Not bad at all. I would still buy the iPhone over the Pre. I think people who want a keyboard would like this one.
Too bad it is only coming to Sprint. I have had terrible luck with them.
A
Not sure how much luck had to do with it. I had Sprint for years then a string of horrendous customer service issues with them forced me to switch to T-mo. Been OK with them for a number of years. I still won't touch at&t even if they paid me.
Palm, WHERE IS THE NEW VERSION OF Palm Desktop for Mac? It has not been updated for a decade, being limited and buggy!!!
My solution was to use Missing Sync. I don't remember Palm Desktop doing much to connect to any OS's native software, it was its own island. Missing Sync syncs events to calendar, contacts to Address Book, and so on.
Quote:
Originally Posted by slapppy
Well the OS kicks the iPhones ass out of the water. The hardware looks dated, too thick, too small and physical slide out keyboard just adds bulk. It doesn't look sleek or different from all the other clones out there.
It looks distinctive enough, there's not a lot of wiggle room to make it distinctive and not ridiculous. I don't remember seeing any with a curved slider. Most of the sliders are straight guides and seem to ignore that people don't have flat faces.
I love how they list that as a feature!! It is like they have the only phone that uses it and everyone wants removable battery. However, the only smartphone that does not have a removable battery is currently the second best selling smartphone (in the US at least). How weird!!
1. You have to slide the keyboard out to type anything. I found this is very annoying with Android. Apple's software keyboard actually changes depending on the context. For example, if a text field is numeric only, the keyboard only contains number keys. With hardware keyboard, typing some of the stuff (numbers, symbols) is very difficult.
2. Again about the keyboard - you have to turn to the correct orientation to type. On Android, you have to turn to landscape. With Pre, you have to turn to portrait.
3. Again about the keyboard. When people have to slide every time they want to type, that's extensive wear on the sliding mechanism. I have doubts on its reliability. iPhone has terrific reliability record and one of the reason is the lack of keyboard.
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.
There are a bunch of things the Pre seems to have that I hope Apple is paying attention to. The OS actually does seem to be more advanced than iPhone's crippled Mac OS X. It might be time to make the iPhone a bit more Mac OS X-ish.
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.
I heard that Palm was making jabs at the iPhone during their demo
but when I found out they were unikeyboard only I couldn't believe it.
The feature where you drag a floating bar to switch apps looks cool until
you realize how freakin' annoying this would be day in and day out.
The screen is smaller because they have to account for the extra inch and a half
when the keyboard is open.
Web app only means weaker games if any and we're on the precipice of Apple moving
to OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenCL ...come on game over (excuse the pun)
UI didn't look all that fluid and this is running on ARM Cortex (TI OMAP) the iPhone
OS would FLY on that hardware.
Congrats Palm ..welcome back but don't get cocky. You're not competing with iPhone Rev 2 you're going head to head with iPhone Rev 3 which is likely going to have a much faster ARM and PowerVR graphics and Firmware 3.0.
They better have some more tricks up their sleeve.
I figure we're going to get most of what we need in the next iPhone Rev
MMS
Background processes (iPhone Rev 3 will have Snow Leopard and Blocks/GrandCrentral/OpenCL)
Flash
Cut N Paste
Programmable graphics.
I figure the technology they worked on for 17" Macbook Pro may extend to the phone (correct me if i'm way off base here) and who knows maybe we see a 3.5" to 4" AMOLED screen hit. I'd pay extra for that.
I love how they list that as a feature!! It is like they have the only phone that uses it and everyone wants removable battery. However, the only smartphone that does not have a removable battery is currently the second best selling smartphone (in the US at least). How weird!!
I was being sarcastic. It is a feature - one that the iPhone unfortunately lacks and should have had from day one. It would be selling even more if it had it.
Besides smartphones- do any cell phones not have it? Besides throw-aways?
I was being sarcastic. It is a feature - one that the iPhone unfortunately lacks and should have had from day one. It would be selling even more if it had it.
Besides smartphones- do any cell phones not have it? Besides throw-aways?
I really doubt that many are not buying the iPhone due to lack of removable battery. Most people are know are not buying the iPhone due to the required data plan, the 2 year contract, or/and being stuck with another carriers contract. No one ever mentioned the battery or the touch screen keyboard as a problem.
I don't know about regular phones not having removable batteries but I used to have a WM smartphone called Qtek years back and it did not have a removable battery. That phone was a disaster since the battery drained quickly and died in few months.
As an unabashed iPhone fanboy, I have to say, this phone looks great. Not great enough for me to give up my beloved iPhone and switch carriers, but certainly a worthy competitor. Provided it costs something reasonable and actually performs well, this seems certain to give palm a seat at the table.
Personally, I think it's fantastic that another company seems to understand that hardware is nice, but software is where it's at. The smart phone industry would have been much poorer without Palm.
I disagree with those that say this phone is ugly.
I wouldn't buy it over an iPhone, but I think it's a fairly stylin' handset. The fact that both the device and the OS appear well-designed and attractive is the main reason for the buzz IMO.
The thing that's going to determine if this device is a winner or not is the very thing they are seemingly keeping secret for now. By this I mean the actual details of the OS, what it really is, how it works, how you develop for it etc.
All they have shown us so far is a tech demo really, kind of like what used to be called an alpha product. The OS is obviously not completely finished, and the apps are non-existent, as is the eco-system. The reaction so far from the press is "looks good," but that's pretty much because the "look" of it is all we have seen so far. I'd give it a week or two for the details of the OS to come out before anyone can make a realistic determination of it's chances of market success.
A big problem I see for this device is that the iPhone will still very likely eat up the majority of the market with it's platform, so this device is basically an alternative to that and always will be. Looked at that way, the market for this thing is crowded. I don't think it likely that there will be more than two major smartphone platforms moving forward so it's a matter of who will gain the slot of "if not iPhone then ..."
I think the smart money is still on Android for the moment and this device would certainly run it well even if the whole "WebOS" thing fails. I wouldn't be surprised if there are Android developers trying to mimic this UI as we speak and if the UI and functionality is the same, but it's open source Linux, etc. I don't see why anyone wouldn't chose Android instead of moving to an entirely new custom OS.
In fact, the more I think about it, perhaps the whole "we must develop our own OS" thing might be Palm's achilles heel in a way. They never have played well with other OS's. Their original raison d'être was to create a whole new platform that would be a leader in the mobile market, same as WinMobile, and they never seem to have grown beyond that hope IMO. Even now when two new mobile platforms with fantastic adoption rates (iPhone & Android) are staring them right in the face, they come out with their own custom one that they hope will take over the market?
The premises underlying this strategy seem questionable to me.
I disagree with those that say this phone is ugly.
I agree with you, but I can see what someone would say that. I too don't like the over-roundedness of it. I think they could have taken the next step and evolved the "Palm shape".
Palm, WHERE IS THE NEW VERSION OF Palm Desktop for Mac? It has not been updated for a decade, being limited and buggy!!!
LOL! Yeah, the #1 reason I stopped using my last two PDAs (Palm OS and a Zaurus) was lack of easy syncing with my Mac.
This looks like a neat device. Maybe when my iPhone contract runs out, or if Palm hadn't allowed themselves to get 6-7 years behind in the first place.
I was being sarcastic. It is a feature - one that the iPhone unfortunately lacks and should have had from day one. It would be selling even more if it had it.
Besides smartphones- do any cell phones not have it? Besides throw-aways?
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.
This is why the Palm Pre won't sell. This guy never gets it!! This is how he responding to questions from New York Times in 2006 to the idea that any company (including Apple) could easily win customers in the smart-phone sector:
I think it looks cool. I like the size and keyboard myself. I was hoping that Apple would have a iPhone Nano that looked exactly like this but alas it never happend. I'm totally glad that this is occurring on a slider. I've had a slider chocolate for a 1 1/2 half years and love the compactness of it. They fit into pants pockets most unobtrusively .
Comments
Not bad at all. I would still buy the iPhone over the Pre. I think people who want a keyboard would like this one.
Too bad it is only coming to Sprint. I have had terrible luck with them.
A
Not sure how much luck had to do with it. I had Sprint for years then a string of horrendous customer service issues with them forced me to switch to T-mo. Been OK with them for a number of years. I still won't touch at&t even if they paid me.
Removable, rechargeable battery.
Who would want that? Nobody ever uses that!!!
Palm, WHERE IS THE NEW VERSION OF Palm Desktop for Mac? It has not been updated for a decade, being limited and buggy!!!
My solution was to use Missing Sync. I don't remember Palm Desktop doing much to connect to any OS's native software, it was its own island. Missing Sync syncs events to calendar, contacts to Address Book, and so on.
Well the OS kicks the iPhones ass out of the water. The hardware looks dated, too thick, too small and physical slide out keyboard just adds bulk. It doesn't look sleek or different from all the other clones out there.
It looks distinctive enough, there's not a lot of wiggle room to make it distinctive and not ridiculous. I don't remember seeing any with a curved slider. Most of the sliders are straight guides and seem to ignore that people don't have flat faces.
Who would want that? Nobody ever uses that!!!
I love how they list that as a feature!! It is like they have the only phone that uses it and everyone wants removable battery. However, the only smartphone that does not have a removable battery is currently the second best selling smartphone (in the US at least). How weird!!
Thataboy
I watched the Pre video tour. Some observations:
1. You have to slide the keyboard out to type anything. I found this is very annoying with Android. Apple's software keyboard actually changes depending on the context. For example, if a text field is numeric only, the keyboard only contains number keys. With hardware keyboard, typing some of the stuff (numbers, symbols) is very difficult.
2. Again about the keyboard - you have to turn to the correct orientation to type. On Android, you have to turn to landscape. With Pre, you have to turn to portrait.
3. Again about the keyboard. When people have to slide every time they want to type, that's extensive wear on the sliding mechanism. I have doubts on its reliability. iPhone has terrific reliability record and one of the reason is the lack of keyboard.
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.
There are a bunch of things the Pre seems to have that I hope Apple is paying attention to. The OS actually does seem to be more advanced than iPhone's crippled Mac OS X. It might be time to make the iPhone a bit more Mac OS X-ish.
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.
I heard that Palm was making jabs at the iPhone during their demo
but when I found out they were unikeyboard only I couldn't believe it.
The feature where you drag a floating bar to switch apps looks cool until
you realize how freakin' annoying this would be day in and day out.
The screen is smaller because they have to account for the extra inch and a half
when the keyboard is open.
Web app only means weaker games if any and we're on the precipice of Apple moving
to OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenCL ...come on game over (excuse the pun)
UI didn't look all that fluid and this is running on ARM Cortex (TI OMAP) the iPhone
OS would FLY on that hardware.
Congrats Palm ..welcome back but don't get cocky. You're not competing with iPhone Rev 2 you're going head to head with iPhone Rev 3 which is likely going to have a much faster ARM and PowerVR graphics and Firmware 3.0.
They better have some more tricks up their sleeve.
I figure we're going to get most of what we need in the next iPhone Rev
MMS
Background processes (iPhone Rev 3 will have Snow Leopard and Blocks/GrandCrentral/OpenCL)
Flash
Cut N Paste
Programmable graphics.
I figure the technology they worked on for 17" Macbook Pro may extend to the phone (correct me if i'm way off base here) and who knows maybe we see a 3.5" to 4" AMOLED screen hit. I'd pay extra for that.
but does it have copy and paste? AKA "the killer app!"
Yes it does. I wouldn't call it a killer app though, it's not even an app.
I love how they list that as a feature!! It is like they have the only phone that uses it and everyone wants removable battery. However, the only smartphone that does not have a removable battery is currently the second best selling smartphone (in the US at least). How weird!!
I was being sarcastic. It is a feature - one that the iPhone unfortunately lacks and should have had from day one. It would be selling even more if it had it.
Besides smartphones- do any cell phones not have it? Besides throw-aways?
I was being sarcastic. It is a feature - one that the iPhone unfortunately lacks and should have had from day one. It would be selling even more if it had it.
Besides smartphones- do any cell phones not have it? Besides throw-aways?
I really doubt that many are not buying the iPhone due to lack of removable battery. Most people are know are not buying the iPhone due to the required data plan, the 2 year contract, or/and being stuck with another carriers contract. No one ever mentioned the battery or the touch screen keyboard as a problem.
I don't know about regular phones not having removable batteries but I used to have a WM smartphone called Qtek years back and it did not have a removable battery. That phone was a disaster since the battery drained quickly and died in few months.
Personally, I think it's fantastic that another company seems to understand that hardware is nice, but software is where it's at. The smart phone industry would have been much poorer without Palm.
I wouldn't buy it over an iPhone, but I think it's a fairly stylin' handset. The fact that both the device and the OS appear well-designed and attractive is the main reason for the buzz IMO.
The thing that's going to determine if this device is a winner or not is the very thing they are seemingly keeping secret for now. By this I mean the actual details of the OS, what it really is, how it works, how you develop for it etc.
All they have shown us so far is a tech demo really, kind of like what used to be called an alpha product. The OS is obviously not completely finished, and the apps are non-existent, as is the eco-system. The reaction so far from the press is "looks good," but that's pretty much because the "look" of it is all we have seen so far. I'd give it a week or two for the details of the OS to come out before anyone can make a realistic determination of it's chances of market success.
A big problem I see for this device is that the iPhone will still very likely eat up the majority of the market with it's platform, so this device is basically an alternative to that and always will be. Looked at that way, the market for this thing is crowded. I don't think it likely that there will be more than two major smartphone platforms moving forward so it's a matter of who will gain the slot of "if not iPhone then ..."
I think the smart money is still on Android for the moment and this device would certainly run it well even if the whole "WebOS" thing fails. I wouldn't be surprised if there are Android developers trying to mimic this UI as we speak and if the UI and functionality is the same, but it's open source Linux, etc. I don't see why anyone wouldn't chose Android instead of moving to an entirely new custom OS.
In fact, the more I think about it, perhaps the whole "we must develop our own OS" thing might be Palm's achilles heel in a way. They never have played well with other OS's. Their original raison d'être was to create a whole new platform that would be a leader in the mobile market, same as WinMobile, and they never seem to have grown beyond that hope IMO. Even now when two new mobile platforms with fantastic adoption rates (iPhone & Android) are staring them right in the face, they come out with their own custom one that they hope will take over the market?
The premises underlying this strategy seem questionable to me.
I disagree with those that say this phone is ugly.
I agree with you, but I can see what someone would say that. I too don't like the over-roundedness of it. I think they could have taken the next step and evolved the "Palm shape".
The hardware bits i'm not sure I like completely, but the OS is exquisite.
Nothing is a call to arms against the iPhone, but this is the first legitimate contender. Nothing else has even come close.
Watching the demos simply amazed me. They made the iPhone OS look dated for the first time ever. webOS is beautiful.
Once this hits Verizon, this should brother the iPhone as one of the top phones in their market segment.
Dear RIM; get back in the game of you're done.
Kudos to Apple and Palm. Apple, bring it on. I know you will.
Palm, WHERE IS THE NEW VERSION OF Palm Desktop for Mac? It has not been updated for a decade, being limited and buggy!!!
LOL! Yeah, the #1 reason I stopped using my last two PDAs (Palm OS and a Zaurus) was lack of easy syncing with my Mac.
This looks like a neat device. Maybe when my iPhone contract runs out, or if Palm hadn't allowed themselves to get 6-7 years behind in the first place.
I was being sarcastic. It is a feature - one that the iPhone unfortunately lacks and should have had from day one. It would be selling even more if it had it.
Besides smartphones- do any cell phones not have it? Besides throw-aways?
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.
This is why the Palm Pre won't sell. This guy never gets it!! This is how he responding to questions from New York Times in 2006 to the idea that any company (including Apple) could easily win customers in the smart-phone sector:
Geez, that guy is cocky as hell and rude.