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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."
Older Palm OS phones are pretty open, as far as apps go. Can put pretty much anything on there.
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.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
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.
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
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)
Verizon has at least one phone (Blackberry 8830) that works on both CDMA and GSM.
Zimbra
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.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
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).
Battery is user replaceable according to the article.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Erm, except for 3G usage, where the G1 and the Storm beat it, apparently.
And frankly, that's all I use my iPhone for.
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...
Baka Drew
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.
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
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
ooooo so close
"It's coming right for us!" - Jimbo
there thats better
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
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).
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.
I Don't Work Here
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.
These are not reasons to get married, I just simply wanted to point out it is not the end of childishness/fun. Obligatory.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
HTML + CSS is not a programming language.
HTML + CSS + Javascript is a bad, poor performing, cobbled together language.
"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!
It's an integrated solution, the GPU is part of the CPU.
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.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
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.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.