Palm surprises with Pre smartphone running new webOS - Page 2

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

The only way the iPhone sells more is when the phone is offered, as is, on Verizon. That won't happen because Verizon and T-Mobile USA are dictatorial mental midgets.

Originally Posted by Hoss

Once somebody, maybe SiriusXM or DirectTV, comes up with a reliable satellite phone service, we can forget about AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, and have dirt cheap coverage everywhere. And their infrastructure is already built about 100 miles above the weather.

GPS chips send and receive data reliably already. I'm already saving the $250 I'll need to break my AT&T contract with their stupid jip plans.

Originally Posted by Hoss

Once somebody, maybe SiriusXM or DirectTV, comes up with a reliable satellite phone service, we can forget about AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, and have dirt cheap coverage everywhere. And their infrastructure is already built about 100 miles above the weather.

GPS chips send and receive data reliably already. I'm already saving the $250 I'll need to break my AT&T contract with their stupid jip plans.

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

In a subtle jab at the iPhone, Palm's webOS can run multiple apps at the same time, each one "seamlessly connected to the web and always active."* According to Palm, you can instantly flip from one app to another like you would sift through playing cards on a table.

Originally Posted by djbeta;1360949smart!

I would have liked the Pre a lot more if they ditched that slide-out keyboard.

yes, I know some people just seem to prefer having it-- but I would guess 9 times out of 10 those people haven't given the iPhone keyboard a fair shake-- JUST a guess..

Originally Posted by mjtomlin

How exactly is the iPhone's OS crippled? The underlying OS on the iPhone is in fact OS X, same that's on the desktop. Once you jailbreak the iPhone, there's not much that can't be done with it.

If you're referring to the user interface, I'd hardly call the iPhone's "crippled". The iPhone's interface is a completely different way to interact with the system. All attempts made by previous mobile operating systems just took the desktop's point&click interaction and threw it behind a touch screen. Apple designed a completely new interface for a handheld device, because they knew trying to cram the Mac screen on a display that small is absurd and counter-intuitive.

The iPhone is a new platform, it's not trying to be a micro Mac, nor should it.


And while I like the idea that they chose WebKit as their front end for the entire OS, I don't understand how some people think this is more advanced than Cocoa Touch on the iPhone? WebKit has proven to be a powerful application environment, but it is in no way superior to an OS native API.

Originally Posted by teckstud

You obviously have never used a slider. The are smaller phones, not annoying and very easy to use and do not break- there is no hinge. Portrait is better than landscape because it is narrower and easier to hold. This phone looks like a winner- better than a Blackberry.

Originally Posted by djbeta

I would have liked the Pre a lot more if they ditched that slide-out keyboard.

yes, I know some people just seem to prefer having it-- but I would guess 9 times out of 10 those people haven't given the iPhone keyboard a fair shake-- JUST a guess..

Originally Posted by str1f3

it's the best looking os on a mobile phone out there period. only time will tell if it is as good as the demo. if it is, apple is in for a SERIOUS battle.apple had better come up with something special for os 3 and 3rd generation iphone. it looks as if apple was resting on it's ass and palm passed them by.

it may not look as good hardware-wise as the iphone but the palm blows it out of the water when it comes to the os.

Originally Posted by paxman

Pass the joint, mate!

Originally Posted by str1f3

it may not look as good hardware-wise as the iphone but the palm blows it out of the water when it comes to the os.

Originally Posted by hmurchison

It sure does!! If you're of that opinion. Others may disagree.

Originally Posted by johnqh

You obviously like to make assumptions about things you have no clue about.

It is not small (way bigger than iPhone), and if you look carefully, the Pre is very thick.
Anything which is physical will break at one point. That's shown by the reliability studies that iPhone is the more reliable (over Blackberry).

Narrower keyboard is better? Wow. First time I hear anyone claiming that.

Seven features that make the Palm Pre better than the iPhone

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/0...s-that-ma.html

There was a glow on the face of every Palm employee we saw today, and deservedly so: the new Palm Pre is a hail mary product. It's probably going to save the company.

And it is, in many ways, better than the iPhone.

Brownlee and I got a little guided tour of a Pre by a beaming executive this evening. (We filmed it; Xeni, Derek, and Wes from the Boing Boing video team are working on it as I write.) But I'm so excited about the product that I wanted to share my enthusiasm before I forgot all the details about why I am so into it in the first place.

• It feels small and pleasant in the hand. Much smaller than the iPhone, but inexplicably the screen seems big enough. Part of that is the lovely interface that Palm has created that echos a little bit of the old Palm OS in font choice and such, but feels wholly new.

It's a little bit longer than a Treo when the keyboard is extended, but the curving bit makes it seem a nice size.

• It runs Linux. SQLlite is the built-in database. Developers will have to use "web technologies" to make most of the apps, but it sounds like there may still be ways to use closer-to-the-metal languages.

• The animations and interface are gorgeous. They are in many ways busier than the iPhone's animations, and clearly largely cribbed from the bouncy, lively way the iPhone OS moves around, but they look really nice when switching from app to app.

• It has the coolest menu bar I've ever seen. The touchpad actually extends about half an inch below the screen, and to bring up the ever-present menu bar, you push up from below to smoosh it onto the screen, where it rests under your thumb like a Gummi worm. It looks really great and really useful. It is the first clear "impress your friends" feature.

• Integration with Facebook and Gmail looks top notch. Here's the part that got me: if you choose to, you can make your contacts list pull live from Facebook, including their selected profile picture, which means every time your friends call you their image will be their latest Facebook profile picture. Not a huge deal, of course, but a wonderful touch.

• There will be an official app store, but you can still load other apps. Probably. Palm isn't quite sure how syncing with a PC will work, but it sounds like you'll be able to load apps from a variety of sources as well as buying them over-the-air from the Palm application store.

• It's got multitouch, Apple patents be damned. We asked if they were afraid of Apple's claimed protectionist patents for multitouch. They would only respond with a confident smile.

What a pleasing thing it is to see a company that had been all but counted out of the smartphone game come storming back into what I suspect will be the lead.

Update: Oh, one more thing: It has system-wide cut-and-paste.

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Palm, Inc. used this year's Consumer Electronics Show to unveil its iPhone challenger, the Palm Pre, which will run a brand-new operating system called Palm webOS.

It feels small and pleasant in the hand. Much smaller than the iPhone, but inexplicably the screen seems big enough. Part of that is the lovely interface that Palm has created that echos a little bit of the old Palm OS in font choice and such, but feels wholly new.

It's a little bit longer than a Treo when the keyboard is extended, but the curving bit makes it seem a nice size.

It runs Linux. SQLlite is the built-in database. Developers will have to use "web technologies" to make most of the apps, but it sounds like there may still be ways to use closer-to-the-metal languages.

The animations and interface are gorgeous. They are in many ways busier than the iPhone's animations, and clearly largely cribbed from the bouncy, lively way the iPhone OS moves around, but they look really nice when switching from app to app.

It has the coolest menu bar I've ever seen. The touchpad actually extends about half an inch below the screen, and to bring up the ever-present menu bar, you push up from below to smoosh it onto the screen, where it rests under your thumb like a Gummi worm. It looks really great and really useful. It is the first clear "impress your friends" feature.

Integration with Facebook and Gmail looks top notch. Here's the part that got me: if you choose to, you can make your contacts list pull live from Facebook, including their selected profile picture, which means every time your friends call you their image will be their latest Facebook profile picture. Not a huge deal, of course, but a wonderful touch.

There will be an official app store, but you can still load other apps. Probably. Palm isn't quite sure how syncing with a PC will work, but it sounds like you'll be able to load apps from a variety of sources as well as buying them over-the-air from the Palm application store.

It's got multitouch, Apple patents be damned. We asked if they were afraid of Apple's claimed protectionist patents for multitouch. They would only respond with a confident smile.

Originally Posted by hmurchison


sophomoric writing and logic.

Originally Posted by addabox

Man, really.

"7 Reasons Why the Pre Is Better Than The iPhone" turn out to be "has multitouch like the iPhone", "might allow apps other than apps sold in an app store that doesn't exist yet", "has busier animations that will impress your friends", "has a particular animation that I really like that doesn't work very well in the demos", "is Linux", "is smaller except when it's not", and "has trivially easy to implement integration with FaceBook and Gmail."

Oh, and cut and paste, of course, but at this point that just amounts to a ritual invocation.

I can see being taken with the thing, but some of that stuff is just silly.

Originally Posted by str1f3

others can. i'm just giving the only point of view i can. my own. but i know i'm not alone. almost every tech blog is stunned that palm made this. not saying that apple can't do something more imaginative but in six months at wwdc it's time to step up!

Originally Posted by guinness

From the video of the Pre on engadget, the OS already looks more fluid than the iPhone's OS, and the browser looks much, much better than Safari, especially when changing orientations.

Just too bad the phone will on Sprint, and not a network that matters, like Verizon.

Originally Posted by TenoBell

The video definitely looked good. I'm not sure how you define the OS looking more fluid. We didn't get to see them using the different apps.

How does the browser look much better than Safari? All you could really see are web pages being displayed.

Originally Posted by hmurchison

This is a feature? It's not smaller with the kb extended

Originally Posted by ascii

The first strong competitor to the iPhone. But the iPhone has been out 2 years now, so we should expect some serious competition to start to appear. I will just say though, I don't think this could have come out before the iPhone. There are too many similarities.