The Palm Pre
Written on 1/11/2009 02:10:00 PM by poison_ivy
When I got a press release of the Palm Pre, I held off reporting about it thinking that it was just another Palm Centro. Well, after taking a look at the press release and the videos of the Palm Pre in action, I hurriedly whipped out my laptop because iPhone may be looking at another iPhone killer. I've previously said that the Blackberry Storm may be the real iPhone killer because of its clickthrough interface but the Palm Pre just bumped the Blackberry Storm and has challenged the almighty iPhone.
Design
Like the MotoSurf A3100, Palm dished the bar design and opted for a more rounded design and only one hardware button Unlike the MotoSurf however, Palm decided to bring in a 3.1 inch touch screen for the Palm Pre. Still a little small by today's standards but it's still big enough. Plus what's great about the screen is its not QVGA, it's an HVGA, 24 bit color 320x480 screen. What I didn't like about the Palm Pre's design is the bezel on the screen. They could have made it more touch friendly by removing the bezel. Anyways, the Palm Pre is not an all touch screen phone. There's a slide out QWERTY keypad which reminds you of the keypad on the Centro. Like the Xperia X1, the Palm Pre has a slight arc when you slide-out the keypad.
Features and Performance
I'm actually pretty excited about the Palm Pre. From the product videos, you can see that Palm's new OS, the WebOS is pretty good. Unlike the iPhone, the Palm Pre is designed for multi tasking, similar to the panels on Xperia, you can launch different “cards” or applications. Closing this applications is as simple as “throwing away” these cards. Though from the videos, the interface is not as fast as the iPhone, maybe because of the added animations, it's still faster than other phones and rarely lags. It is a multi-touch phone because you can also do the panning in and out of photos similar to the iPhone. Whether it can do the copy and paste feature that can be done on windows mobile phones, we have yet to see.
The processor is pretty fast. The Palm Pre runs the latest OMAP processor which according to some, can be clocked around 600-1000MHz. Hard to believe but if it can handle multi-tasking and animated icons without a lot of hiccups, then 600-1000MHz processing power is not very far-fetched.
As for the camera, the Palm Pre has a 3 megapixel camera with LED Flash. I'm not too familiar with camera features about according to Palm Pre's press release, it has an “extended depth of field”, whatever that is.
Multimedia wise, I have always thought of Palm as strictly for business users so I don't know whether it can compete with the iPhone in terms of audio playback quality but it does support Bluetooth A2DP profile and it can probably handle decent video playback thanks to its HVGA screen. The Palm Pre has a 3.5mm headset jack and an 8GB internal memory though I couldn't find anything on Palm's website whether it supports microSD card slot.
The web browser is capable of rendering web pages very fast but again, I don't know whether it supports flash or YouTube directly on its browser. The Palm Pre has a variety of messaging features including Outlook EAS, POP3, IMAP, MMS, and IM.
Other features on the Palm Pre includes EVDO REV, WiFi, GPS, microUSB connection, accelerometer, light sensor, and a proximity sensor that disables the screen when you put the Palm Pre to your ear. The Palm Pre is also the first mobile phone to support wireless inductive charging, meaning you can charge your phone without wires by just placing the Palm Pre on the Palm Touchstone charging dock.
Outlook and Availability
I've never been a fan of Palm especially since their botched plan to create a sort of laptop companion for smartphones which they subsequently scrapped. I forgot the name of that said project. Anyways, you have to give them credit for the Palm Pre, it looks like they're going to make a turnaround, and I though they were due for bankruptcy. Though I hate the design (hopefully, they'll be able to release more decent hardware in the near future), the webOS is definitely something to look forward to. The Palm Pre has definitely jumped on top of my list of next mobile phones to be bought but unless you're in the US, we have to wait for the second half of 2009 to be able to acquire the Palm Pre since it would be sold exclusively to Sprint first for the whole first half of 2009. Bummer.
Design
Like the MotoSurf A3100, Palm dished the bar design and opted for a more rounded design and only one hardware button Unlike the MotoSurf however, Palm decided to bring in a 3.1 inch touch screen for the Palm Pre. Still a little small by today's standards but it's still big enough. Plus what's great about the screen is its not QVGA, it's an HVGA, 24 bit color 320x480 screen. What I didn't like about the Palm Pre's design is the bezel on the screen. They could have made it more touch friendly by removing the bezel. Anyways, the Palm Pre is not an all touch screen phone. There's a slide out QWERTY keypad which reminds you of the keypad on the Centro. Like the Xperia X1, the Palm Pre has a slight arc when you slide-out the keypad.
Features and Performance
I'm actually pretty excited about the Palm Pre. From the product videos, you can see that Palm's new OS, the WebOS is pretty good. Unlike the iPhone, the Palm Pre is designed for multi tasking, similar to the panels on Xperia, you can launch different “cards” or applications. Closing this applications is as simple as “throwing away” these cards. Though from the videos, the interface is not as fast as the iPhone, maybe because of the added animations, it's still faster than other phones and rarely lags. It is a multi-touch phone because you can also do the panning in and out of photos similar to the iPhone. Whether it can do the copy and paste feature that can be done on windows mobile phones, we have yet to see.
The processor is pretty fast. The Palm Pre runs the latest OMAP processor which according to some, can be clocked around 600-1000MHz. Hard to believe but if it can handle multi-tasking and animated icons without a lot of hiccups, then 600-1000MHz processing power is not very far-fetched.
As for the camera, the Palm Pre has a 3 megapixel camera with LED Flash. I'm not too familiar with camera features about according to Palm Pre's press release, it has an “extended depth of field”, whatever that is.
Multimedia wise, I have always thought of Palm as strictly for business users so I don't know whether it can compete with the iPhone in terms of audio playback quality but it does support Bluetooth A2DP profile and it can probably handle decent video playback thanks to its HVGA screen. The Palm Pre has a 3.5mm headset jack and an 8GB internal memory though I couldn't find anything on Palm's website whether it supports microSD card slot.
The web browser is capable of rendering web pages very fast but again, I don't know whether it supports flash or YouTube directly on its browser. The Palm Pre has a variety of messaging features including Outlook EAS, POP3, IMAP, MMS, and IM.
Other features on the Palm Pre includes EVDO REV, WiFi, GPS, microUSB connection, accelerometer, light sensor, and a proximity sensor that disables the screen when you put the Palm Pre to your ear. The Palm Pre is also the first mobile phone to support wireless inductive charging, meaning you can charge your phone without wires by just placing the Palm Pre on the Palm Touchstone charging dock.
Outlook and Availability
I've never been a fan of Palm especially since their botched plan to create a sort of laptop companion for smartphones which they subsequently scrapped. I forgot the name of that said project. Anyways, you have to give them credit for the Palm Pre, it looks like they're going to make a turnaround, and I though they were due for bankruptcy. Though I hate the design (hopefully, they'll be able to release more decent hardware in the near future), the webOS is definitely something to look forward to. The Palm Pre has definitely jumped on top of my list of next mobile phones to be bought but unless you're in the US, we have to wait for the second half of 2009 to be able to acquire the Palm Pre since it would be sold exclusively to Sprint first for the whole first half of 2009. Bummer.
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I'm also excited about this product. I'll be switching to Sprint the moment this baby is released.
I didn't know Palm is back in the PDA business. LOL. But this does look yummy.
I am waiting to get this phone gets released from http://www.puremobile.com/Palm/Palm-Pre-Black-GSM-Phone/ they say it coming soon