| By this point, the fine folks over at engadget have pretty much blogged up the new Palm pre. I can’t help but get the feeling that this is rather Applish. We (and by we I mean engadget) waits anxiously for the press release while building up hype on their homepage. From inside, they blog live what’s going down with the occasional cell phone snapshot. The only thing that is missing is the black 3/4 lenth sleeved sweater and jeans… some of you know who I’m talking about. But I hear he didn’t show up this year either. I guess I’ve just been trained to how Apple does this sort of thing. |
The apple store goes down just before the press release then comes back up right after revealing the new products we’ve just heard about. I expected the same thing palm. However, I hit up palmone.com well after the press release had concluded and I was met with the Palm Treo Pro. That’s old news. There was nothing to satisfy my apetite for the new pre. Oh well, not everyone can be like Apple. But that’s not the only Apple vibe I got…
The Palm pre, like an iPhone?
Now keep in mind, I haven’t held one of these suckers yet (hence the blind review), But I’m trying to decide what palm is trying to do here. They seem pretty confident with this new design which resembles an iPhone when closed, a slide phone action, a large screened Centro when open, and still somehow a clamshell when opened. Get all that? Will it take off? Time will tell, I suppose. As far as the iPhone resemblance goes… there’s a touch screen with big icons, the status bar at the top looks striking similar to that of the iPhone, and lets not forget the dock at the bottom of the screen. The only thing that really sets it apart is the keyboard. It looks a lot like a centro keyboard, maybe a little bit bigger. But it doesn’t really matter. Any keyboard is going to be faster than trying to type on the iPhone’s touch screen. But wait… there’s more.
THIS JUST IN
The palm website is now up with pictures!!
Sexy
Okay, it does look nice. It’s curvy… not too big. I’m warming up to it. I’m thinking it’s going to be a hit.
WebOS
It looks like Palm is learning a bit from Apple’s success. The new OS, appropriately called, WebOS, is html/css driven. That means developing for it will be much easier than even… say the iPhone and its objective C. However, how easily will it be to get apps for it. Even blackberry has been trying to open up the development scene but so far with little success. What I’d like to see is Palm keeping this thing open. I think it’s smart to use common web technologies but take it one step further and don’t lock it down to only get apps through an “app store”.
Sprintel
Yes, they went with CDMA on this one, and Sprint!?!? I didn’t hear anything about a GSM version but if anyone has, let me know! Nevertheless, I’m pulling for Palm. Let’s be honest, they need a break. To me, they are the underdog of the PDA world, not afraid to take a risk even after past failures. And for that… props!
GSM (Added several hours later)
It’s looking there actually may be a GSM model released but it’s doubtful that we’ll see it in the U.S., at least for a while.
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