As some of you have probably heard by now, The Palm Pre is being hailed as the "new hotness" across the mobile world. This is exactly the reaction Palm (and Sprint to a degree) needed to remain a competitor in the cell phone market.
For the unaware, Palm's stock have been in the garbage and talk about their new operating system was just that...talk. After many years of waiting they unleashed their new OS at CES this year to great impression.
Now that sometime has passed I thought I could better address my personal opinions on the Palm Pre and WebOS but first a quick rundown to update people on the Palm Pre:
The Palm Pre, which is set to be released "in the first half of '09, follows the trend set forth by the iPhone: Large touch screen with a intuitive user interface. While we have seen a few companies go after the iPhone market, many have failed to garner the same attention that Apple received when they announced the iPhone. This has now changed.
The Palm Pre is built off a new Operating System developed by Palm called WebOS. It gets its name because of a few reasons. The platform (which is a Linux core) relies heavily on what palm calls Synergy. They have partnered with companies such as Facebook, Google and Amazon to bring the internet to your phone without you even noticing.
For instance: During their press conference they announced that your contact list could be completely downloaded from Facebook (and the phone would smartly combine any duplicate information) but not only that, if your friend changed his/her profile picture, the new picture would be represented on your phone as well. It's this kind of "synergy" that Palm hopes will separate their product from Apple's.
The other reason Palm went with the name WebOS is the fact that any application built for the phone has to be programmed with web standards such as HTML and Javascript. While this is more than capable for most applications, there are some concerns how well this will work in terms of gaming and more intensive applications.
The Pre itself in my opinion looks great. Its a pebble shape with a slider form factor. That's right, the Pre has a slide out physical keyboard. The Pre retains the classic Palm Mute/Ringer switch as well as a power button and usb port for charging. I'll post additional pictures after this article.
So far the Palm Pre looks like it could be a real winner. The term "iPhone Killer" is getting old in my opinion but this phone certainly looks to have the same "ease of use" feeling of the iPhone with the workhorse abilities of a Windows Mobile device.
Keep checking in and as soon as I get a chance to use it I will give further impressions.
Until next time.
