
Palm announces Palm Pre at CES - chaostheory
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/01/08/palm-announces-palm-pre/
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chops
I've been waiting for the magic bullet phone, and this is looking like it
could be it.

I've been (and still am) a long-time Palm user - most lately the 700p, then
the 755p all with Verizon, and though the OS is clunky and old, it works well
for what I like in a phone.

But this new one looks like it'll satisfy exactly what I'm looking for.

I've considered the iPhone, but I dismiss it because of its shady AppStore
policies.

I've considered the Blackberry Storm, but its on-screen keyboard doesn't
really allow enough space for a reasonable SSH session with vim.

I'd also like to at least try the G1 for a week, but T-Mobile's network is
weak at best.

I tried a Samsung HTC phone with Windows Mobile with a slide-out horizontal
keyboard early 2008 and found it practically unusable.

This phone looks like it's going to satisfy every major requirement I have,
especially if it comes to Verizon. It's absolutely imperative that my phone be
SSHable, and Vimmable, and doable out "in the sticks" when I'm on vacation.

And the slide-down keyboard looks amazing. You shouldn't have to use two hands
to type on a phone's keyboard.

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rufo
As a long-time Treo 700p user that switched to an iPhone at the beginning of
2008... I'm seriously impressed.

Palm seems to have actually looked at the iPhone interface, taken what it does
right to heart and attempted to improve upon Apple's rough edges. The fact
that it's not just another "mini desktop OS" ala Android or Windows Mobile,
but is actually built for mobile usage from the ground up is fantastic, and
few other players in the mobile market seem to have understood this.

That being said - I have no idea how you compete against the iPhone. Palm used
to have brand-recognition and goodwill, but I don't know how much of that is
left after grinding out chunky Treos and above-average Windows Mobile
smartphones for years. My gut feeling is at best, it's going to be a distant
second or third under the iPhone - but it seems equally likely it will have
middling sales and do nothing to rescue Palm as a company.

Time will tell, I suppose.

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jmtulloss
I'm a bit biased, but I think the platform is the thing that will have the
most impact. JavaScript/HTML/CSS makes porting web apps ridiculously easy, and
most of the apps I use these days are web apps.

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tptacek
That approach didn't play so well on the iPhone, pre-SDK.

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jmtulloss
That's because they were loaded off the internet and didn't have any access to
system services.

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tptacek
Good point.

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r11t
Wireless charging seems to be a pretty innovative feature of this phone.

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lallysingh
A nonugly smartphone with a keyboard and replaceable battery. I love palm.

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rbanffy
Just Wow.

I don't even care that much if it will run traditional PalmOS software...

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vondur
It seems that Palm wants to charge a lot more than the iPhone price point. It
had better be better than the iPhone to justify a higher price.

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bvttf
So is this the new palm software based on the BeOS?

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andrewf
No, it's a separate development effort.

The BeOS stuff became PalmOS 6, aka PalmOS Cobalt, which debuted in 2004 but
never made it onto a shipping device. That IP is owned by <http://www.access-
company.com/>, who purchased PalmSource (the OS company which Palm spun off
five years ago).

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bvttf
Wow, thanks! I wondered what'd actually happened with that.

