'Palm Pre' Smartphone Announced: WebOS, Wireless Charging, App Store

[Furrybeagle]

Disclaimer: yes, I actually do own an iPhone, and multiple Macs, so I’m not just some trolling Palm/PC/whatever user.

Palm, late to the party again...

Sounds similar to the hype then flop of the BB Storm.

Unlike the BB Storm and the G1, which were rushed, Palm is taking their time and trying to build the best phone they can (reminds me of Apple’s approach to the iPhone two years ago…).

$399? With contract? Sorry, Ed Colligan: your arrogance will kill off an otherwise pretty decent-looking product.

And Steve Jobs’ arrogance for making the original iPhone $499 is why it did so poorly.

There are so many critical things wrong with this device that it will never make it as a true iPhone competitor. Perhaps a formidable opponent for the G1, but the Pre is not for most of the people out there.

One second they are saying how easy it is to use, the lack of buttons on the interface unless they are necessary. Then they are showing off advanced gestures and advanced multitasking.

None of want to face it, but the "exclusive" $599 iPhone is gone. iPhone is the new RAZR. In order to effectively compete with the iPhone, the device must be ridiculously easy to use. Not for us computer junkies, but for everyone. The majority of iPhone users are computer illiterates. How am I going to explain to my non-nerd friends what in the hell those cards do? You have to remember that at the end of the day, most iPhone users are the same people that open up the "E" icon on their desktop, and maximize "the internet". These people have no need for multitasking, nor are they going to learn it. Why do you think Copy/Paste is not at the top of the list? They doesn't need it.

Not to mention that "Palm" has lots almost all brand power, and the fact that the device is rumored to cost $399. Before you say anything about the iPhones original price, don't forget that Steve quickly realized that was not a mass market price. That was when there was no competition for the iPhone. Most people will just go for the original, leaving the Pre to most hard core users.

That all said, I'm still intrigued.

Yet OS X is the same way… on the one hand it easy to use, and on the other hand I can dive into the command-line and do things Windows can’t hope to pull off without some significant additions. If you don’t understand gestures, don’t use it. And I would hardly call multi-tasking “advanced.” Most people manage to pull it off on their PCs, and I think the idea of cards a great way to visualize running applications.

Again, though, I don’t think its Palm’s intentions to make an iPhone killer as much as a really good (power-user) phone that appeals to a more niche market. Apple started out with the iPhone the same way, until they realized that if they dropped the price they could sell a *lot* of phones. And it’s not like they didn’t have any competition… Apple just turned out to be way ahead of the other smartphones on the market and capitalized upon the fact that people wanted something better. Maybe the Pre will follow the same path? Or maybe it will remain a power user phone, instead.

That all said, I'm also intrigued with how things will pan out.

well the 4 finger gestures were hardwere wise

No, they weren’t. The early 2008 MBPs and MBAs are capable of up to 12 finger gestures (in Linux, see here, after 2 minute mark), and AFAIK the MultiTouch controller on those Macs are no different from the ones on the Unibody MacBooks. I’ve hacked 4 finger gestures on my early 2008 MBP. There’s a whole thread on it in the forums.

dude! the MMS is old..lets rock with the e-mail. I know that people aren't ready for that, just like people werent ready to let go firewire..as a teen it was hard first but i got used to it

SMS is old too, yet they kept that around. And I know a lot of people who can’t receive email on their phones. MMS is all software. =/

Furthermore, they shouldn’t have ditched FireWire (which isn’t even “old”), but at least there was a hardware reason behind it.

Don MMS will never be on the iPhone that's a dream you should putto rest now. Out of all the features people want MMS is hardly a top tier feature and if it is for you get a razr or something.

Yet people keep b!tching for it, I keep receiving MMS messages I can’t open, and if they can get it on a RAZR, why can’t I get it on my iPhone? If Apple has time to get features like Street View working, why can’t they get MMS working? And didn’t someone a couple posts up from you just call the iPhone the new RAZR?

Furthermore, where are my turn-by-turn directions and copy-paste? And while we’re at it, I’d like a landscape SMS app without jailbreaking.

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Don't worry TLJ. I think he did.

The poster you quoted was the worst iPhone junkie I have seen in a while.

With the typical, "I don't like this product because it doesn't have ALL the things the iPhone has even though it does a lot of things better." type of post.

It seems that you have to either love the iPhone and bash everything else, or be flamed for liking something else and not the iPhone.

Thanks
You more than most on this forum are great at telling it like it is and pointing out Apple's faults and for that I am very appreciative of you.

I can't help thinking Palm is holding something back - that they will be making it possible to develop full native Pre apps just like one can with Android or the iPhone. It just seems like it will be a limiting factor otherwise.

From what I understand the apps are technically native since the entire OS is basically a web browser, where most everything is written in javascript, CSS, and html with just a few components made in other ways.
However, I think it's safe to assume that Palm is working on a way to get 3D graphics and things that aren't possible in a web environment working.

 

[JeffTL]

I don't see what the big deal with MMS is. 99% or more of pictures you send people can wait for them to get to their email. Especially in this age of laptops and Wi-Fi nearly everywhere, and enough smartphones around that they aren't a rarity by any means anymore, email receipt time is plenty short for anything but business-critical, and if you're receiving business critical JPEGs you should probably have an iPhone or BlackBerry instead of a RAZR. I can understand the appeal of SMS -- it's push and all you need is the phone number -- but MMS is a puzzle. Text messages are more useful for time critical applications.

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

I don't see what the big deal with MMS is. 99% or more of pictures you send people can wait for them to get to their email. Especially in this age of laptops and Wi-Fi nearly everywhere, and enough smartphones around that they aren't a rarity by any means anymore, email receipt time is plenty short for anything but business-critical, and if you're receiving business critical JPEGs you should probably have an iPhone or BlackBerry instead of a RAZR. I can understand the appeal of SMS -- it's push and all you need is the phone number -- but MMS is a puzzle. Text messages are more useful for time critical applications.

Why are you defending Apple for omitting a feature? Sure, maybe you don't need it, but many people like using it and it is a very basic feature.

How is it that MMS would somehow make the iPhone worse? Why would be it be soooo bad to put it in the phone?

 

[gnasher729]

iPhone = iPod Touch + Phone.
Pre = Nothing + Phone.

And it took them 18 months to copy the phone part.
And where is the developer kit? And do you think their "AppStore" will go beyond the "Apple has an AppStore, so we will have an AppStore" phase? With 10,000 applications on there?

On the iPhone, multi-tasking is turned off for a reason. That may be hard to grasp for some, but Apple learnt from Windows CE's problems and disabled multi-tasking. If Palm does it the other way round, that's their decision, but it is hard to bet against what Apple does and be right.

Watching Pre's presentation video it is clear that the UI is too close to iPhone's. We don't know how much "technology transfer" Palm got from this gurus migration, but it seems that not little. Also, I was wondering about those 200 patents around the iPhone that Steve mentioned Apple intended to protect. Is it the virtual keyboard one of them (that's why Pre/Android doesn't have one). Anything else from the UI? all pop-up and sliding menus are so iPhone's.

Since Apple was forced to pay $100 million to Creative because of a patent on "Using a menu system to choose songs on an iPod", I would think that some patent lawyers working for Apple now have a very, very good look at all of Apple's patents and try to claw back some of those $100 million or more.

 

[nickpro]

The first iPhone "killer" that actually looks promising! Nice!!

^^^^^^

EDIT: after watching the videos - WOW, apple is going to be playing catch-up (iphone OS-wise, interface, etc.) after the pre comes out.

 

[sushi]

iPhone = iPod Touch + Phone.
Pre = Nothing + Phone.

And it took them 18 months to copy the phone part.
And where is the developer kit? And do you think their "AppStore" will go beyond the "Apple has an AppStore, so we will have an AppStore" phase? With 10,000 applications on there?

On the iPhone, multi-tasking is turned off for a reason. That may be hard to grasp for some, but Apple learnt from Windows CE's problems and disabled multi-tasking. If Palm does it the other way round, that's their decision, but it is hard to bet against what Apple does and be right.

Good points!

It will be interesting to see how this develops. Palm has always been about simplicity. Their implementation of multi-tasking may work well.

 

[gnasher729]

There is a reason Palm's stock went up 40% today...

Did you know that at some point in 2001 PALM was worth about seven times as much as AAPL? And right now AAPL is worth about 100 times more than PALM?

 

[mac2thefuture]

Aesthetically it looks rather pleasing and the fact it contains certain basic items that the iphone lacks is good in my opinion. We ned competition and I thinks it will come from this unit.

 

[gnasher729]

Well at the moment *sigh* the world's most advanced os that is according to apple is OS X has yet to implement merging functionality when you copy a folder of the same name somewhere, like the linuxes and the dreadful vista, in its world's most advanced wisdom osx will just paste over one folder with the other and delete it instead of simple and so ENABLING option to just merge the two. Ah....apple....

Ahem... If I want to merge the contents of two folders, I open the first one, select all, copy, open the second one paste, no sweat. I can't remember ever doing that. Very likely because that was not what I wanted.

Obviously you know a lot more about user interface design than everyone at Apple, but maybe they asked themselves: How much do users lose if we don't allow this merging (as I said, about two seconds worth of work). How much do users lose if we allow this merging (it can be absolutely catastrophic if the user does it when they shouldn't have).

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

iPhone = iPod Touch + Phone.
Pre = Nothing + Phone.

And it took them 18 months to copy the phone part.
And where is the developer kit? And do you think their "AppStore" will go beyond the "Apple has an AppStore, so we will have an AppStore" phase? With 10,000 applications on there?

It's my understanding that Palm has quite the list of apps for their phones and PDAs. Also, Apple has forced developers to use Macs and write in cocoa. Palm was smart enough to create a web dev environment. There are many, many times as many web developers as there are those who know cocoa. So Palm already has a much larger potential developer market than Apple could ever dream of.

On the iPhone, multi-tasking is turned off for a reason. That may be hard to grasp for some, but Apple learnt from Windows CE's problems and disabled multi-tasking. If Palm does it the other way round, that's their decision, but it is hard to bet against what Apple does and be right.

Yeah... Apple is always right
Why don't we just wait and see if Palm made the wrong decision to allow multitasking before we say it's "the wrong decision." However, Judging from the videos online the phone is much, much more responsive than the iPhone and the interface doesn't have all those awful "you scrolled too far, let me load" glitches.

Did you know that at some point in 2001 PALM was worth about seven times as much as AAPL? And right now AAPL is worth about 100 times more than PALM?

How is that at all relevant to the topic at hand?

 

[Povilas]

Great features. Ugly design.

I wonder how long battery will last with all that multi-tasking. For me device must have great features, but design is also as important as features, so Pre will lose it to the next generation iPhone i'm going to buy. (No, i don't have an iPhone, try not to faint.)

 

[Povilas]

Disclaimer: yes, I actually do own an iPhone, and multiple Macs, so I’m not just some trolling Palm/PC/whatever user.




Unlike the BB Storm and the G1, which were rushed, Palm is taking their time and trying to build the best phone they can (reminds me of Apple’s approach to the iPhone two years ago…).



And Steve Jobs’ arrogance for making the original iPhone $499 is why it did so poorly.



Yet OS X is the same way… on the one hand it easy to use, and on the other hand I can dive into the command-line and do things Windows can’t hope to pull off without some significant additions. If you don’t understand gestures, don’t use it. And I would hardly call multi-tasking “advanced.” Most people manage to pull it off on their PCs, and I think the idea of cards a great way to visualize running applications.

Again, though, I don’t think its Palm’s intentions to make an iPhone killer as much as a really good (power-user) phone that appeals to a more niche market. Apple started out with the iPhone the same way, until they realized that if they dropped the price they could sell a *lot* of phones. And it’s not like they didn’t have any competition… Apple just turned out to be way ahead of the other smartphones on the market and capitalized upon the fact that people wanted something better. Maybe the Pre will follow the same path? Or maybe it will remain a power user phone, instead.

That all said, I'm also intrigued with how things will pan out.



No, they weren’t. The early 2008 MBPs and MBAs are capable of up to 12 finger gestures (in Linux, see here, after 2 minute mark), and AFAIK the MultiTouch controller on those Macs are no different from the ones on the Unibody MacBooks. I’ve hacked 4 finger gestures on my early 2008 MBP. There’s a whole thread on it in the forums.



SMS is old too, yet they kept that around. And I know a lot of people who can’t receive email on their phones. MMS is all software. =/

Furthermore, they shouldn’t have ditched FireWire (which isn’t even “old”), but at least there was a hardware reason behind it.



Yet people keep b!tching for it, I keep receiving MMS messages I can’t open, and if they can get it on a RAZR, why can’t I get it on my iPhone? If Apple has time to get features like Street View working, why can’t they get MMS working? And didn’t someone a couple posts up from you just call the iPhone the new RAZR?

Furthermore, where are my turn-by-turn directions and copy-paste? And while we’re at it, I’d like a landscape SMS app without jailbreaking.

MMS is a floppy disk drive, guess who got rid of it first. If Apple believes MMS is unnecessary you won't get it. Apple is only 2? year on mobile phone marker and you all already want everything.

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

MMS is a floppy disk drive, guess who got rid of it first. If Apple believes MMS is unnecessary you won't get it. Apple is only 2? year on mobile phone marker and you all already want everything.

If that's true, and SMS is even older than MMS then why did Apple keep SMS?

 

[codo]

MMS is a floppy disk drive, guess who got rid of it first. If Apple believes MMS is unnecessary you won't get it. Apple is only 2? year on mobile phone marker and you all already want everything.

Hardly. If Apple wany my £, they simply have to make something I want. I want MMS. Simple. I don't care how many years they've been doing this or that, it's a standard feature on a mobile phone I'm looking to purchase.

You are talking utter rubbish - its no "floppy disk drive" because people actually use it! It is still fit for purpose, if someone wants to send me a photo they have snapped on their phone... They use the inbuilt "send photo" feature in their phone, which is MMS. Their phone is a phone, not an email device. I want to be able to receive pictures from these people.

Some of you need to stop defending Apple until you are blue in the face. They have innovated, but it's not bloody perfect. There is still ALOT of room for improvement, accept that fact and move on.

My contract expires in 6 months, and I'm fully open to any phone on the market. I've got an iPod and several Macs so I'm not gagging for an iPhone... Apple - impress me.

 

[Furrybeagle]

It's my understanding that Palm has quite the list of apps for their phones and PDAs. Also, Apple has forced developers to use Macs and write in cocoa. Palm was smart enough to create a web dev environment. There are many, many times as many web developers as there are those who know cocoa. So Palm already has a much larger potential developer market than Apple could ever dream of.

Those apps that were developed for PalmOS don’t work on the Pre, though. Unless you knew that and were pointing out that there are already plenty of people developing for Palm devices, in which case never mind.

iPhone = iPod Touch + Phone.
Pre = Nothing + Phone.

And it took them 18 months to copy the phone part.

Oh please. That is a ridiculous comparison. First off, you have no idea how long it took Apple to develop the iPhone. Knowing Apple, they were probably working on it for much more than 18 months… more like years.

And contrary to what you believe, making a smartphone isn’t just “copying the phone part”. Creating an operating system and designing a piece of electronics takes a long time to pull off without being chock full of design flaws and bugs. The team that developed the BB Storm already had the current version of the BlackBerry OS at their disposal, and it still got slammed in reviews… that’s what you get for rushing. Just because the Pre is similar to the iPhone didn’t make WebOS any simpler to code or design. And yet it still manages to have at least some unique design ideas, like the multi-tasking cards (whether or not they work well has yet to be seen).

On the iPhone, multi-tasking is turned off for a reason. That may be hard to grasp for some, but Apple learnt from Windows CE's problems and disabled multi-tasking. If Palm does it the other way round, that's their decision, but it is hard to bet against what Apple does and be right.

Maybe it’s more stable and has a longer battery life, but I can’t run apps in the background. Even the remedial push framework we were promised for SEPTEMBER is still not here. People are coming up with hacks to get functionality that should just be there, and these hacks don’t just work. It doesn’t look good for Apple. But I suppose when you already have an abysmal battery life, adding anything like multi-tasking is just asking for trouble. I’d rather have more functionality and a bigger battery/phone than crippled functionality.

Windows CE tried to copy the desktop paradigm along with the Win32 API and (in true Microsoft fashion) failed miserably. Comparatively, last time I used a Palm PDA I was able to use multi-tasking (for something like, say, audio playback), and aside from slowing down the machine (mind you, this was unaccelerated mp3 playback on hardware from years ago) I didn’t notice any stability or functionality issues.

 

[Furrybeagle]

MMS is a floppy disk drive, guess who got rid of it first. If Apple believes MMS is unnecessary you won't get it. Apple is only 2? year on mobile phone marker and you all already want everything.

Yes, except that people actually use MMS. And why do people keep comparing it to hardware. It’s software, it’s not like it’s taking up space in a case or is made of physical parts. If EA can develop a mobile version of Spore in two weeks, why can’t Apple’s own developers add MMS to their phone? Even jailbreakers have hacked a version together.

IIRC even Apple offered a USB floppy drive with the original iMac. I’m sorry, but for everything Apple does right, they’re still wrong in this case.

Edit- Sorry for double posting

 

[curmi]

Yeah, I want MMS too.

It isn't that I use it much, but I know a lot of people (mainly relatives) who don't have iPhones and send around MMS messages all the time. And I can't view them.

Me saying "That's old technology" doesn't somehow magically let me receive MMS messages.

 

[Mackan]

so yet again, the iphone is still one of the only smart phones out there where you can't mms or copy paste. what the f#ck apple, just give us those damn features already.

Steve and Apple decide what is best for you. MMS and copy & paste is not good for you.

 

[SpaceMagic]

It looks really nice. Well done Palm. All competition is a good thing - it will keep Apple on its toes!

I've always felt a bit sorry for Palm... it's been lost for a long long time.

 

[cv01]

What the iPhone is missing and the Pre will have...

- gps navigation
- multitasking
- open sdk
- notifications
- wireless charger
- copy & paste
- bt tethering/ad2p
- usb mass storage
- microusb2
- mms
- 3mp cam with led flash
- nice cases/accessories available @ releasedate
- exchangable battery
- keyboard
- adobe flash

Crazy, they need to hurry up releasing that thing, looks like Palm is back!

 

[Povilas]

If that's true, and SMS is even older than MMS then why did Apple keep SMS?

Because SMS is what people send everyday, every second. MMS is a fail.

Hardly. If Apple wany my £, they simply have to make something I want. I want MMS. Simple. I don't care how many years they've been doing this or that, it's a standard feature on a mobile phone I'm looking to purchase.

You are talking utter rubbish - its no "floppy disk drive" because people actually use it! It is still fit for purpose, if someone wants to send me a photo they have snapped on their phone... They use the inbuilt "send photo" feature in their phone, which is MMS. Their phone is a phone, not an email device. I want to be able to receive pictures from these people.

Some of you need to stop defending Apple until you are blue in the face. They have innovated, but it's not bloody perfect. There is still ALOT of room for improvement, accept that fact and move on.

My contract expires in 6 months, and I'm fully open to any phone on the market. I've got an iPod and several Macs so I'm not gagging for an iPhone... Apple - impress me.

I said no MMS

 

[vvebsta]

Dang I watched the CES video where they demo it, and I think they have something with the cards and the dashboard on the bottom. I was starting to envision what Apple could do with the next gen iphone. They could make the dock more useful let you put more things in the dock and add dock hiding letting you tap the bottom of the screen to pull up the dock and switch between open apps. Multitasking here we come!

Things I like about the Pre:
- I LOVE that everything is live on this palm and that everything is always saved, no reloading your web page because you exited safari. Pandora will continue to play after you leave the app to do something else. All this makes for a happier customer experience.
- The dashboard on the bottom of the Pre is a stroke of genius. I hate that incoming text messages and alarms on the iphone completely obstruct everything your doing. I think resizing the app and displaying the notification below is EXCELLENT!
- I LOVE the idea of having all the info from my contacts off of facebook, google, mobileme, etc all present in the address book. I especially like the faces with the names. I think it would be cool to have the pictures update when the person updates their profile picture on facebook. Some people may find it annoying or confusing when a new picture appears, but I would love it.
- I also liked the Quicksilver-esque feature when you started typing something on the keyboard. That would be very handy and fast for looking up stuff.
- Also what cv01 said about the gps navigation, the bluetooth ad2p (bt stereo is high in my list!) and flash.

Things I don't like about the Pre:
- The whole bottom "gestures" section of the Pre, is a little strange to me, especially the holding down and dragging your finger to the screen to get the little "ribbon" of your top 5 apps. The not touching the screen while reading is a good idea but overall the idea seems awkward. Secondly, its completely unexplained and hidden from the new user. I would have no idea how to pull up the apps screen if I hadn't watched the video.
- As an iPhone user I definitely think the iphone touch screen keyboard blows everything out of the water. I can type much faster than on it than I could with an actual little smartphone button keyboard now that I'm used to it (and despite the hype the giant button on the blackberry storm sucks for speed typing).
- I don't like the idea of having your IMs and your text messages for a contact in one ongoing conversation. Unless there was a way to delete large sections of stuff. Usually text messages (at least for me) have fairly more important content than IMs. I know allot of time when I am IMing I'm shooting the breeze with people and just chatting. I wouldn't want to have to scroll through tons on jabbering to find something important like and address or an appointment time that was text to me. Maybe I'd like it if there were an option to sort out just the texts.

Overall
Its definitely good competition for the iPhone and hopefully pushing Apple to get stuff done like Copy and Paste, Push Notification, having multiple apps open. I am hoping for more ram, more processing power, and major battery life improvement in the next gen iPhone.

 

[vvebsta]

And I would hardly call multi-tasking “advanced.” Most people manage to pull it off on their PCs, and I think the idea of cards a great way to visualize running applications.

Cards doesn't seem like anything new. This may have been said already but, I think the card idea is pretty much what Apple did first with multiple pages in safari on the iPhone, and people seemed to pick that up really quick.

 

[Akira1980]

Let's put it this way, if we didn't have iPhone, I would be getting the Pre over anything in the market today.

Lucky for us though, we have the iPhone. But Pre is close second. This is a good news for us since the next iPhone update really need to step it up. Other companies are catching up to the iPhone finally.