T-Mobile´s G1, HTC Touch HD, Blackberry Storm, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic… they are all hard contenders for the iPhone. Each have flaws and pluses, but none of them seem to have (still) beaten Apple´s prodigal son.
Now it´s time for Palm, not the lately stucked Palm we have seen, but the Palm that laid the foundation for PDA devices. Yes, after several difficulties, Palm is back to its origins of excellence and commitment, and the proof is here: Palm Pré, the One that will rule them all.
Over the last years Palm have lost supremacy of their traditional mobile operating system, PalmOS, to the point of finally adopting both Windows Mobile and PalmOS. The new Palm Pré is not only the release of an impressive hardware device, but the release of PalmOS heritage: the brand new WebOS, which IMHO has enough potential as to finally reclaim supremacy… but this is something the market will show us at the right moment.
Do you think I´m crazy? Look the video of the official Keynote and think if this is better GUI than iPhone Os or not…
So seems this covers all the flaws of the current competitors, and it does so with style, perfect responsiveness and great usability.
Of course WebOS will be accompanied of an online store for apps, which is a key feature on an emerging mobile OS, as it will have to fight against settled down OSes like Windows Mobile or Symbian, with a wide catalog of appplications.
Pré software acceptance (even if it smells to quality) it´s still unknown, but right now there is something sure: Pré hardware is impressive. (You will find at the bottom the hardware features extracted from Palm website.)
The main reason is its core: the new Texas Instruments OMAP3430 (Pré is the first device mounting it), which delivers brute power at minimal power consumption, and I daresay its the best embedded processor right now for a mobile device. This gem is based in the acclaimed ARM Cortex-A8 platform, which is years away on all terms of iPhone´s ARM 11-based architecture from Samsung (S3C6400).
Note that Pré also have ambient light, accelerometer, and proximity sensors, GPS, 8 Gb, integrates with Exchange (one of G1´s flaws), can be used as a laptop modem (one of iPhone´s flaws), supports copy and paste as well as multi-tasking (both iPhone flaws) … so it have all the cards to win the game.
With great power, comes great responsibility control, so Pré display provides a responsive multi-tactile screen, with improved gestures on the bottom part of it. They´ve taken only the best of iPhone´s screen features (two-finger zooming) and G1´s (straight-forward acessibility to apps) and mixed it up nicely. And to fit all preferences, Pré has an sliding full QWERTY keyboard!
These are the official features extracted from the OMAP34xx product family brochure (pdf):
•IVA™ 2+ (image, video, audio) accelerator enables multi-standard (MPEG4,
WMV9, RealVideo, H.263, H.264) encode/decode at D1 (720 x 480 pixels) 30 fps
• OpenGL ES2.0 compliant
• Integrated image signal processor (ISP) enables up to 12 megapixels still image capture
• Flexible system support
• Composite and S-video TV output
• XGA (1024×768 pixels), 16M-color (24-bit definition) display support
• MIPI and FlatLink™ 3G-compliant serial display, parallel display support
• High-speed USB 2.0 On-The-Go (OTG) support
• HLOS support for customizable interface
• Optimized power-management companion chip: TWL5030
Note the awesome graphics power, including up to 12 Mpx cameras (Pré mount a 3 Mpx one, which beats iPhone and G1), XGA resolution, accelerated video… shall you search deeply on IMAP3430 delights, you will find that it includes a PoverVR SGX, better than the MBX iPhone ships with, so Pré might able to do better games than the great games we have seen on iPhone.
If all this weren´t enough… Pré comes with a wireless charger !!! Yes, you read fine. It´s name: Palm TouchStone. This technology has been available for a while but nobody is still selling it. Look at the impressive Pré dock charger, which several Palm employees call “the puck”, for its resemblance to the hockey discs.
Finally, these are the hardware features extracted from Palm website, and some photos of the rest of Palm Pré views:
- Network specs: 3G EVDO Rev A
- Display: 3.1-inch touch screen with a vibrant 24-bit color 320×480 resolution HVGA display
- Keyboard: Physical QWERTY keyboard
- Email: Microsoft Outlook® email with Microsoft® Direct Push Technology POP3/IMAP (Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, etc).
- Messaging: Integrated IM, SMS, and MMS
- GPS: Built-in GPS
- Digital camera: 3 megapixel camera with LED flash and extended depth of field
- Sensors: Ambient light, accelerometer, and proximity
- Audio Formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, AMR, QCELP, WAV
- Video Formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264
- Image Formats: GIF, Animated GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP
- Wireless connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g with WPA, WPA2, 802.1X authentication, Bluetooth® 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support
- Memory: 8GB of user storage (~7.4GB user available)
- USB mass storage support
- Phone as laptop modem
- Bluetooth tethering
- Connector: MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
- Headphone jack: 3.5mm stereo
- Palm® Touchstone™ charging dock
- Width: 59.5mm (2.3 inches)
- Height: 100.5mm (3.9 inches)
- Thickness: 16.95mm (0.67 inches)
- Weight: 135 grams (4.76 ounces)
