Palm surprises with Pre smartphone running new webOS - Page 6

How exactly do you measure this? I cannot speak for the S60, but the iPhone isn't slow and laggy in general.

Their can be slow downs and lag when the processor and memory are saturated. But then that's the same situation for any computer.

It takes a very liberal interpretation of what a smartphone is to include the iPhone in that category in the first place, so it should consider itself lucky that the definition is so wide and vague!

People are excited about the 5800, N97, the N95 range are still hot devices, and the E71 has been doing very well too.

Side by side, open menus, contacts, settings, typing etc etc. S60 Nokias are quicker at all these everyday tasks. The iphone seems to have some sort of animation lag when typing, which means you can be a few letters ahead of what appears on the screen (in the brower, email, and SMS) which just isn't an issue at all on my S60 devices. The slowness is definitely something Apple need to work on to polish up the interface.

Not exactly a scientific measurement, as their can be many other variables as to why pages open. I haven't found it to be a significant issue.

What I have found is that you do need to turn off the iPhone every once in awhile and do a hard reset. It can feel snappier afterwards.

Well mine gets turned off every night, and on again in the morning, so I am basing my comparison on this daily reboot.

Needing to do resets usually indicates there are faults in the software.

And general motors share is still pretty large isn't it with a lot more product lines than Toyota. I'm not sure you know how difficult it would be for apple to become the #1 cell phone maker. Apple is a boutique shop. For apple to become the largest phone maker, everyone would want to have a phone connected to itunes (ie, everyone would want to pay for this). I can never see apple iphones being free and a significant number of people like their phones free or below $100. It the same logic people used with macosX.. remember how a couple of years back, everyone was predicting the death of microsoft when it seems macOSX was taking off?. Apple forgot not everyone cares about cool and not everyone wants to pay the fee for cool. To claim apple will be #1 in a market that is not mature is bold. Apple could become yesterday news pretty quickly. The cell phone market is not the computer market. It's brutal and cutthroat.

I'm not so sure about everyone predicting the death of MS or OS X "taking off" a few years ago, but I do know that Apple has steadily increased market share since pretty much the introduction of OS X, so apparently whatever Apple has or has not forgotten hasn't hurt them much.

Unless the theory is that Apple should have finished MS off by now, and it's only their forgetfulness that has kept that from happening, but that doesn't seem to be what you're saying.

I doubt it, because there is no need for Palm software to connect to your PC -- it works like a thumb drive, you drop the music, photo's, videos, and then you go. No software needed.


I am focusing on certain questions. About keyboard, there can always be someone to develop some sort of quick keyboard for simple text or quick messages. Its not hard to do such things, especially if you all ready know how to use javascript/css. I expect someone to do that within a month or two of release, hell someone could be working on a demo of such things now.

And I personally love the pebble design, and the sliding feature. With the iPhone (I use on a day-to-day basis an iPod Touch) you have to learn how to type, and even when you get use to it (it takes a couple of seconds, longer if your like my dad) you still make mistakes -- and it's auto-check or whatever, I absolutely hate it. I wish the iPhone had a keyboard, either physical or touch-screen, but another screen (like the DS Lite) that slides out, so you have more screen room.

Also, about the reliability, is it really fair to judge so quickly? Have you ever had a sliding phone? I had two LG slider phones, and the only problem I had with my first one (it was an old sprint phone, actually) was the OS couldn't hand me sliding it up and down up and down up and down like a thousand times a minute, because every time you did the OS would change (I would do it out of habit, not for phone functions). The hardware itself, however, never broke down on me no matter how many times I dropped it or slide it. :/ The phone did, however, mess up and did not let me unlock my phone....a week before I bought me new phone.

Sprint is the third largest carrier, and basically they are doing what they always do -- release their phone with Sprint, and then within a year release it to other carriers.

And thats not true about the price. Samsung and Sprint said the same about the Instinct, and yet they released that at a good price (with contract). They will do the same with the Pre, or it shall be the death of them. However, every rumor and every speculation leads to the thought that it will be $399 (no contract) and $199 (or below, with contract), to compete with other similar phones.

With regards to the web app "yawn", the entire phone is a web phone. Everything. It makes sense that they would move in this direction, and opening up development to people like me lets us change things quickly, without waiting for some developer to do it. I wouldn't be surprised if they open up other type of coding at some point for games.


My thoughts exactly.


First off, I am just inputting my thoughts on this matter. Just stating that.

I think this phone will grab one section of the market, and then take a few customers here and there. The first market that this phone will snap away from Apple and other "iPhone killers", as some people call them, is the business world. The iPhone has never been considered that great of a business phone, because of it's lack of a physical keyboard. I tend to disagree, but that is the current mind set with many business users (it might be that a lot of them just aren't use to an all touch device). Second, I think it will, for Sprint customers, be the phone to get. This phone is the ultimate smartphone -- it can multi task, it can connect to the web and gather all your contact, calender info all by itself, it simplifies everything and most importantly, it does not copy the iPhone style of GUI, like other products (*cough* Samsung Instinct). Also, it could grab some people over from other carrieris, but I doubt it. The only phones that seem to do that would be the Blackberry Storm and the iPhone (which, btw, the Blackberry Storm is awesome, but thats because of the screen feature -- not really the OS itself).

What will this do? Hopefully, help the Sprint image and will boost Palm. And when the Palm Pre goes to AT&T and other networks, you will see the Palm Pre really competing with the big guys. And when Sprint unrolls their new 4G Wi Fi Nation Wide, well, thats when the Pre and other phones will attract new customers for Sprint -- thats why I stay with them, they are always ahead when it comes to new technologies. Although AT&T beat them on the whole visual voicemail thing, which is something the Pre lacks (or does it?).


You make good points. I bet there is a new iPhone in the works, too, but the question is...will it be a better update than the 3G, which seems to be a black mark on the iPhone's record?


I do agree that was silly of them, but i came name a couple of thins I like that the iPhone doesn't have:

A physical keyboard. You don't know how many times I wish my iPod Touch had one. (although I can type all right with the iPod keyboard, it's just annoying sometimes)

Sprint. I hate AT&T. If I had to switch to a different network, it would be T-Mobile or Verizon, because I like the Blackberry Storm and T-Moble always has nice phones. And Sprint has a wicked fast 3G Network. They really do.

The Gesture Area. That is a really cool, thinking outside the box, idea that really makes use of the screen.

The design. The keyboard slides out weird, notice that? It does so to fight glare, and so it will be comfy when to your face. There was another reason, but it's slipped my mind for now. Also, the pebble like design gives it a smooth and nice feel. If it's anything like my old blue LG (which was also pebble shapped), it will be nice.

The glass behind the phone.



That side, with the reflective glass, I have read is so you can take an auto-picture of yourself. We shall see if thats true.

Camera Flash. Thats just an amazing feature.

The touchstone. Not sure if the iPhone has some thing like this, but it should.

I am sure I can keep going, but I think (in my opinion) there are tones of up sides...the down sides will come later, I am sure (NO VIDEO RECORDING IS ONE OF THEM!!!)


Drag and drop, but with the contacts use Blue Tooth -- always worked for me.

There's a big difference between what iTunes does for you and what a flash drive capability does for you. I don't think many people, especially Apple's iTunes market, that'll like drag-n-drop as it simply isn't as usable. If I wanted to drop 1000 5 MByte images into the Pre, the photo viewer better be damn good as it would be tortuously slow to view them on the device otherwise. If I wanted to drop 1000 5 MByte music files into the Pre, the software better be damn good as I imagine it's going to be a navigation nightmare, and slow. Videos are the same way.

iTunes does a lot of things to make stuff usable such as reducing photo file size for speed, organize your music and videos, and all wrapped in a great interface. The thumb drive idea just doesn't work as well. I know it won't work for me, since I simply don't organize stuff.


We will see how well a interpreted language based keyboard works. This is one those things that need to be optimized a whole lot.


Apple traded a physical keyboard for a larger screen. Palm went the other way around. The current iPhone has a 25% larger screen than the Palm Pre as a result. It makes a lot of things better such as image viewing, video watching and web browsing. It makes a lot the buttons on the screen more usable and the UI more navigable. Palm's essentially go the same iPhone layouts with 5 icons along the bottom for the home screen and other places, lists in a lot of places, and some buttons very close to each other similar to Mac/iPhone OS X toolbar layouts. Having a 25% smaller screen on the Pre will be detrimental for a lot of things involving the finger.


I'm almost vehemently disagreeing with this, instead of merely disagreeing. The business world is very good-old-boy-network with a group think mentality. If you don't have your product considered as business oriented already, they aint buying. And right now, that's RIMM, not Apple nor any of the other so-called iPhone killers. I think the presence of a physical keyboard is mostly secondary to being able to make deals with businesses and probably also secondary to all the features that businesses want (security features and such). Supporting Exchange is only the first step. So, I think the Palm Pre has a long way to go unless they didn't disclose that the Pre supports other business features.


It really depends on what phones Sprint gets by the time the Pre ships, no? The Storm could be on Sprint by then. The "Instinct 2" could be on Sprint by then. A new WinMob phone could out on Sprint by then. All of them will undoubtedly be supporting the same kind of things the Pre is trying to do.

And yes, webOS is copying a whole of iPhone OS X. Basically all iPhone UI conventions are in the Pre.


How is the iPhone 3G a black mark on the iPhone's record? You mean if Apple did everything right, they could have sold 2x as many phones?

I think the thing most worrying for the Pre is that Palm is going for the social networking market with the Pre. They are envisioning the Blogger, Facebook and MySpace crowd as their big market, as it is these types of folks who have a lot of data in Yahoo, Hotmail (does the Pre even sync Hotmail?), Google, er, the "Cloud". They are building a PIM and messaging intensive phone. I really don't know much about this market, or care to know it actually, so I don't know if it is viable a not. Is it really a big market? Is it something people really want to do? Is it more important to people than other things such as music or video or data?

They are not angling for the business market where RIMM is dominant. They are not angling for the entertainment market where the iPhone is dominant. They are trying to target this new market. If it is viable, then it's going to be a race between Palm cornering the market, and Palm, Apple, Nokia, MS leveraging their strengths to get the market. It's going to be tough as Palm has just announced the end of Palm OS, likely the end of WM Treos, so the next 6 months are going to be lean lean lean.