product.

What? No landscape mode?

[joeyblades]

The demos didn't show them rotate the phone for a landscape display.
If I'm browsing with a half VGA display, I want some width...

Re:What? No landscape mode?

[dimonic]

Actually, it did.

Re:What? No landscape mode?

[stompertje]

It does have an accelerometer to switch the screen orientation. See the specs from Palm: http://investor.palm.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=358392

Old news

[tarlss]

What does this phone do that my G1 doesn't? It doesn't even have an app market. And development is just crap.

Does it support Java?

[Qwavel]

My first language is C/C++, not Java, but obviously Java and J2ME are the closest thing we have to a standard mobile development platform, so please support them!

The recent trend away from J2ME is making it a nightmare to support a broad range of phones.

They should do what Nokia does with Symbian: it supports C/C++ apps for Symbian but it also supports J2ME apps.

whoopsie

[up2ng]

ooooo so close

"It's coming right for us!" - Jimbo

there thats better

Battery Display

[spud.dups]

Is it just me, or is the battery display outside of the screen area? If someone understands, could you explain how this would work.

Re:Battery Display

[ryanov]

I think the screen area is larger than it looks, but when the screen is not illuminated, it is invisible. The area with the battery, etc., is part of the screen but does not look it as there are dark pixels surrounding it... sort of the way that old MacOS made the screen look like it had rounded corners when it didn't.

Re:Palm never got their PalmOS to the point where

[MrCrassic]

No.

Just no.

I've owned every iteration of the Palm Treo, and every single one of them had issues with stability. If you even thought of THINKING of putting a non-Palm app on the phone, it would crash. Opera crashed all of the time on the 650 and 680, as well as Good Mobile Messaging (Exchange conduit). It would crash while doing nothing (I could hear it resetting in my pocket) or while making calls.

I would love to fancy the idea of Palm making an earth-shattering comeback, but I hope that they resolved all of the problems that plagued their Treo line (and their credibility), like the build quality (i.e. the phone lasting more than year without some defect coming up), the stability, etc. Looks really nice, though.

Re:ipod to zune and iphone to Palm's killer new ph

[linhares]

I love analogies

So does Douglas Hofstadter

HDSPA?!

[olivermoffat]

HDSPA! What's that? Is that HSDPA but, like High-Def instead?

Uuuh... No copy-paste again?

[Anonymous Coward]

subj

This Interrupted Me

[repetty]

What, another review of an unreleased produce that the reviewer hasn't even seen?

--Richard

Can Android improve because of it?

[edmicman]

I'm wondering if the Android development might take some cues from this and improve it's own offerings? It sounds like webOS does some really cool things with it's UI and data management, from a PIM standpoint. Could an open OS like Android in turn improve it's shortcomings by adopting some of the ideas from Palm?

It would be really nice if software would get all-around better rather than having separate options that do certain things exceptionally well and other things mediocre...

CDMA?

[rpgdude]

It's not a GSM phone. It's a CDMA phone. Pretty much useless. At least the iPhone is GSM.

Re:CDMA?

[Planesdragon]

There's a GSM version coming down the pipe, later in the year.

Heh...

[BrokenHalo]

Ah, but I suspect that you haven't read the famous quote from Sigmund Freud:

"Two can live as cheaply as one, especially if they both have good jobs."

Thrown in FWIW as devil's advocacy, since I actually agree, having been married for over 20 years...

Evolution of iphone interface...

[TurinX]

Looking at the vidoes, it seems to take what the iphone does so well and (maybe) improve... The reason I think the iphone is so popular (and I love mine) centers around the UI - everything else I've tried doesn't quite match it... The Pre seems to use a very similar approach, in terms of naviation, web, etc... but adds new features (the keyboard 'logial' serching for example). Again, impossible to tell without trying, but looks impressive... (That said, i thoguht the storm looked great... and it was a DISSASTER! TRUELY AWEFUL phone. The bold is brilliant, love mine, but we actually returned our storms and are sticking with Bolds....)

Another Folio

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm amazed at the replies here. I watched the videos, and to sum it up -

It's crap. Not even close to matching the iPhone. Keyboard better than the iphones? Hardly. And comeone, they are waaaay too late to the party at this stage.

I'm pretty sure this is the last big product launch you will see from Palm before they go under or are bought up.

Re:Another Folio

[memco]

I wouldn't say it's crap, necessarily (I'd try it out first), but it is definitely late in the game, and doesn't seem to offer enough to make it really worth selling my iPhone for.

Re:ipod to zune and iphone to Palm's killer new ph

[Anonymous Coward]

I love digities

only three years behind Apple now

[peter303]

Just copying isnt going overtake a market someone else dominates.

No FLAC

[0xG]

"Audio Formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, AMR, QCELP, WAV"
Boo, hiss!

"Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING."
(That fixed it :-)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I wouldn't go *quite* that far

[danaris]

Translation: no matter how good it is, it won't sell unless it's shiny and has 'Apple' written on it?

Overcoming the "cool factor" that Apple has (whether you like it or not, it's difficult to deny it's there) would be somewhat difficult, of course, but the really important thing would be to do the same thing Apple does with its user interface: study what actually makes a good one, and then use that information to make a user interface that is easy to use and lets people actually get at the features of the device they want to use.

Dan Aris

If it has "killer" in the title, it's not

[chord.wav]

"Killer" products innovate, they don't copy other products.

On top of that, I don't need a touchscreen paperweight...I still have my Palm TX for that matter thank you very much!

Re:If it has "killer" in the title, it's not

[glop]

Funny but it is less than 5 ounces and did not seem to bulky on pictures where it sat beside an Iphone.
I really like the idea of cards for the GUI. It seems very much like the original (i.e. simple idea that keeps things simple, fast, efficient).
The javascript/HTML GUI seems really Palm-like too (i.e. simple to do what most apps want to do).
It is multi tasking too.
And below lies Linux with a powerful CPU, OpenGL capabilities etc.
Also, I heard the Centro was selling pretty well (not like the Iphone but well).
I guess they could have some success.

To me, this looks more tempting that the Android phone actually... Too bad it's only EVDO...

Weird thing in the photos of this phone....

[NiteShaed]

Looking at the photos of this thing, it looks like the clock, signal strength and battery indicator are actually above the screen....are these just drawn in for a mock-up, or is the screen actually bigger than it looks?

Re:Weird thing in the photos of this phone....

[dreemernj]

The screen is bigger than it looks in those photos. The part where you see the clock and signal strength are actually part of the screen.

If you check this video from the event, he demonstrates a photo app (about 35 seconds in) where the bar with signal, battery and everything slides up and is replaced by a header for the photo app. He also clicks to hide that header so you can see the full size of the screen.

I'd love to see one up close to see how well the screen blends with the surface when its showing the clock and signal.

Re:Weird thing in the photos of this phone....

[NiteShaed]

ah, that explains it then (I can't do video from here, but thanks for the description).

I'm looking forward to seeing this in person as well...I have Sprint and I've been sticking with them, but it seems they never get the phones I really want on their system.

Sooo...how were the original iPhone apps written?

[danaris]

The real difference between the Palm Pre and the iPhone when it comes to developers, is that all Palm's standard apps that come with the phone were written with javascript, CSS, and HTML. They're "eating their own dogfood", so to speak.

So do you think the original iPhone apps were not written in Objective-C using Xcode?

Dan Aris

No more Palm devices for me, EVER !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I owned a Sony Clie, on which I depended greatly. Palm sold the rights to produce hardware to Sony, but Palm did not keep control over the software.

As OS updates were installed on my laptop ( to which I synced the
Clie regularly ) the Palm Desktop as supplied by Sony ceased being compatible with my laptop. As such, the Clie became useless to me, and Sony had pulled out of the Palm market in the US, so I was left with no choice but to find an alternative.

This earned my everlasting refusal to ever buy a Sony or Palm product again, and all this was before the Sony rootkit fiasco. I am aware that some of us are forced to use certain devices because it's what "corporate" supplies us. But for me, there is no way I will ever spend my own money on a Palm.

Think about this : Palm is a "one -trick pony". It lives or dies on Palm devices alone. Do you think it would be safer to bet on a Nokia or an iPhone or ? If your answer is "no", then you are setting yourself up to be screwed by Palm like I was.

Don't say you weren't warned.

And to any Palm honchos who read this : I don't think much of your company, which started out with such promise only to whore itself to a company like Sony, which in turn screws all the consumers who won't yell too loudly about it. And Sony : fuck you too.

Thinking ahead...

[Media Withdrawal]

Completely agreed. Clicked Palm's "learn more" link and just about fell over laughing when I got a pretty page that said "Thinking ahead is a beautiful thing. Coming soon." That smacks of a subtle revolt of marketing drones told to hype vaporware.

Palm's banking on the goodwill that adheres to its name while signaling a complete change in direction. Typical. Palm had an identity crisis for nearly a decade, with dozens of hardware licensees and more than 100% turnover of its technical staff. Forget about your favorite PalmOS apps. They won't run on a modern OS and most were written by shops way too small to work with major carriers. Whether or not thinking forward is beautiful, time's run out for the Palm legacy.

No backup to SD card? Um, what?

[Dr. Manhattan]

On my Treo, I use NVBackup, but there's also Red Feline Backup, both of which are free and open source, not even getting into the numerous for-pay options. They can be run off of SD card so if you've got a card reader you don't even need to use HotSync to install them.

Of course, I haven't had the problems syncing you have. I can't recall a time I lost data from it. Of course, I mostly use Linux (pilot-xfer, JPilot), so perhaps they're more reliable about that.

None of this applies to the new phone, of course, since it's not running Palm OS. Still, while PalmOS has many faults, I've never see the sync as one of them.

iTunes is a club now?

[danaris]

i disagree, one of the benefits of the Palm is that it does not do the iTunes thing. Owning a piece of hardware should not require you to join a "special" club no matter how "cool" they make it seem.
If you want to join a special club to get access to specific content that should be your decision.

Um...so what's a club now? "People who have downloaded iTunes"? You do know that a) it's free, b) you don't have to sign up for anything to get it, and c) using iTunes in no way requires you to use the iTunes Store, don't you?

That's when they ask if they can have Word... sigh.

And you tell them...what? MS Word is available for Mac. OpenOffice.org Write is very similar to the Windows version of Word 2003.

In what way is Word not available for Mac?

I know, I know...IHBT, IHL. IWHAND.

Dan Aris

Palm who?

[nurb432]

While i still carry a T/X ( i would like to meet the idiot engineer who didn't include a microphone..), are they even solvent at this point?

Re:Palm who?

[The Conductor]

>didn't include a microphone
You can buy one that clips onto the athena connector.

webOS really Ninnle!

[Anonymous Coward]

That new Palm webOS being implemented is actually a Ninnle Linux port!

Loyal Palm customer

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had a Palm Centro with Sprint for over a year and I have been happy with the product and the data plan. If Sprint keeps the same data plan and sells the Pre for a reasonable price it should be popular and may provide some price competition for ATT and Apple. OF course it has to work, but I don't much care if it beats the Iphone in every regard.

Re:who has ever gotten support on a cell phone bef

[drew]

I think there is an assumption by most people that a cell phone is a piece of hardware, like a cd player or consumer electronic device, that will never change and always be the same as when you got it. People don't seem to expect much in the way of updates for them because that would require "computer knowledge". Smart Phones are a bit of a different beast, because people expect to be able to do many of the same things that they can do with a computer. In particular, you typically want to exchange information between your smart phone and a computer, and if the sync software doesn't keep up with changes on the computer side, it can get really messy.

I had a Treo 300 some years ago, back when HandSpring was still a separate company, and Palm still had a decent OS. I used it for a really long time, and to this day it is possibly the best phone I have ever owned. But the entire time that I used it, I don't think they updated the Palm Desktop software once. I remember having a lot of problems getting it to work when I switched to XP. Regardless of desktop OS, contacts would pretty much only sync reliably with Outlook, and even then, "reliable" was something more akin to "fails in predictable ways" than "works without hassle". I can't remember how many other headaches I had to endure at the hands of Palm Desktop, but I still shudder at the thought of it.

It's sad what Palm has squandered. That 7 year old phone could run circles around my BlackBerry 8800 in terms of installed and third party software. (Blazer was pretty crappy, but somehow still far and away better than RIM's built in browser of 6 years later.) Even the data network speed was nearly on par. My BlackBerry still can't sync contacts with Thunderbird. Their desktop software isn't really any better than Palm's, but it at least has the saving grace that my BlackBerry has never crashed, so I have never had to use it. The only real points in favor of the BlackBerry are 2 third party software packages that didn't exist when I had my Treo - GMail and Opera Mobile. I'd love to have a more modern version of my Treo, but I can't bring myself to buy another Palm product. They've spent the last five years running around in circles, and I am not ready to believe that they've suddenly found their direction now.

data != application ...

[KlaymenDK]

Migrating data is not the same as (sup)porting an application.

Given that the launch date is still far off, there is still a (naive?) possibility that they will support Garnet. But we probably shouldn't hope for it (nor continue to write apps for it).

Re:data != application ...

[mspohr]

It's not clear from the announcement whether they are referring to data or program files. I would assume that reading data files would be a no brainer that wouldn't even merit an announcement. However, applications are difficult. Since the old PalmOS uses the same data structure to store program files, I assumed that they were referring to porting applications. We will have to wait and see what actually appears. I definitely won't spend time writing anything in the old PalmOS.

webos

[Anonymous Coward]

In my home town (Guadalajara). when we say webos we are refering to testicles! Rock on Palm!

You can't square that circle.

[jotaeleemeese]

Nokia alone is selling 16 times more phones than Apple.

I went directly to the earning reports of each company, so you will have to explain how the numbers you are quoting fit with what the companies themselves are telling us.

Re:You can't square that circle.

[embsysdev]

The data I quoted was from ad impressions, so the simplest explanation is either that most Nokia units sold are not smartphones, or their users don't surf as much.

Palm sync reliability

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly, in 18 years of supporting palm software, and writing palm software, and selling palm software I've -never- had that happen.

At one time, we had an installed base of hundreds of palm-os devices from multiple manufacturers with multiple OS's running and I've never had that happen.

I feel bad for you.

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[account_deleted]

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it's about damn time

[roc97007]

Speaking as a Palm user, I've been extremely frustrated with Palm's products these last five years. I was determined to hang onto my 650 until something better came along. I tried a 750, returned it. When my 650 finally quit, I acquired a used 680 and grimly hung on waiting for something... anything...

This new phone solves every issue I had with Palm -- decent camera, Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi, and an updated OS that's not Windows Mobile. It looks like finally someone at Palm realized what their core strengths used to be and has attempted to revive same.

For me it's too late. The 680 gave up the ghost last week and I have a Blackberry Bold on order. But I wish Palm the best of luck and hope they survive as a company.

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[account_deleted]

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They don't get it, do they?

[synthespian]

What a pathetic attempt.

I sort of lost count of the number of special "gestures" I would have to remember.

Apparently, there'll be a new wave of UI with "gestures". They're getting it all wrong. I do not want a computer for which I must extend my arm to flick through 2,000 photos! That's stupid! "Gestures" do not necessarily make for a simple UI.

Apple competitors don't seem to understand the fundamental concept Apple advanced: user want to do certain things with their computers. There's an ecosystem around the iPhone that, at the very least, would be hard to replicate. Besides, there's the whole issue of brand recognition and brand loyalty. Apple just makes good products. Period.

Re:They don't get it, do they?

[iluvcapra]

Apparently, there'll be a new wave of UI with "gestures". They're getting it all wrong. I do not want a computer for which I must extend my arm to flick through 2,000 photos! That's stupid! "Gestures" do not necessarily make for a simple UI.

I dunno, I was pretty good with Graffiti writing back in the day, as were a lot of other people, and that requires you to learn a particular way of writing every letter in the latin alphabet. Doing lotsa gestures can work, the problem is exposing the functionality the gestures provide in a way thats hard to miss.

errrrrrrm

[The Outlander]

Has anyone made comment to how bloody ugly this phone is?

It looks like a bar of soap and is as appealing to me AS a bar of soap on the floor in a prison.

ADHD

[argent]

They've been suffering from corporate AD&D since Hawkins returned.

They're trying to cast magic missile?

Sorry, I was going to fix that typo but I got distracted.

google did it google did it

[DragonTHC]

the HTC G1 does all of that better and more aesthetic.

The Palm® Preâ phone is available

[krischik]

... on the Sprint network.

Well that was it for me. There is no Sprint in Switzerland. All networks GSM compatible here.

And even if there was GSM here: I got a company SIM and and have no use for a phone which ties me to a particular network.

But then: From all I understand US working (I might be wrong of course): Sprint is the network for those poor which cant affort a contract which propper GSM network.

Which makes Palm Pre the phone for those who can't affort an IPhone (or a contract with AT&T)

Not iPhone killer but poor mans iPhone.

Which is sad: On those Videos it did look quite nice. And some of those features where kind of the way I allways though "It should realy be like...."

Maybe Palm sellst itself cheap...

Compare Apples to... Apples

[SuperKendall]

So Nokia is selling 117 million units, Apple is selling 7 million.

Which is a meaningless statement when you realize that Apple is selling smartphones, not an entire range of cellphones.

Do the calculation for smartphones and get back to us on those numbers.

If Palm were selling a normal cellphone your figures might have more relevance, but it's all about the market that Palm is targeting.

If the iPhone were unlocked that would matter more

[SuperKendall]

Only Sprint. I don't think switching will even be a consideration for a lot of people.

True, but the iPhone today is locked into AT&T such that you cannot take advantage of other international carrier SIM's when you go abroad (as far as I know).

So choosing between the two wouldn't end up being as much about the advantages of GSM. Since Palm said they plan to sell internationally, it's pretty certain that other regions will get GSM phones, though they will probably also be carrier locked so you couldn't use them here...

I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are dozens of smartphones with similiar specs. Many of them look better, have full (real) keyboards, higher resolution screens and work on more frequencies. What other than plams market share is being killed here?

For the TLA challenged:
~UMTS = WCDMA = ~HSDPA = The future of that ancient GSM crap. No more making CRT monitors and speaker/mics wig out. Thank god the world is moving to CDMA.

Because removable batteries add space requirements

[SuperKendall]

Why would one guess that the battery won't last as long as the one in the iPhone?

Because engineering all the space for a compartment with walls (to keep you from screwing up the insides of the phone) and walls around the battery itself (to keep keys from puncturing it in your pocket) all waste space that can be taken up by battery material.

Thus, you either have to make the device larger to compensate or the battery will simply not last as long. Not to mention the processor in the Palm device is faster and probably consumes more energy...

Even with it's slightly larger size the G1 gets mixed revues on battery life for the same reason, when you are running 3G you are eating a ton of battery and there's no avoiding the advantage of more battery material.

Two Income Trap

[shmlco]

"However, with 2 earners you're only losing 40-60% of your household income in the face of a layoff, versus 100% for a 1 income. This makes a 2 earner household more resilient."

A two earner household is only more resilient if, and only if, it can stay afloat for a significant period of time on a single salary. If, as the parent implies, they need BOTH salaries to make the mortgage payment, the car payments, pay the student loans and the credit cards and the other bills, THEN they are susceptible to the Two Income Trap. Lose just one salary in that case, and the ship begins to take on water and sink.

Further, you tend to imply that gross overspending is the major cause behind bankruptcy, when in fact two of the major triggers are job loss and medical problems. Get sick, or involved in a significant accident, and one wage earner can lose their job just when they're getting hit with major medical expenses. Children are a issue too, but often because parents buy that "two income" house in order to be closer to better schools.

If at all possible, it's best to try to keep base expenses within the range of a single salary, and use the second for savings and investments, vacations, eating out, supporting hobbies, and so on. Then, and only then, is a two earner household truly "more resilient" and not susceptible to "the trap".

Finally someone who understands

[SuperKendall]

I really admire Palm for continuing to find a unique vision in the cellphone/PDA market. They finally realized what so few other cellphone makers seem to, that you have to design a phone you think is great yourself and not something that attempts to scale the iPhone wall with a checklist ladder only to have the hot oil of reality rain down on the result (Storm).

I had written Palm off after the iPhone arrived, I figured they'd adopt Android to compete and eventually be absorbed by some larger body.

But I think this phone could do well for them. It represents a somewhat different tangent from the iPhone or Android, and Palm can leverage the large body of knowledge they have around how people use contacts and other information day to day. Before I thought the smartphone market would end up being pretty much the iPhone and Android. Now I think the Palm will take a decent share although probably trail both those OS's a bit just because the app range probably cannot be quite as extensive due to the system architecture.

It's hard to say for sure though until we see the real phone and real SDK... and the delay gives time for other makers to step up with improved products. But still it's good to know Palm is not going out without a real fight.

Going to be a good year for Smartphones.

Re:Because removable batteries add space requireme

[el_gordo101]

Good answer. I didn't think about the space restrictions within the case and the fact that the battery case itself would eat up additional room. Still, I think would rather be able to have the ability to switch in a new battery myself rather than sending my gear out for repairs. Just my personal opinion...

Re:who has ever gotten support on a cell phone bef

[iluvcapra]

The sad fact of the matter is that there is such a deathgrip on the American cell phone market, I go in now with lowered expectation and zero assumption I will ever receive anything that resembles customer service or support.

I dunno, my phone's touchscreen went dead the first month I had it and I was able to bring it back to the shop I bought it from and they gave me a new one right then. I the OS software on my phone is regularly updated over the internet from the vendor, adding new features and security updates, and they also vouch for all the 3rd-party software that will run on it.

Of course, I have an iPhone, which is quite a breath of fresh air after the line of Treos I had; w/r/t software Android has the potential of being the same, and Palm has the potential of providing good hardware support, considering they do have a small chain of stores that they could use to extend customer service the last mile the way Apple has leveraged their Apple stores. But Palm's awful support has been particularly breathtaking in the last 5 years, and the folks currently running the Palm shops make the guys at Radio Shack look good.

It can't just be me

[sgt scrub]

[The operating system] needs to be more than a bundle of apps bolted on top of a phone. We all live complex lives and keep our information all over the place.

I can't be the only on tired of writers telling the public that an Operating System and the Applications running on it are associated.

pssst Tim. The reason you had to put bracketed words in "Jon Rubinstein, executive chairman of Palm"'s quotes is because. The OS and the applications ARE a separate thing. And guess what else? No really! Guess. Applications are kept all over the place these days too! Welcome to 2009 sir.

Re:ipod to zune and iphone to Palm's killer new ph

[db10]

Analogies are like cars, they just keep driving down the road... unless it's a Ford, then it's sitting on the side of the road waiting for the tow-truck.

WTF is the big deal with the iPhone anyways?

[WebCowboy]

Thus far, I have yet to see an "iPhone killer" do anything of the sort.

Personally, I can't understand why the iPhone is considered "immortal" and the one to beat. I've had a chance to use it and I'm sorry--the ONLY thing it is the best at is looking pretty. Otherwise there are numerous things about the iPhone that totally turn me off

* The total control-freakishness of Apple since its release was a bad first impression for me. It was locked to one US-only provider, and wouldn't work here in Canada unless you hacked it or waited for the 3G version that would be locked onto Rogers (AT&T doesn't operate here so you have to use it on Rogers network). Then API docs weren't forthcoming upon its release and even now that there are some docs out there Apple continues to exert dictatorial control over the apps store. The "walled garden" is distasteful to me. I want to be able to connect to other devices and run apps that *I* want to use, not what someone else LETS me use.

* The stupid thing is so glossy and slippery and poorly shaped to use as an actual phone that you can drop it far more easily than most other phones. It looks to be amongst the most easily scratched too. Those characteristics are totally useless apart from making it look pretty--and for all the shiny effort most people put some kind of gaudy cover on it anyways.

* It's too hard to type on the touchscreen. Ladies with longer fingernails almost can't use it at all, and men with large fingers can have quite a hard time with typos. It has all the tactile feedback of typing on an old Sinclair ZX81. I've seen nothing yet that can replace actual keys, thought RIM's Blackberry Storm at least has a touchscreen keyboard with tactile feedback (still I prefer their keyboard models). I know multi-touch is "sexy", but I'm not entirely sure it is worth the tradeoff of not being able to use a stylus or fingernails as a pointer option. If you can't do it without a capacitive screen then maybe you should wait until you can before using it on such a small display.

* More from-over-function gripes: In its efforts to make the iPhone "slim and sexy" it lacks a user-serviceable battery. I HATE that! My phones have ALWAYS outlived the useful life of their batteries. It is planned obsolescence at its most annoying.

Anyways, enough slagging the iPhone--it IS pretty, and it does have the best web browser, a HUGELY superior interface to Windows Moile and is a decent phone overall. But "hard to kill"? Hardly. I think even an unassuming mobile device in a clamshell or slider design that provides a decent alphanumeric keypad and with sufficient processing power could wipe the floor with the iPhone. I think this new Palm has a good shot, if its GUI lives up to Palm's hype, because it is that OP with the slick UI that is the sole reason for iPhones SUSTAINED success (The Jobsian hype machine can only take credit for the insanely-great launch).

NOT an iPhone killer

[dtjohnson]

I'm not a fan of Apple. I might even be an 'Apple hater.' If they get market dominance, they'll be just as big a butt as IBM and Microsoft were in their heydays. But...the phrase 'iPhone killer' is just wrong. Here's why: The iPhone is an extremely good product by any objective measure, mostly due to its user interface and funtionality which are quite a ways ahead of the competition that's still in stores. If the new Palm is somehow able to accomplish something similar to the iPhone, then that's great...but there is simply no way that Palm or anyone could come out with a product using current technology that would be an 'iPhone killer' because the iPhone (and iPod touch) have used the available technology in an extremely aggressive way that is NOT going to be killed off by some other product using that same technology. The Apple products are just too good right now.

Why does emulating something have to be the key?

[dissolved]

I've recently taken delivery of a BlackBerry Bold when I was originally in the market for an iPhone. It turns out it did all the things *I* wanted and none of the things that the iPhone did that I didn't want. I didn't want a touch screen that I'd grease up and scratch, I don't need to tilt it to drink a pretend beer or shake imaginary dice, I wanted a phone that did SMS, email and instant messaging perfectly.

Success in this market won't come through emulation, it's through giving your users what you want. The Palm just looks like a HTC or somesuch copy of an iPhone to me.

Sure, I'll buy another Palm...

[ichbineinneuben]

...when they stop loading them up with unremovable crapware. Not until then.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o Get a LOAD of this... Palm and

[davidsyes]

"Pre"... what a nasty/naughty combination to... release... or unleash... WHy not call it "Palm Frond"? It'll be the palm's friend... with a swanky accent...

Butt, on the other hand, it could become the Fronde... (frond vs fronde...)

Allow me to interpret

[Anonymous Coward]

"but being married gives me one person I can be fun/childish with every day guaranteed"

Somebody will have sex with me! Finally! Yay!

RTFS: Pre is GSM in other countries

[James McP]

The UK version is HSDPA (aka GSM). I can't see any reason why it would be different in Switzerland.

Historically Palm has always sold an unlocked GSM version without carrier subsidy. I detest the practice of carrier locking in the US but that's really a carrier subsidy issue more than a manufacturer issue where palm is concerned.

It's not your age

[Sits]

I'm a bit younger than you (think decades) and I see other folks approaching your age picking up their (older) kids as though they are as light as a feather. When said kids ask ME to pick them up it just doesn't happen - I don't have that kind of weightlifting ability.

My current guess is that parents develop limbs of steel and muscles with infinite torque. It is only a matter of time before you too develop this miraculous ability to be able to lift cars and children with a single arm...

Re:Sooo...how were the original iPhone apps writte

[vux984]

So do you think the original iPhone apps were not written in Objective-C using Xcode?

Remember, the iphone 3rd party developers were initially told to make their "apps" as 'iphone optimized websites accessed via safari' -- something they didn't have to put up with for THEIR apps. So while they were using their own tools, they weren't living under the same limitations they expected everyone else to.

More to the point, nobody has ever said objective-C & xcode aren't good enough tools to write apps.

An awful LOT of people (including me) have said that css/html/javascript apps (including g-crap) SUCK ASS compared to 'real apps' (at least within the web traditional desktop browser).

So when palm says, "hey, make your apps in css/html/javascript" I'm pretty leery and skeptical... but then I see that all THEIR apps are written in css/html/javascript and they look really good, and I'm a lot more comfortable with accepting that their css/html/javascript platform is actually pretty good.

After all, the problem with css/html/javascript apps isn't the languages, its the (relativly) piss poor functionality, bugginess, and non-standards-complianceness of the browser DOMs we have to build on. Everything from shitty event handling, to no-threading, to coping with all the IE quirks -- none of that is really the fault of css/html/javascript itself.

Elizabeth Warren

[shmlco]

BTW, Elizabeth Warren, the primary author of The Two Income Trap, is the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

As a Harvard Law professor, I suspect that her credentials in the matter are just a little more substantial than your own...

Re:Elizabeth Warren

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Harvard Law professor, I suspect that her credentials in the matter are just a little more substantial than your own...

As a Harvard Law professor, I expect that she has a secure enough and large enough income that she does not have to worry about finances.

Title says "killer phone," not "iphone killer"

[commodoresloat]

This has nothing to do with the iPhone. It just means the OS keeps track of files using ReiserFS.

The plan will be a killer

[gelfling]

High end Sprint PDA phones require the $100/month x24 month unlimited plans. That's $240. They'll probably charge $300-$350 for the phone in the beginning. Plus taxes, that's a $3,000 phone.

Re:The plan will be a killer

[Big Bill the Conjure]

Not so. All the Sprint PDAs can be put into service with plans as inexpensive as $70, including data, SMS, and nav. It's only the SE plan (unlimited voice) that cost $100.

Who killed who?

[James McP]

Y'know, there's not a lot the iPhone does that my Treo650, which came out a couple years before, couldn't do. It just did it with more shiny. iPhone had a 3.5mm headphone jack, not that many headphones could actually plug into it. WiFi is about the only major feature.

Of course, my Treo 650 had 3G support on Sprint long before the iPhone 3G was released so it arguably didn't need WiFi. Arguably.

Sure, there were differences in memory and the camera but that's what a couple of years advancement will do. I suppose if the Treo was supported by a high price point along with an expensive plan ($1,000/year for the iPhone service plan. Wow, I spent about half that.)

As it is the Treo supported BT DUN (well, on Sprint, if not all networks, those prats), MMS support, oh, and uh, copy paste. The service plan was also much, much cheaper.

Multitouch is nice, I confess, though the Treo's keyboard makes up to some extent, as does the ability to use various handwriting tools.

Where Apple won is that they didn't bow to the carriers and cripple the phones. I truly believe that 90% of the instability problems of the Treo650 was due to Palm supporting all the requests by different carriers to hack up the feature set (BT DUN here, non-standard email client there, custom voice dialers, etc, etc).

I give Steve Jobs props for sticking to his guns. When he's right it produces wonderful results. When he's wrong, well, he drags the whole company down because no one can change his mind.

Newton? Great idea but he should have put it on a shelf for couple more years until the tech caught up. That's how Palm originally won the PDA market, by building a fully functional PDA supported by the available tech.

iPhone is the same thing in reverse. The original Treos didn't have the technological support and they poisoned their fanbase with underperforming tech. Apple took the core concept of the treo (e.g. "smartphone") and made a great product.

I just don't see the iPhone as revolutionary, merely evolutionary.

you missed one thing

[commodoresloat]

anti-competitive practices by a certain company known for flying chairs, that specifically kept major hardware companies from selling dual boot systems. No new OS runs anything useful until people actually develop for it; this move ensured nobody would develop anything interesting for Be.

that's what you think

[commodoresloat]

It didn't ship like that; it's just that the Android got to it before you opened the package.

Re:that's what you think

[pohl]

Well, that's a neat trick, considering that the box was opened, sans pants, five months before the Android OS was unveiled.

Re:Sooo...how were the original iPhone apps writte

[basicio]

They might have been, but with the original iPhone, you couldn't write comparable apps, and even now that there is an SDK Apple still strictly limits the features and functionality of apps by forcing them through its app store and by preventing developers from using certain of their libraries.

Apple does not allow its developers feature parity in the way Palm seems to be doing.

Re:Because removable batteries add space requireme

[Belial6]

Wow. Someone has been drinking the Apple cool aid. The amount of space that is needed to separate the motherboard from the battery is small enough to be irrelevant. It could easily be a .5 - 1mm piece of plastic that just acts as an insulator. After all, you only need to replace it as often as the entire life of an iPhone. Apple screws their customers by not having a battery door. Apple could have easily made the iPhone and iPods with the exact same dimensions that they have now, but with one tiny screw that allowed the shell to open up and expose the battery. I don't believe for a second that the Apple hardware designers are too incompetent to do this. Apple made a business decision to tell customers that when the battery dies, the device is garbage. Sure, there are way to crack open the case and change the battery, but there will be just as many that go in the garbage because of the hoops that Apple requires it customers to jump through than those that get the battery replaced.

Will switch from iPhone

[okmijnuhb]

I have the G1 iPhone and after hearing that ATT is cutting back signal for the G1 iPhone I plan to switch.
Also, went to the Apple store today to get an adapter for the crappy recessed headphone jack, so I can use my Etymotic phones, they told me to go to Radio Shack. I see how they operate. I hope Radio Shack sells the Palm phone.
I miss GnuChess, and all the free apps that the Apple store charges for.
Also copy/paste, making any audio or midi file ring or alerts, syncing memos and tasks to the computer, etc. etc.
iPhone is overrated. The only thing I like is it fits comfortably in my front pants pocket, no holster necessary. Lets hope the Palm is as sleek.

Re:Because removable batteries add space requireme

[SuperKendall]

Wow. Someone has been drinking the Apple cool aid. The amount of space that is needed to separate the motherboard from the battery is small enough to be irrelevant.

Sheesh. Think for yourself, not for the Apple Hater inside you - for once let the hate go and let reason take over.

Look at your cell phone (I can tell Apple didn't make it). See where the battery goes inside? Do you really see no empty space at all, or lack of any walls and support pillars around where the battery goes?

Now look at your battery. Is that really just battery material all over or does it have a shell? Have you ever even taken apart a battery? Well I have, and even with the newer shaped batteries instead of the rounder cells, just the over-engineering that has to go into the battery alone to make sure things in your pocket do not short circuit the thing in a bad way, adds a lot of volume via the casing.

Now image a battery with 1.0 physical volume (chose whatever units you like) and then a battery with 1.2 units of volume. Which is going to offer more power? Can you see what I am and was getting at here?

Cool aid indeed. It's basic logic. It's not like Apple is using some magic material, they use the same battery parts everyone else does. It's that they have chosen an engineering tradeoff that simply allows for more battery material and thus more power.

Re:Because removable batteries add space requireme

[SuperKendall]

Still, I think would rather be able to have the ability to switch in a new battery myself rather than sending my gear out for repairs.

In that regard I like what the Macbook Air did - there's a ton of little screws (I think about 18) but when you take them off the formed battery can be replaced by the user. For something like the new 17" Macbook Pro, I hope they can at least service them in-store so they don't have to be sent out (unless they have a similar loaner program to the iPhone).

I do wish the iPhone were a bit more user serviceable but given the usefulness every mm gives you at that size I don't begrudge it, in place of an extra battery I just use eternal battery packs for something like an international flight where I need quite a bit more power and that are the same size a second external battery would be anyway.

I also had a Solio, which was great as you could charge anything that could charge via USB in-flight during the day (if you had a window seat). It's also useful if you are going somewhere really remote.

Re:ipod to zune and iphone to Palm's killer new ph

[Hucko]

Ford or Holden (GM's 'Australian' vehicle)

Acronym check.

[Flash13]

Is that ment to be HSDPA, as in High Speed Downlink Packet Access, or HDSPA as in High Downtime Severely Prevents Access?

Re:Because removable batteries add space requireme

[Belial6]

Sure, anyone that points out glaring flaws in Apple products must be "Apple Haters".

You are a ranting fanboy. There is no structural shell or battery casing that would need to be added to allow the iPhone to be opened. If the amount of casing inside the iPhone would short out with a battery door, it would short without one. There is no space saving by making the battery non-replacible. It is just an intentionally shitty design with the intent of bilking fanboys out of $85.95.

There is not engineering 'tradeoff' there is only engineering 'screwing'. Apple just made the obviously correct guess that whether from ignorance or denial, many people will believe that sealing the device somehow magically makes more room inside for batteries.

Re:Because removable batteries add space requireme

[mac.man25]

Not to mention the processor in the Palm device is faster and probably consumes more energy...

Um, no. The OMAP CPU is MUCH more energy effient then the ARM9 cpu, look at the difference between the Core and the Pentium 4. Plus the iPhone has TWO, one for the phone modem and one for the applications! (Arguably the Palm I'm sure also has two CPUs.)

Look at the beagle board, it runs a OMAP 3530, has USB, Ethernet, HDMI (with audio), runs at 600MHz, and can display full motion video on a HD display using 11% of the CPU. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_OHe-JfTyk

Oh, and it does all of this while drawing 2 Watts. I'd say that's pretty impressive, also considering the 3530 is the energy hog of the family. Palm is using the 3430, which is pin and software compatable with the 3530. And more effient.

Re:How to make an iPhone killer....

[Anonymous Coward]

Idioten Kaufen Eben Alles

Defining "best"

[danaris]

But my point is that it's hard to define what the "best" is. I'm certainly willing to agree that "best selling" is a lousy way of determining it (after all, look at Windows...or, for that matter, McDonald's). But, as I pointed out in my original post, for most people, "best" doesn't necessarily mean simply "most features", or even "most features that I would like." A music player that plays every format known to man is useless if you can't actually figure out how to get your songs to play on it. A phone with a 30 day battery life is useless if you can't figure out how to call people in your contact list. A smartphone with all the bells and whistles is useless if the browser crashes every 10 seconds.

The problem is, of course, outside of a feature list, "good" is pretty hard to quantify. I don't have the answers; I just get annoyed when people list off the features of one device and then another, count them both up, and then say, "Well, of course this one is better! It has more features!"

So the iPod (whichever one, pick your poison) may or may not be the "best" out there today. Either way, though, the iPod did gain its dominance through having a better user experience, even if it's since kept it at least partially through its "cool factor", and thus many people not knowing about anything else.

Dan Aris

Re:Defining "best"

[aliquis]

But there is no chance iPod in any area, kind of. Easy synchronisation with iTunes and the Classic having big HDD is the only points I can think of, and neither of them is any huge points.

Lots of the players with more features probably DO have a worse user interface than the iPod, but for a player like the Sony ones that's not a valid point since it's supposed to be really good on those to.

Personally I don't want a too retarded user interface, the D2 (?) and O2 for instance only offer browsing files thru folders and not ID3 tags which is really retarded imho. S9 do ID3 tags.

But say Sony NWZ-S600 vs iPod Nano and the Sony will win in lower price, better audio quality, better stocked phones, arguable better format support (WMA), probably better batterylife although I don't know.

One benefits of iPods is line out thru dock, but the big deal with that is what makes it a benefit is because the regular output is so crappy ...

iPod Touch is an interesting product, custom apps and wifi is nice, though there are other players out with better format supports (and for video files that's a HUGE deal, being able to play any divx with no conversation is nice) and better screens. The issue with Touch imho is that the iPhone is a much better product since you get a phone to, so I'd want the iPhone in that case but I won't buy one with subscription because I do so few phone calls so ..

Take a look at Cowon S9, Sony NWZ-S629 and Archos 5 yourself.

I just saw this...

[laird]

I just saw the Pre, and I was very impressed. Not because of the tech spec's - there are plenty of WinCE phones with great spec's, and they all kinda suck to use.

The thing that makes the Pre a great product (at least potentially) is that they rethought the human interaction, as a while, so the phone is extremely touch oriented, intuitive and fun to use. The phone is highly visual and responsive. If anything, it's even a bit slicker/richer than the iPhone. It will be interesting to see Apple respond to. So while there are many nice 'features', the impact

One innovation is that they introduced some gestures that start in an offscreen (but touch sensitive) area, that perform fundamental actions such as going 'back', and bringing up the 'main screen'. So applications can take over the whole screen, rather than having to all use screen space for back/home/etc. buttons.

It's also nice that you can have multiple apps running at the same time, which is a nice change from the old PalmOS, and the iPhone.

Some other things:
- It has a keyboard, which would be faster than a screen keyboard.
- It charges through induction (i.e. no contacts), so you just put it down on the dock, it magnetically sticks to it and starts charging. And if you get a call, you pick up the phone, and it knows that it was picked up and answers the call.
- The apps run in 'cards', which shrink and grow. So when you're on the 'home screen' seeing multiple apps, the 'icons' are live app windows (i.e. showing the live window contents, still scrolling, etc.), not just static, representative icons.

So overall, a win. Palm has finally gotten back to its user-centered design of the original Palm.

Graffiti, please

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

I own an iPhone and love it. But I still miss features my Palm V had, specifically Graffiti - the method of entering text via stylus. Once I learned not to look at the screen, I became really fast and could easily use it to take notes in a meeting. I hate entering text in the iPhone. I consider the predictive text to be an amusing feature brought over from the Newton. In 4 months it has only predicted the correct word maybe 10 or 20 times. But it replaces my word with the wrong one hundreds of times. Wish I could turn it off. I have actually considered carrying my old Palm V (yes it still works) with my iPhone.

If Palm brings out this phone with Graffiti, I'll dump my iPhone in a heartbeat.

no, WAIT for marriage...

[big_paul76]

Especially for men, DO NOT get married in your 20s.

Every single one of my male friends who got married in their 20s was either divorced inside of 2 or 3 years or in a completely miserable, dysfunctional, marriage by age 30. Me, I was engaged when I was 25, and thank god we broke up before going through with the wedding.

Besides, if I can indulge in some cynical thinking that verges on the misogynistic, before 30, women are "buying", but after 30, women are selling, and men are buying. The dating/relationship options for men get better and better after 30.

thanks for the reminder...

[big_paul76]

Of how lucky I am to have my wife. She's in better shape now than she was when we first started dating (2004), and our sex life is better than ever.

on the virutes of parenthood...

[big_paul76]

This is why my wife and I (both of us have _never_ wanted kids) are looking into more permanent birth control options.

You wanna ruin your marriage? Have kids.

the real cause of bankruptcies...

[big_paul76]

And, realistically, you probably shouldn't talk about bankruptcies without talking about:
1) Wage stagnation - my father, when he was younger than I am now, was able to own a house, and support himself, my mother, and two small kids on a plain 'ol civil servant's salary. My wife and I are "DINKS", (dual-income-no-kids) and even with the drop in prices recently, home ownership is still something only possible on the far side of a large inheritance or a lottery win. In the last 30-40 years, the price of a house has gone up much, much faster than median incomes;
2) If you're talking about in the USA, anyway, healthcare costs. I can't remember the source, but I recall hearing that the #1 cause of personal bankruptcies in the USA is medical bills. I don't know if it's the _number one_ cause, but I think we can all agree it's probably a significant factor.

Re:the real cause of bankruptcies...

[digitalunity]

1) While its certainly true that minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation, the average salary is closer. The salary for those with higher education has exceeded inflation for some time now, although I believe even they will see a short to medium term stagnation in income.

As you have probably noticed, the housing market was highly inflated. The housing bubble collapse was merely an adjustment of values. A lot of people will lose houses they purchased but didn't plan on keeping for the long term because they can't afford their loans. The long term effect is that people who made homestead purchases with the intent of occupying them for 5 years will never be able to sell at their mortgage principle and face either taking on a large debt from the upside down loan(if they have the credit to do this), or claiming bankruptcy.

Sadly, the banks aren't doing enough with the $700B they were given to help those who just need a little assistance(as opposed to people who purchased houses with 5 year ARM's with the intent of short term reselling, gambling on the value of the house going up).

I know a few realtors in my area and they have reached a consensus. The housing inventory in my area is going DOWN, which is good, but the percentage of homes they show which are bank owned is going up dramatically. The banks are taking huge losses by selling these foreclosed homes on the currently highly deflated market as opposed to taking a loss and helping the previous owner keep their home.

This is a tragedy of epic proportions.

2) I'm no bankruptcy lawyer, but my understanding was that bankruptcy doesn't cover some medical costs. The theory being that medical debts don't affect the debtors credit rating the same way as normal debt. I'm certain maintaining health insurance for a family can cost a small fortune right now with and even without employer assistance. This is certainly a big reason for so many un/under-insured citizens, but I'm not sure how that would affect bankruptcy.

When faced with a decision to keep a roof over your head or health insurance, most people simply go without insurance.

Patton Oswald said it best...

[big_paul76]

With his line about how he and his wife have decided to have their very own 'invisible baby' - his name is "Ten Hours of Sleep a Night". He's the best baby in the world! You can do mushrooms in front of him, you can go to a rock concert on a thursday and come home sunday...

Palm is NOT porting apps; allowing others to do so

[KlaymenDK]

From As an article at :

"We're not emulating [applications from] the old Palm OS, but will allow third-party emulation," said Pam Deziel, vice president of product management

At least it's a better and more open stance than Apple, but it's still tossing a lot of good code out the window.

As for porting existing PalmOS apps to WebOS, many apps can surely be ported but it's not just a matter of code -- the new OS also using a brand new UI paradigm which it will be difficult, or at least non-trivial, to adjust a good number of apps to.

Second, there's the making-available perspective: traditionally, you could get your Palm software from just about everywhere, but now Palm is talking about a software portal in the style of Apple's AppStore (which is so proprietary I can't even browse it as a visitor because I don't have iTunes installed). I wonder what this means for indie developers' possibilities to host their own software outlets?

I think I shall after all stick to my plan to buy a refurbished Treo 680 (as a replacement for a T3 and a crummy Nokia). In all likelihood it will be at least 1 1/2 years until the Pre hits the European markets anyway.

Re:Palm is NOT porting apps; allowing others to do

[mspohr]

It looks like we are starting to get a better picture of the ability for legacy apps to run and it doesn't look good. Not encouraging that they will allow third party emulators but not provide one themselves.

I agree that the new paradigm is much different so legacy apps would probably look and run like a real kludge.

I'm in Europe also. They did say that a GSM version would be available. Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later.

I don't think they mean to control distribution like the iTunes store complete lock down. We will have to wait and see for further details.

Re:Palm is NOT porting apps; allowing others to do

[KlaymenDK]

Yeah, I guess we'll see. I'm not panicking, yet. :-)

Bear in mind, though, that GSM is not necessarily just GSM: there's the 850-band in the US and the 900-band here; it's not specified that this is a dual-band phone, but it just might be.

Re:Palm is NOT porting apps; allowing others to do

[mspohr]

Quad band (850, 900, 1800, 1900) chip sets cover everything and are common in most 'world phones' so I don't think this will be a problem.

Re:3.5 mm? o.o Get a LOAD of this... Palm and

[ryanov]

I'd prefer not to have butt on my other hand, but that's just me.

Re:Your what now?

[ryanov]

What was your name again? I didn't catch it.

what do you expect?

[commodoresloat]

It's Google, man. Those guys can do anything.

Re:Because removable batteries add space requireme

[SuperKendall]

Sure, anyone that points out glaring flaws in Apple products must be "Apple Haters".

But anyone who points out far more glaring flaws in your own theory gets no valid rebuttal, only personal attack.

There is no structural shell or battery casing that would need to be added to allow the iPhone to be opened

Do you realize what you just said? You said that if you open the iPhone casing today, the battery would have as thick a casing as if it were user replaceable.

And that, my friends, is that.