Don't worry, it's probably only the iPhone OS that would have a problem like this. All other smartphones OSes are built from the ground up with multitasking in mind, so the batteries last just fine, even with a whole load of things running in the background. It would take Apple to rewrite the iPhone with multitasking in mind to make the battery in it last more than 5 minutes. Push notifications are just a half-arsed cover up for true multitasking.
The iPhone does multitask. At least get the facts straight.
There is nothing about inductive charging that requires such long recharges. With toothbrushes, one charge will last the brush for a week with two uses a day for about two minutes each.
The charging circuits are cheaper if they supply less current while recharging. That lengthens the recharge time. But it doesn't matter for a toothbrush, considering the way it's used.
I can't imagine that Palm would have a recharger that would take much longer than what every other phone requires.
I only mentioned my toothbrush because it uses inductive charging, not because a phone should have the same recharging specs.
I speculate that to charge at the same rate will require more power and generate more heat through inductive charging. I?m sure we?ll see tests between the two charging types for the device soon enough.
Quote:
Originally Posted by quinney
At 4.76 ounces each, that amounts to 6723 phones. I agree that sales will be poor,
I've mentioned this before, but I still marvel at how the "anything but the iPhone" crowd has so firmly fixated on "multitasking" as being the number one obvious hideous failing of the iPhone that everybody agrees is totally lame.
This after spending the last few years agreeing that the number one obvious hideous failing of the iPhone that everybody agrees is totally lame was cut and paste, or MMS, or the camera, or video, with "multitasking" coming in a distant fifth, if it got mentioned at all.
Down the memory hole. Multitasking it is. And when Apple implements that, there will be some phones out there with, I dunno, OLED screens or better haptic feedback, and the very same people will confidently assert that the iPhone is a toy for lacking them, as if it had always been common knowledge.
Because irrational iPhone hatred is an inexhaustible well of invention.
By the way, as has been pointed out "rebates" are pretty much a scam. There is a specific calculation as to how many people will actually manage to navigate the process (and the process generally has some stoppers built in for the unwary).
Given the hyper-competitive environment that the Pre is launching into, and the necessity of doing well out of the gate, I'd have to assume that Palm didn't think they could actually make enough money simply selling the Pre for $199, or they would have done so. They must know that $300 up front is going to kill a certain percentage of sales, so they may have felt they had no choice. We have to assume the numbers have been crunched, and the hope is that enough rebates will go unredeemed to make some kind of economic sense.
If I had to guess (given remarks from Palm re the "premium" nature of Pre not being price sensitive) the rebate thing was some kind of last minute compromise between losing money or losing sales.
But all of that bodes ill for any near term discounts to drive sales. If they can't sell the thing for $199 straight up when they more or less have to move a lot of units upon release, they're probably right at the edge of what's sustainable. Palm doesn't have the deep pocket luxury of MS to be able to sell things at a loss-- they need profits, and now.
Even if the Pre is a success, if it doesn't make much money for Palm they could still be in trouble.
I took a chance, viewed your post, and was pleasantly surprised.
Anyways, what you said is partially true. Companies do take a gamble and bet that some people won't follow through on their rebate forms. This is not the only reason why a company like Palm did this though. That's not a very reliable way of making money. If for every phone sold Palm temporarily keeps 100 bucks for eight weeks or so, how much money off interest do you think Palm can make? Its a way of making extra money at no cost to the customer. Not only that, but for 100 bucks, you know most people will fill the form out and send it in, and that's reliable market research.
I've gotten two phones from Sprint, each had a mail in rebate. The first one took 6-8 weeks, and the second one took less than a month. It was real easy to do.
Love the replaceable battery and the more than one app at a time feature.
Will the Pre come with a flash?
Sometime this year, but not at launch.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ivan.rnn01
until the Sprint exclusive deal ends!
;-) You nailed the reason I think the Pre has a chance: it can go where you are, instead of forcing you to switch. Unlike the iPhone (of course, that may change next year).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Maury Markowitz
I've been waiting for someone to point out a single killer feature on this phone for weeks now. Here we are, approaching launch, and I still haven't seen one. Let's see: it's fat and heavy, it's linked to Sprint who is widely derided as the worst US carrier, it has no apps (yet) and the company is short on cash.
It has some app's, and it can emulate -- meaning all the app's you had with your Palm OS you can still use (or most). I know it has Doc's to Go, a neat Fandago app (that when you buy a movie ticket, it will add that to your schedule on your phone and any calander your synced with via internet), a Pandora app I'm looking forward to, and all the Sprint exclusives such as Sprint TV Premier. Which, btw, can you watch live TV with your iPhone? :-) I can with my Pre.
However, since I can't get the iPhone with my Sprint, and you will be able to get a Web OS/Palm Pre with your AT&T, what will you say then? If rumors are true, AT&T is getting a Pal Eos that has the WebOS (although it seems to be a Centero replacement, not a powerhouse) but still, thats the reason the Pre has a chance. It will sell great with the Sprint network, the lack of supply in the start will annoy customers but also great buzz and demand (everyone will be talking about how they can't get a Pre -- which, just like the Wii, translated into "It's Hot, hot! Get it now while you still can!") and after all the Sprint people who wanted an iPhone, but didn't get the Instinct, and all the Palm lovers (who are on Sprint, which is a good mant), and just regular Sprint ppl get their hands on the Pre, I bet Sprint will announce the Pre being the best selling phone for their network. Then the next year the Pre moving to other networks and the same will happen.
Quote:
Originally Posted by msantti
That said, if there were no iPhone, I would consider a Pre.
Of course, I somewhat think the Pre would not be this good if the iPhone did not exist.
That is very true my friend.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Adjei
The price is 299, why do these companies always put these stupid rebates, if I go and buy the phone in store, I'm not paying 199, I'll be paying 299.
I actually agree.
However, am I the only one who is excited about the Pre being at Wally? Think about it: Someone walks in, wanting a Pre/iPhone, willing to go to any carrier...who would they choose? The Wal-Mart employee doesn't get money for selling a certain product, so it's really up to what the employee himself/herself believe. And when the Pre goes to AT&T...it will be a bigger test for the Palm Pre.
I speculate that to charge at the same rate will require more power and generate more heat through inductive charging. I?m sure we?ll see tests between the two charging types for the device soon enough.
All phones and rechargers get hot. I don't see why this would get any hotter. It's all about the rate of charge.
The iPhone does multitask. At least get the facts straight.
No more than a feature phone does. I'm talking above true multitasking, with some form of task switcher, and applications actively running in the background. If I'm happily chatting away on Palringo, and I get an email, I have to shut Palringo down completely, logging me off, to go and read that email. Playing music in the background and polling for emails is something that even a very basic feature phone can do, so that's hardly a point to show off for the iPhone. The iPhone can't multitask at the minute because Apple can't figure out a way to prevent it from sucking loads of power or running out of memory. They'll get it eventually, with experience, as it can be done (as can be seen by other smartphone OSs).
No more than a feature phone does. I'm talking above true multitasking, with some form of task switcher, and applications actively running in the background. If I'm happily chatting away on Palringo, and I get an email, I have to shut Palringo down completely, logging me off, to go and read that email. Playing music in the background and polling for emails is something that even a very basic feature phone can do, so that's hardly a point to show off for the iPhone. The iPhone can't multitask at the minute because Apple can't figure out a way to prevent it from sucking loads of power or running out of memory. They'll get it eventually, with experience, as it can be done (as can be seen by other smartphone OSs).
It has that for Apple's own programs. They haven't allowed that for public use. They are supposedly thinking of ways to allow some limited version.
Really? What will the new iphone have that will "change the game"? Please link me to where you can confirm this and it's not hearsay...
Well, it's really the new iPhone OS 3.0 that is the game changer. The new hardware itself will likely be only an incremental improvement. The current OS and development environment is already light years ahead of all of the other competitors, and the new enhancements to the API are going to make the AppStore even more of a discriminator.
Remember how Windows took off when the number of available programs began to dwarf those that were available for Mac OS? Well, it's happening again, except this time the iPhone OS is the clear leader.
I think also that the battery life/multitasking/"everybody else does it" argument is skewed somewhat by how people use their iPhones.
By making "features" accessible and even fun to use, the iPhone ushered in a new era of owners actually doing a lot of stuff with their phones. Comparisons to older systems with shitty browsers or shitty media players or difficult to access functionality don't hold up, for the simple reason that such features are unlikely to be used as heavily.
We've seen the stunning statistics for the iPhone's percentage of mobile web traffic. There's a reason for that. Add in an iPod and a bunch of apps that people actually use, all the time, and it becomes clear that Apple is obliged to weigh battery usage against far heavier utilization, on average, than the average "multitasking" phone-- which itself is unlikely to have particularly stellar battery life.
With almost every rebate I used there was a clause in the fine prints saying "One rebate per household".
I really hope the Pre sells very well, which I doubt, just to get Apple and AT&T to improve their iPhone contract terms (3G limitations, unlocking, text plan... etc). Competition is good for everyone.
I've mentioned this before, but I still marvel at how the "anything but the iPhone" crowd has so firmly fixated on "multitasking" as being the number one obvious hideous failing of the iPhone that everybody agrees is totally lame.
This after spending the last few years agreeing that the number one obvious hideous failing of the iPhone that everybody agrees is totally lame was cut and paste, or MMS, or the camera, or video, with "multitasking" coming in a distant fifth, if it got mentioned at all.
Down the memory hole. Multitasking it is. And when Apple implements that, there will be some phones out there with, I dunno, OLED screens or better haptic feedback, and the very same people will confidently assert that the iPhone is a toy for lacking them, as if it had always been common knowledge.
Because irrational iPhone hatred is an inexhaustible well of invention.
Once Apple iPhone paranoia has set in- be afraid, be very afraid!!
I think also that the battery life/multitasking/"everybody else does it" argument is skewed somewhat by how people use their iPhones.
By making "features" accessible and even fun to use, the iPhone ushered in a new era of owners actually doing a lot of stuff with their phones. Comparisons to older systems with shitty browsers or shitty media players or difficult to access functionality don't hold up, for the simple reason that such features are unlikely to be used as heavily.
We've seen the stunning statistics for the iPhone's percentage of mobile web traffic. There's a reason for that. Add in an iPod and a bunch of apps that people actually use, all the time, and it becomes clear that Apple is obliged to weigh battery usage against far heavier utilization, on average, than the average "multitasking" phone-- which itself is unlikely to have particularly stellar battery life.
Let's talk battery life once you start recording video on your iPhone.
Which would you rather have to drain that battery -video or multi Apps?
Not to mention the slightly confusing particulars that must be followed exactly to the letter or they have grounds to deny.
What particulars? You give them your name, phone number, email address, mailing address, and a copy of the sales receipt or packing slip (easily printable off sprint's website.)
It's far easier to fill out than you think dude. Here's the form: (keep in mind the first page is just showing how much of a rebate people can get with each phone.)
By the way, as has been pointed out "rebates" are pretty much a scam. There is a specific calculation as to how many people will actually manage to navigate the process (and the process generally has some stoppers built in for the unwary).
Given the hyper-competitive environment that the Pre is launching into, and the necessity of doing well out of the gate, I'd have to assume that Palm didn't think they could actually make enough money simply selling the Pre for $199, or they would have done so. They must know that $300 up front is going to kill a certain percentage of sales, so they may have felt they had no choice. We have to assume the numbers have been crunched, and the hope is that enough rebates will go unredeemed to make some kind of economic sense.
If I had to guess (given remarks from Palm re the "premium" nature of Pre not being price sensitive) the rebate thing was some kind of last minute compromise between losing money or losing sales.
But all of that bodes ill for any near term discounts to drive sales. If they can't sell the thing for $199 straight up when they more or less have to move a lot of units upon release, they're probably right at the edge of what's sustainable. Palm doesn't have the deep pocket luxury of MS to be able to sell things at a loss-- they need profits, and now.
Even if the Pre is a success, if it doesn't make much money for Palm they could still be in trouble.
This is dead on - Palm really need a lot more than $200 per phone (like iPhone did at launch before volumes went up, component prices came down and R&D was amortized). Sprint is the least able to subsidize a phone being in financial dire straits and iPhone sets the price point at $199. Rocks and hard places abound. Hence the rebate - which is a scam - even $100 rebates have a 30-50% redemption rate, smaller rebates usually well below 10%. The Pre had better be flawless or both companies are headed to the brand graveyard since both Palm and Sprint are likely operating on razor thin margins.
What particulars? You give them your name, phone number, email address, mailing address, and a copy of the sales receipt or packing slip (easily printable off sprint's website.)
It's far easier to fill out than you think dude. Here's the form: (keep in mind the first page is just showing how much of a rebate people can get with each phone.)
My rebate forms from Sprint weren't any more complex, but they still found reasons to deny some of them.
One annoying thing is that after two weeks or so, you get an e-mail telling you that your rebate is being processed, so you think everything is fine. Then six weeks later, you get one telling you that it's been denied.
They don't even tell you why. They just list a whole bunch of reasons, and say that it was one or more of them. I fought with reps about this, but it rarely helps.
I for one prefer multi apps because theiPod touch could use it as well whereas the Touch has no camera (yet)- so no video. I don't like to constantly relaunch the remote APP and have to search for my AppleTV with the remote AP. It kind of ruins its benefits. This applies to others Apps as well.
Comments
Don't worry, it's probably only the iPhone OS that would have a problem like this. All other smartphones OSes are built from the ground up with multitasking in mind, so the batteries last just fine, even with a whole load of things running in the background. It would take Apple to rewrite the iPhone with multitasking in mind to make the battery in it last more than 5 minutes. Push notifications are just a half-arsed cover up for true multitasking.
The iPhone does multitask. At least get the facts straight.
The Pre is going to sell a ton of phones.
At 4.76 ounces each, that amounts to 6723 phones. I agree that sales will be poor,
but I think your estimate is a bit low.
There is nothing about inductive charging that requires such long recharges. With toothbrushes, one charge will last the brush for a week with two uses a day for about two minutes each.
The charging circuits are cheaper if they supply less current while recharging. That lengthens the recharge time. But it doesn't matter for a toothbrush, considering the way it's used.
I can't imagine that Palm would have a recharger that would take much longer than what every other phone requires.
I only mentioned my toothbrush because it uses inductive charging, not because a phone should have the same recharging specs.
I speculate that to charge at the same rate will require more power and generate more heat through inductive charging. I?m sure we?ll see tests between the two charging types for the device soon enough.
At 4.76 ounces each, that amounts to 6723 phones. I agree that sales will be poor,
but I think your estimate is a bit low.
This after spending the last few years agreeing that the number one obvious hideous failing of the iPhone that everybody agrees is totally lame was cut and paste, or MMS, or the camera, or video, with "multitasking" coming in a distant fifth, if it got mentioned at all.
Down the memory hole. Multitasking it is. And when Apple implements that, there will be some phones out there with, I dunno, OLED screens or better haptic feedback, and the very same people will confidently assert that the iPhone is a toy for lacking them, as if it had always been common knowledge.
Because irrational iPhone hatred is an inexhaustible well of invention.
By the way, as has been pointed out "rebates" are pretty much a scam. There is a specific calculation as to how many people will actually manage to navigate the process (and the process generally has some stoppers built in for the unwary).
Given the hyper-competitive environment that the Pre is launching into, and the necessity of doing well out of the gate, I'd have to assume that Palm didn't think they could actually make enough money simply selling the Pre for $199, or they would have done so. They must know that $300 up front is going to kill a certain percentage of sales, so they may have felt they had no choice. We have to assume the numbers have been crunched, and the hope is that enough rebates will go unredeemed to make some kind of economic sense.
If I had to guess (given remarks from Palm re the "premium" nature of Pre not being price sensitive) the rebate thing was some kind of last minute compromise between losing money or losing sales.
But all of that bodes ill for any near term discounts to drive sales. If they can't sell the thing for $199 straight up when they more or less have to move a lot of units upon release, they're probably right at the edge of what's sustainable. Palm doesn't have the deep pocket luxury of MS to be able to sell things at a loss-- they need profits, and now.
Even if the Pre is a success, if it doesn't make much money for Palm they could still be in trouble.
I took a chance, viewed your post, and was pleasantly surprised.
Anyways, what you said is partially true. Companies do take a gamble and bet that some people won't follow through on their rebate forms. This is not the only reason why a company like Palm did this though. That's not a very reliable way of making money. If for every phone sold Palm temporarily keeps 100 bucks for eight weeks or so, how much money off interest do you think Palm can make? Its a way of making extra money at no cost to the customer. Not only that, but for 100 bucks, you know most people will fill the form out and send it in, and that's reliable market research.
I've gotten two phones from Sprint, each had a mail in rebate. The first one took 6-8 weeks, and the second one took less than a month. It was real easy to do.
Love the replaceable battery and the more than one app at a time feature.
Will the Pre come with a flash?
Sometime this year, but not at launch.
until the Sprint exclusive deal ends!
;-) You nailed the reason I think the Pre has a chance: it can go where you are, instead of forcing you to switch. Unlike the iPhone (of course, that may change next year).
I've been waiting for someone to point out a single killer feature on this phone for weeks now. Here we are, approaching launch, and I still haven't seen one. Let's see: it's fat and heavy, it's linked to Sprint who is widely derided as the worst US carrier, it has no apps (yet) and the company is short on cash.
It has some app's, and it can emulate -- meaning all the app's you had with your Palm OS you can still use (or most). I know it has Doc's to Go, a neat Fandago app (that when you buy a movie ticket, it will add that to your schedule on your phone and any calander your synced with via internet), a Pandora app I'm looking forward to, and all the Sprint exclusives such as Sprint TV Premier. Which, btw, can you watch live TV with your iPhone? :-) I can with my Pre.
However, since I can't get the iPhone with my Sprint, and you will be able to get a Web OS/Palm Pre with your AT&T, what will you say then? If rumors are true, AT&T is getting a Pal Eos that has the WebOS (although it seems to be a Centero replacement, not a powerhouse) but still, thats the reason the Pre has a chance. It will sell great with the Sprint network, the lack of supply in the start will annoy customers but also great buzz and demand (everyone will be talking about how they can't get a Pre -- which, just like the Wii, translated into "It's Hot, hot! Get it now while you still can!") and after all the Sprint people who wanted an iPhone, but didn't get the Instinct, and all the Palm lovers (who are on Sprint, which is a good mant), and just regular Sprint ppl get their hands on the Pre, I bet Sprint will announce the Pre being the best selling phone for their network. Then the next year the Pre moving to other networks and the same will happen.
That said, if there were no iPhone, I would consider a Pre.
Of course, I somewhat think the Pre would not be this good if the iPhone did not exist.
That is very true my friend.
The price is 299, why do these companies always put these stupid rebates, if I go and buy the phone in store, I'm not paying 199, I'll be paying 299.
I actually agree.
However, am I the only one who is excited about the Pre being at Wally? Think about it: Someone walks in, wanting a Pre/iPhone, willing to go to any carrier...who would they choose? The Wal-Mart employee doesn't get money for selling a certain product, so it's really up to what the employee himself/herself believe. And when the Pre goes to AT&T...it will be a bigger test for the Palm Pre.
I speculate that to charge at the same rate will require more power and generate more heat through inductive charging. I?m sure we?ll see tests between the two charging types for the device soon enough.
All phones and rechargers get hot. I don't see why this would get any hotter. It's all about the rate of charge.
The iPhone does multitask. At least get the facts straight.
No more than a feature phone does. I'm talking above true multitasking, with some form of task switcher, and applications actively running in the background. If I'm happily chatting away on Palringo, and I get an email, I have to shut Palringo down completely, logging me off, to go and read that email. Playing music in the background and polling for emails is something that even a very basic feature phone can do, so that's hardly a point to show off for the iPhone. The iPhone can't multitask at the minute because Apple can't figure out a way to prevent it from sucking loads of power or running out of memory. They'll get it eventually, with experience, as it can be done (as can be seen by other smartphone OSs).
No more than a feature phone does. I'm talking above true multitasking, with some form of task switcher, and applications actively running in the background. If I'm happily chatting away on Palringo, and I get an email, I have to shut Palringo down completely, logging me off, to go and read that email. Playing music in the background and polling for emails is something that even a very basic feature phone can do, so that's hardly a point to show off for the iPhone. The iPhone can't multitask at the minute because Apple can't figure out a way to prevent it from sucking loads of power or running out of memory. They'll get it eventually, with experience, as it can be done (as can be seen by other smartphone OSs).
It has that for Apple's own programs. They haven't allowed that for public use. They are supposedly thinking of ways to allow some limited version.
Really? What will the new iphone have that will "change the game"?
Well, it's really the new iPhone OS 3.0 that is the game changer. The new hardware itself will likely be only an incremental improvement. The current OS and development environment is already light years ahead of all of the other competitors, and the new enhancements to the API are going to make the AppStore even more of a discriminator.
Remember how Windows took off when the number of available programs began to dwarf those that were available for Mac OS? Well, it's happening again, except this time the iPhone OS is the clear leader.
Thompson
By making "features" accessible and even fun to use, the iPhone ushered in a new era of owners actually doing a lot of stuff with their phones. Comparisons to older systems with shitty browsers or shitty media players or difficult to access functionality don't hold up, for the simple reason that such features are unlikely to be used as heavily.
We've seen the stunning statistics for the iPhone's percentage of mobile web traffic. There's a reason for that. Add in an iPod and a bunch of apps that people actually use, all the time, and it becomes clear that Apple is obliged to weigh battery usage against far heavier utilization, on average, than the average "multitasking" phone-- which itself is unlikely to have particularly stellar battery life.
I really hope the Pre sells very well, which I doubt, just to get Apple and AT&T to improve their iPhone contract terms (3G limitations, unlocking, text plan... etc). Competition is good for everyone.
With almost every rebate I used there was a clause in the fine prints saying "One rebate per household".
Not to mention the slightly confusing particulars that must be followed exactly to the letter or they have grounds to deny.
I've mentioned this before, but I still marvel at how the "anything but the iPhone" crowd has so firmly fixated on "multitasking" as being the number one obvious hideous failing of the iPhone that everybody agrees is totally lame.
This after spending the last few years agreeing that the number one obvious hideous failing of the iPhone that everybody agrees is totally lame was cut and paste, or MMS, or the camera, or video, with "multitasking" coming in a distant fifth, if it got mentioned at all.
Down the memory hole. Multitasking it is. And when Apple implements that, there will be some phones out there with, I dunno, OLED screens or better haptic feedback, and the very same people will confidently assert that the iPhone is a toy for lacking them, as if it had always been common knowledge.
Because irrational iPhone hatred is an inexhaustible well of invention.
Once Apple iPhone paranoia has set in- be afraid, be very afraid!!
I think also that the battery life/multitasking/"everybody else does it" argument is skewed somewhat by how people use their iPhones.
By making "features" accessible and even fun to use, the iPhone ushered in a new era of owners actually doing a lot of stuff with their phones. Comparisons to older systems with shitty browsers or shitty media players or difficult to access functionality don't hold up, for the simple reason that such features are unlikely to be used as heavily.
We've seen the stunning statistics for the iPhone's percentage of mobile web traffic. There's a reason for that. Add in an iPod and a bunch of apps that people actually use, all the time, and it becomes clear that Apple is obliged to weigh battery usage against far heavier utilization, on average, than the average "multitasking" phone-- which itself is unlikely to have particularly stellar battery life.
Let's talk battery life once you start recording video on your iPhone.
Which would you rather have to drain that battery -video or multi Apps?
Not to mention the slightly confusing particulars that must be followed exactly to the letter or they have grounds to deny.
What particulars? You give them your name, phone number, email address, mailing address, and a copy of the sales receipt or packing slip (easily printable off sprint's website.)
It's far easier to fill out than you think dude. Here's the form: (keep in mind the first page is just showing how much of a rebate people can get with each phone.)
http://www.nextel.com/assets/pdfs/en...mir_060609.pdf
Let's talk battery life once you start recording video on your iPhone.
Which would you rather have to drain that battery -video or multi Apps?
Depends on who you talk to.
By the way, as has been pointed out "rebates" are pretty much a scam. There is a specific calculation as to how many people will actually manage to navigate the process (and the process generally has some stoppers built in for the unwary).
Given the hyper-competitive environment that the Pre is launching into, and the necessity of doing well out of the gate, I'd have to assume that Palm didn't think they could actually make enough money simply selling the Pre for $199, or they would have done so. They must know that $300 up front is going to kill a certain percentage of sales, so they may have felt they had no choice. We have to assume the numbers have been crunched, and the hope is that enough rebates will go unredeemed to make some kind of economic sense.
If I had to guess (given remarks from Palm re the "premium" nature of Pre not being price sensitive) the rebate thing was some kind of last minute compromise between losing money or losing sales.
But all of that bodes ill for any near term discounts to drive sales. If they can't sell the thing for $199 straight up when they more or less have to move a lot of units upon release, they're probably right at the edge of what's sustainable. Palm doesn't have the deep pocket luxury of MS to be able to sell things at a loss-- they need profits, and now.
Even if the Pre is a success, if it doesn't make much money for Palm they could still be in trouble.
This is dead on - Palm really need a lot more than $200 per phone (like iPhone did at launch before volumes went up, component prices came down and R&D was amortized). Sprint is the least able to subsidize a phone being in financial dire straits and iPhone sets the price point at $199. Rocks and hard places abound. Hence the rebate - which is a scam - even $100 rebates have a 30-50% redemption rate, smaller rebates usually well below 10%. The Pre had better be flawless or both companies are headed to the brand graveyard since both Palm and Sprint are likely operating on razor thin margins.
What particulars? You give them your name, phone number, email address, mailing address, and a copy of the sales receipt or packing slip (easily printable off sprint's website.)
It's far easier to fill out than you think dude. Here's the form: (keep in mind the first page is just showing how much of a rebate people can get with each phone.)
http://www.nextel.com/assets/pdfs/en...mir_060609.pdf
My rebate forms from Sprint weren't any more complex, but they still found reasons to deny some of them.
One annoying thing is that after two weeks or so, you get an e-mail telling you that your rebate is being processed, so you think everything is fine. Then six weeks later, you get one telling you that it's been denied.
They don't even tell you why. They just list a whole bunch of reasons, and say that it was one or more of them. I fought with reps about this, but it rarely helps.
Depends on who you talk to.
I for one prefer multi apps because theiPod touch could use it as well whereas the Touch has no camera (yet)- so no video. I don't like to constantly relaunch the remote APP and have to search for my AppleTV with the remote AP. It kind of ruins its benefits. This applies to others Apps as well.