Jan 10, 2009 2:40 pm US/Eastern
Palm Pre Pleasantly Suprises Experts
LAS VEGAS, Nev. (CNET) ―
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A new Palm Pre smartphone that runs on a new operating system called Palm webOS is displayed at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center Jan. 8, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nev..
Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Phew! Thursday was a long, action-packed day thanks to Palm. I'm just now getting to sit down and gather my thoughts on the Palm Pre and Palm Web OS announcements, and I have to confess that I went into the press conference with some skepticism.
It's no secret that Palm's been struggling to keep up with the competition and has come under heavy criticism for its lack of innovation and delays in releasing its new operating system. So can you blame me for thinking that Palm might disappoint again?
Well, I'm happy to say that I was wrong. My CNET News colleagues Ina Fried and Tom Krazit did a great job of covering the press conference and reporting on the basic specs of the Palm Pre, but I wanted to put my two cents in on what I think of the Pre and Palm Web OS and what kind of impact it will have on the market.
User Interface And OS
To me, the real highlight of the Pre is the user interface and OS. The UI reminded me a little of HTC's TouchFlo interface, with the various swiping gestures and cool animated motions, but Palm certainly put a fresh take on it. It's beautiful and smooth, and just plain cool. It's pretty evident that Palm put a lot of thought into the UI, as everything seamlessly works together to give you the best user experience and making the smartphone a really useful tool in your daily life.
The smartphone makes multitasking easy with the Deck of Cards
feature that lets you scroll through various applications and toggle
between them without having to open and close windows. It's slick, but
most importantly, it's easy. I also think Synergy is a huge player,
since it brings all your e-mail accounts and contact and calendar
information from various sources into one place. Again, it's about
simplicity and whether you're a consumer or business user, you have to
love that.
Design
To facilitate all this is a best-of-breed design. First, you've got a
multitouch screen that's absolutely sharp and brilliant in color with
its half-VGA (320x480) resolution. Not only can you use the screen to
navigate, there's a gesture area right below the display where you can
use finger swipes and touches to launch menus, toolbars, applications,
go back, or advance. Of course, my favorite part might be the slide-out
full QWERTY keyboard. I've made it no secret that I'm a huge texter and
need physical buttons, so I was more than delighted when I saw that the
smartphone had a keyboard. The Pre's keyboard is similar to that of the
Palm Treo Pro; the buttons are a little on the smaller side, but there
is a good amount of space between them to reduce any problems.
Again, looking at the design of the phone, I could tell time and
thought was spent on the device. The hardware feels solid and not as
plasticky as the Palm Centro. When you slide open the Pre, it has a
slight curve that makes it comfortable to hold against your cheek when
talking on the phone or even when typing out messages. Also, going back
to the touch screen, it felt responsive and--hooray!--on Web pages, you
can pinch the screen like the iPhone to easily zoom in and out of
pages.
Web
Speaking
of the Web, the Pre's browser is pretty outstanding. It renders sites
onscreen as you would see on your desktop, and quickly at that. When
asked about Flash, Palm said they were not commenting on that at this
point. We do know that there will be an app store, and Palm will
release an SDK to developers. The company reiterated throughout the
press conference that the Palm Web OS was built with developers in mind
and based on HTML, CSS, and Javascript, so that's all one really needs
to know to develop apps for the Pre and other Web OS devices.
Multimedia
As far as multimedia, the Palm Pre offers a 3-megapixel camera.
Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to snap any photos, but early
reports say that the quality is pretty good. Disappointingly, the
camera won't have video recording capabilities at this time, but those
could be added in the future. In terms of music, like the T-Mobile G1,
Palm has partnered with the Amazon Music Store, so you will be able to
purchase songs over the air from your Pre.
The Rest
The Palm Pre offers so much that I could write on it forever, but I'll
save some for when we actually get the unit in review. (By the way, I'm
not sure when that will be, but I don't expect it to be anytime soon. I
know. I'm sad, too.) Just to cover some quick specs: the Pre offers
integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 (with support for stereo Bluetooth),
EV-DO Rev. A, and GPS. There's 8GB of storage, a 3.5mm headphone jack,
and high-speed USB 2.0.
Outlook
The Palm Pre and Palm Web OS isn't necessarily going to revolutionize
the smartphone market, in that it doesn't offer any crazy, new
features, but it definitely brings a fresh look into the way you
interact with a device and how it organizes information. It also brings
innovation and life back to the struggling company and has certainly
set the tech world abuzz. Palm's undeniably taken a beating from the
media and general public, so it's good to see the company respond and
take action.
As much as the Pre is important to Palm, the smartphone will also be a
key player for Sprint. It needs an iconic phone to compete with the
likes o AT&T and the iPhone and Verizon Wireless and the BlackBerry
Storm, and Pre could certainly be the one to do this for Sprint.
Pricing will be key of course, but I suspect the Pre will be priced
competitively with the iPhone and Storm. I also think its chances of
overtaking the Storm are pretty high. It offers a better user
experience and has more consumer appeal. There are still some
unanswered questions about everything that will be offered with the
Pre; in my opinion, and I know these words are thrown around a lot, but
I think the Palm Pre could truly be the stiffest competition for the
iPhone.
Palm took a bit of a gamble announcing the product early at CES 2009
and not closer to its release date, which is expected some time during
the first half of 2009. Both Palm and Sprint will have to be careful to
deliver on their promise and not delay the phone. (You can pre-register
for Palm Pre at
Sprint's Web site.)
Still, the Palm Pre and Web OS has certainly gotten everyone excited
and I can't wait to get some quality hands-on time with the final
product. You can check out of
Palm Pre photo gallery and of course, we'll update you as we get more information, but for now, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Palm Pre and OS.
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