Palm was under serious pressure to hit a home run at CES today—and boy, did it deliver. Running Palm's gorgeous (if belated) new platform, dubbed WebOS, the touchscreen Pre could well be Palm's savior, and perhaps its biggest hit. So, as for the Pre itself (due on Sprint in the first half of this year, no pricing yet): It's got a big, 3.1-inch 480 by 320 touch display (yes, with multitouch and an accelerometer), weighs in at 4.8 ounces, and comes with a curved, slide-out keypad. Yes, it does Wi-Fi and 3G (EV-DO Rev. A, to be exact), as well as GPS (with turn-by-turn directions courtesy of TeleNav), stereo Bluetooth, 8GB of internal storage, a 3MP camera, a 3.5mm headset jack, and a removable battery. But the key to the Pre is its OS, and WebOS—previously code-named "Nova"—is one of the hottest mobile platforms I've seen yet, rivaling both Android and Apple's iPhone OS. At a glance, WebOS doesn't look all that different from the icon-driven, touch-based Android and iPhone platforms; you've got your main, wallpapered home screen, complete with a row of icons along the bottom for your standard e-mail, calendar, and calling features. But Palm's done a few key things differently here, starting with the "gesture" area at the bottom or side of the screen (if you're, say, surfing the Web in landscape mode). For example, if you're browsing an individual contact in the Pre's address book, you can flick horizontally in the gesture area to go back to the contact list, or you can flick up for a translucent window shade of applications. Nice. More importantly, though, is WebOS's way of letting you handle and sort all your open applications like a deck of cards. If you're composing an e-mail, for example, you can flick up, call open a new application, and then return to your e-mail at any point. All open applications appear as windows (similar to the windows in the iPhone's Web browser), and you can flick back and forth, reorder them, and discard them at will. That's really cool, and it solves one of the biggest problems that's dogged the iPhone—namely, that its various applications are all walled off, making it difficult to easily switch from, say, the Web browser to the calendar and back again. WebOS also introduces a concept dubbed "Synergy," which all applications can continuously get info from the Web. The best example: WebOS's unified contact list, which seamlessly displays all your contacts and grab their e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and IM handles from Facebook, Gmail, Exchange, you name it. I'm also happy with Palm's integrated messaging interface, which combines IM and text chats into a single, threaded conversation. And then there's the WebOS "Dashboard": a flexible space at the bottom of the screen for calling, messaging, and appointment alerts. As you're working in other applications, you might see the first line of a text message or IM, or the Dashboard might open a bit bigger for a calendar alert, complete with "dismiss" and "snooze" options. When alerts appear, you're free to keep working in your open application, or you can go ahead and open the alert—and if you want to answer an IM, you can swipe to that "card" in WebOS, and then return to your previous application card. Great stuff. A few other interesting notes: When you're sitting at the Pre's main screen, you can just start typing on the QWERTY keypad to call up a universal search menu; you'll instantly see any matching contacts, or you can quickly jump to Web results from Google, Google Maps, and Wikipedia. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention "Touchstone," a little hockey puck of an accessory with a killer feature—wireless charging. Just place the Pre on top of the Touchstone device to power it up. Awesome. It's a lot to chew on—indeed, Palm's press conference is barely an hour old, and already I'm having the same feeling I did after the iPhone's debut two years ago. The Pre—and WebOS—look red-hot, and the two combined may well guarantee that Palm will live to fight another (and perhaps, many) days. So, initial thoughts? Like what you see? Will developers take to writing WebOS applications? Fire away. Note: Just to clear up any confusion—the Pre is not Palm's first touchscreen phone, not by a long shot. As any Treo fan knows, Palm has been making touchscreen smartphones for years, although earlier models worked better with a stylus than a fingertip. Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/blog/patterson/32611...BA7c6lxNDsSLpA5
you could make a faster, more reliable product, with a better batter life, with superior features and better implementation, that sells for less and has a cheaper contract... and it won't kill the iPhone due to Apple's marketting.
what the hell is the point of having all those extra features that cost EXTRA money? It's a PHONE for gods sake. not a television, not a computer. A PHONE. use it to call and text people. I'm happy with my little flip phone from Verizon with unlimited call and text.
hehe. want it with your name on it? i can do it when i get home from work. wearing rights, of course. and yes, it is a tad ugly.
nothing is a iPhone killer as of yet.. iPhone can do anything to be honest.. want night vision camera? u got it want FUN games and no tetris? u got it, they have a variety of godly games there are much more, but I honestly do think that iPhones can do everything
How many times have I heard the phrase "iPhone killler?" Tons. How many times have these "iPhone killers" actually done any damage to iPhone sales or popularity? None.
a lot of other phones can do everything an iphone can more or less... including tetris. the difference is marketing.