Their market share is dropping fast, and it is only a large market share for a pretty liberal interpretation of "smart phone".
show me a Nokia smart phone that people are excited to buy. Nokia has large market share the same way that General Motors used to have large market share.
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.
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.
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrochester
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.
Their market share is dropping fast, and it is only a large market share for a pretty liberal interpretation of "smart phone".
show me a Nokia smart phone that people are excited to buy. Nokia has large market share the same way that General Motors used to have large market share.
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.
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'm a former Palm user from as far back as the PalmPilot 1000, and continuing until the T|X. As a Mac user, I'll never buy another one until they update their support for the Mac. Maybe the presence of former Apple employees in the organization will jumpstart that support, but until then I'm very happy with my iPhone (and still have 18 mos on the contract!)
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by johnqh
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.
5. So the apps will essentially be web apps. Yawn.
6. Palm is squeeze to Sprint - which is neither GSM nor CDMA, and is way smaller than ATT and Verizon. Basically, it is getting the leftover from Apple, Blackberry and Android.
7. The phone is simply UGLY.
11. Palm and Sprint won't say anything about the pricing and schedule. That means two things - it is going to be expensive, and it is not ready.
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbella
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.
My thoughts exactly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2
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.
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?).
Quote:
Originally Posted by djbeta
I think the Palm Pre is kinda cute.. I think its success will hinge on the price point and exactly how good the OS is. Seems odd that the apps will be built on an html/css/javascript framework... I assume this means that the technologies run locally somehow-- did BeOS work like this in some way.
I think that a new iPhone is probably in the works and will once again become the leader among cell phones, but it will have to match ALL of the features of the Pre..
better camera--- good quality 25fps video (Cycorder is pretty darn good, so I see no reason why this isn't possible)
Adobe Flash support (real Flash so I can use Flash applications!)
a flash
real turn-by-turn GPS
a forward facing camera behind the LCD for properly-oriented video confereincing would be nice (so it looks like you're looking at the person on your screen)
VOICE CONTROL and SPEECH RECOGNITION ---- they pull that off in a fantastic way and they'll have the NEXT iPhone.
some of this stuff is implementable with a software update.. but it would have to be version 3 of the software I gather.. who knows maybe Apple is further along with this than we think (??????)
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?
Quote:
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.
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!!!)
Quote:
Originally Posted by TenoBell
How do you transfer contacts, pictures, and files to your Mac. I haven't heard of any desktop software that interacts with the phone.
Has anyone else seen such software?
Drag and drop, but with the contacts use Blue Tooth -- always worked for me.
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.
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.
Quote:
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.
We will see how well a interpreted language based keyboard works. This is one those things that need to be optimized a whole lot.
Quote:
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.
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.
Quote:
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).
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.
Quote:
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).
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.
Quote:
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?
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.
Comments
Their market share is dropping fast, and it is only a large market share for a pretty liberal interpretation of "smart phone".
show me a Nokia smart phone that people are excited to buy. Nokia has large market share the same way that General Motors used to have large market share.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Needing to do resets usually indicates there are faults in the software.
Their market share is dropping fast, and it is only a large market share for a pretty liberal interpretation of "smart phone".
show me a Nokia smart phone that people are excited to buy. Nokia has large market share the same way that General Motors used to have large market share.
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.
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'm a former Palm user from as far back as the PalmPilot 1000, and continuing until the T|X. As a Mac user, I'll never buy another one until they update their support for the Mac. Maybe the presence of former Apple employees in the organization will jumpstart that support, but until then I'm very happy with my iPhone (and still have 18 mos on the contract!)
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.
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.
5. So the apps will essentially be web apps. Yawn.
6. Palm is squeeze to Sprint - which is neither GSM nor CDMA, and is way smaller than ATT and Verizon. Basically, it is getting the leftover from Apple, Blackberry and Android.
7. The phone is simply UGLY.
11. Palm and Sprint won't say anything about the pricing and schedule. That means two things - it is going to be expensive, and it is not ready.
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.
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.
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.
My thoughts exactly.
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.
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?).
I think the Palm Pre is kinda cute.. I think its success will hinge on the price point and exactly how good the OS is. Seems odd that the apps will be built on an html/css/javascript framework... I assume this means that the technologies run locally somehow-- did BeOS work like this in some way.
I think that a new iPhone is probably in the works and will once again become the leader among cell phones, but it will have to match ALL of the features of the Pre..
better camera--- good quality 25fps video (Cycorder is pretty darn good, so I see no reason why this isn't possible)
Adobe Flash support (real Flash so I can use Flash applications!)
a flash
real turn-by-turn GPS
a forward facing camera behind the LCD for properly-oriented video confereincing would be nice (so it looks like you're looking at the person on your screen)
VOICE CONTROL and SPEECH RECOGNITION ---- they pull that off in a fantastic way and they'll have the NEXT iPhone.
some of this stuff is implementable with a software update.. but it would have to be version 3 of the software I gather.. who knows maybe Apple is further along with this than we think (??????)
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?
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.
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!!!)
How do you transfer contacts, pictures, and files to your Mac. I haven't heard of any desktop software that interacts with the phone.
Has anyone else seen such software?
Drag and drop, but with the contacts use Blue Tooth -- always worked for me.
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.
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.
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.
We will see how well a interpreted language based keyboard works. This is one those things that need to be optimized a whole lot.
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.
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 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).
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.
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).
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.
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?
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.