Palm announced today the Palm Pre, the company’s next generation Linux-based web tech-enabled operating system. It has a fast CPU, Wifi, Bluetooth with A2DP support, removable battery, 3.1″ touchscreen 480×320 LCD, gesture-enabled UI at the bottom half of the phone’s body, 3 MP camera with LED flash, multi-touch, accelerometer, slide-out keyboard, GPS, EVDO, and an impressive, fresh UI. Sprint will be the first carrier to sell the smartphone, at the first half of 2009. ArsTechnica has a nice write-up too.
Palm Announces iPhone, Android Competitor
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Eugenia Loli
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I don’t know about you but I am already completely frustrated with all these feature-packed phones with crappy battery life. If its official specs prove to be true, the next phone I will be buying is a (hopefully) cheap recyclable Motorola W233 with 18 days stand-by time..
And horrible voice quality still. Phones now days are about advanced enough to make breakfast for you, but they still do a sh*tty job at just being a phone.
You are absolutely right. The voice quality on my HTC Touch is horrible! It’s unbelievable how bad it is, and you know i’m not gonna talk about windows mobile general quality…
Impressive for a 1year old 410€ phone.
touchscreen + Keyboard + wifi + unlocked price of ~US $200 = Success
No, that’s too low of a price. Expect $400 or more.
Palm generally releases their new kit in the $400-$500 range, so $400 sounds like a safe bet.
It’s kind of sad that they still haven’t gone past the resolution of the Tungsten T5. Those were crisp enough graphics half a decade ago, but it’s pretty poor these days.
A guy can dream can’t he? That’s the price at which mass adoption would take place. I would buy one for $200. That’s my definition of success for a phone.
I’ve commented in previous articles that I’ve always been a fan of Palm hardware, and even had a soft spot for PalmOS until it was left to rot for so long.
Indeed, my 800w is a fine piece of hardware even though it was quickly eclipsed by the Treo Pro, but Windows Mobile has been really painful. It is slow, bloated, and crashes frequently. It has zero intuition and single-handed operation is out of the question. Worst of all, there seems to be a lack of useful or quality apps that were abundant in PalmOS.
I am a bit mad that I paid $500 for such a lemon. The Pre looks like just the thing to get me back on board with Palm and get them back in the game.
I quite like Sprint as a provider – EVDO really lives up to expectations – and I only pay $5 a month for my grandfathered in unlimited data plan. So this looks like it’ll be my next handset..
One of the people, above is happy because they expect to use this on their grandfathered low cost plan.
Sorry, this handset will likely not be allowed to that person until they convert to one of the much more expensive Simply Everything with Data and GPS plans. Sprint tested this idea with its last network dependent non Windrows Mobile Smart-device, the Instinct.
The Sprint person on the stage at the Palm Launch talked about one thing, raise the Average Revenue Per User.
Price of these phones is the price of the phone plus any forced changes on your service plan. This phone will be used to significantly raise monthly service costs for Sprint customers.
You will see. If you have an older inexpensive plan, *even that already includes data*, or a SERO plan, or a three or dour person family plan, you will be forced up to a minimum of $70.
If you have anything but the highest priced plans, it would not not matter if Sprint sells the Palm Tre for $10 it will the most expensive phone you ever bought.
Will the Pre be compatible with older Palm apps? I mean, I own a T5, can I run the software I already have on the Pre?
I suspect it won’t be compatible but…
It won’t be compatible, it will be “possible” for someone to write a Garnet (PalmOS 5) emulator for it though, and perhaps, like the Nokia N800 and WinMo, one will be written.
Edited 2009-01-09 09:01 UTC
It’s hard to imagine that Palm spent the last two years perfecting a Palm OS (Garnet) emulator for the (also Linux-based) Nokia N8x0 to *NOT* include it with the Pre!
I didn’t expect them to mention Garnet emulation at the unveiling, though – the unveiling is about the future, not the past. But as a long-time Palm supporter, the Garnet emulator is a pre-requisite for my choosing the Pre over Android. I want the past *and* the future, darnit!
Palm didn’t develop the emulator, Access did. I would hope that now that Access can see that Palm have dumped the PalmOS and those legacy customers they will release the Android version of the Garnet emulator and we can bury Palm for the last time.
Long time PalmOS user. I bought the OS not the company.
Ah, thanks, didn’t realize the difference. However, I’d rather see the emulator available for both Android *and* Pre. Choice is Good, and they both look promising to me at the moment. 🙂
Just wondering, am I the only one who is yawning at yet another touch screen phone with a slide-out keyboard? Not trolling, just curious.
Watch the Palm keynote http://palmone.r3h.net/downloads.palm.com/ces.mov and see if your opinion changes. It looks to be a very nice device, taking a lot of what the iPhone does right interface wise and doing it better.
I fell in love with the new OS…it looks very sexy and nice. Maybe I just found my new mobile phone.
Theyd drop the price to 250 and allow for easy ruby app development….*sigh*
Ruby? Its a bit slow to be run on a mobile device.
Not a’tall. I use Python on my N800 quite a lot, and performance is good enough even for animated games such as http://behexed.sourceforge.net for example. I suspect Ruby (and Python) would run just fine on Pre – if Palm is smart enough to permit it.
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=…
Given the choice I’d rather have python. It seems to be faster on just about everything. (given my hobby of doing recreational math computational research, speed is desired, regardless of platform, for fun and profit.)
Well, sure – Python would be my first choice as well (no offense to Ruby or Perl). My point is only that if Python is fast enough even on previous generation devices, I’m confident that next generation devices like the Pre could handle Ruby with no serious qualms.
The Palm Pre looks nice but I am certain it has the same problems iPhone and the G1 phone have: turn on GPS, bluetooth and G3 mode and you can literally watch the battery drop on these phones. The irony is that all the tech sites talking about these phones in forums tell you to turn everything off. So, you end up with a regular phone with a cool touch sensitive screen. There is a certain comical irony to them. I have the G1 Android phone and I accidentally left GPS and bluetooth on and I had to plug the phone in by the afternoon to make a phone call. Lovely battery performance, eh?
..and? You’re using by definition power intensive applications rather than just saying: “Well I had EVERY SINGLE ‘FEATURE’ turned off and it drained in a day” v. “I HAD EVERY SINGLE FEATURE TURNED on AND IT DRAINED in a day”
See the idea? You get ‘features’ or you get battery life, your choice.
That said I am in now way a fan of assinine (power sucking) phone features of today’s phones, nor of the network providers and their even more assinine service plans…
Oh, what happened to the days when phones were meant for talking to people??
I don’t even own a phone with a camera – I use a camera for that. I don’t do text messaging – I use email for that. I don’t listen to MP3s going down the road – I listen to 97.7 (San Antonio, TX). I don’t check my e-mail unless I’m at home, or I’ll use my web access if needed – from a real computer.
Seriously, the money being wasted on these devices makes me sick!
–The loon
I agree. And it scares me a bit. Are these the first attitudes we take on to eventually end up like our grandparents who don’t see the point of all this new-fangled technology, and waste everyone’s time carefully writing out checks at the grocery store checkout stand because they never figured out how to use their debit cards? The younger folks are gaining more influence and the world is changing as a consequence.
Of course, in my case, I’m also terribly non-social. My main complaint about cell phones in general is that people can call you on them. 😉
Edited 2009-01-11 00:58 UTC
The problem with that mentality is that there’s always going to be someone who can one-up you. E.g., I still remember using a rotary dial telephone on a party line (aka, several houses sharing a single phone line – when one house got a call, the phone rang at all of them, and you identified calls for your number by listening for a specific ring tone).
We got along just fine with that system – so is everything beyond that just a frivolous waste of money?
With ANY technology, there are going to be people who use it in frivolous was. But that doesn’t mean that there are no actual legitimate uses for said technology.