The Palm Pre

Not a whole lot is known about the Palm Pre yet. It was just announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (2009), so not a lot of details are available.Here is what I've dug up so far:

It has a touchscreen that seems to work well. It supports gestures for zooming in on webpages and photos. However, it does not have an onscreen keyboard. It uses a physical keyboard for all text input. I find this to be a bit strange if you are holding the Palm Pre sideways or if you don't want to slide out the keyboard.

It will be available on Sprint. I'm guessing it's a timed exclusive and Palm will eventually push similar phones on Verizon and AT&T. It uses Sprint's advanced broadband quality wireless network to deliver WiFi like speeds similar to the iPhone 3G.

For typing in emails or text messages, a physical keyboard is going to be a big boon for some people. I personally don't mind the iPhone's virtual keyboard, but then again I don't write a lot of emails on the go.

One area where the Palm Pre might really shine is in taking photos. It has a 3 megapixel camera, which is far superior to the camera on the iPhone. As much as people use their phones for taking candid shots, this could be a big step up for all those quality facebook/myspace galleries.

Like most modern phones the Palm Pre has a modern web browser, which means it will surf the web the same way the iPhone does. The accelerometer built into the device lets you do landscape or vertical browsing, which is cool, but only having text input from the physical keyboard kind of lesses the coolness of the landscape mode.

Right now the pricing details for the Palm Pre haven't be finalized, but here is what we know so far. Early speculation put the Palm Pre in the $399 range, but that seems to be a quasi-true rumor.

Apparently the $399 is for the phone without a contract, which in reality isn't a bad deal. It sounds like the price of the phone will likely end up in the $200-250 range. I'm thinking that the Palm Pre will retail for $199 like the iPhone 3G does now.

Of course, this means it will likely force users into a $20-30/month data plan as part of the phone contract. I'm not a fan of the overpriced data plans that carriers are pimping these days, but as a consumer we don't have much choice in the matter if we want to really be able to use these cool phones.

Not more than a day or two after the launch of the Palm Pre, Sprint already started. What is likely to be a fairly significant advertising campaign for their new phone. I've already seen ads posted on sites like Engadget, and they are likely to be found on other major gadget sites. Also, Sprint has launched a prelaunch site for the phone that is pretty slim on information, but does allow you to sign up to get further updates directly from Sprint regarding pricing, launch dates, etc.

Ironically, if you really want a lot of information about the Palm Pre phone, you could just read this page, because I'm doing my best to get all information in one place and have no need to hide information from you. Sprint on the other hand is trying to build buzz and anticipation for their phone, so makes sense that they are withholding information on the main site.

Palm is actually doing a good job of providing the relevant information about the new phone on their website. It's actually a very well designed and beautiful site for the Palm Pre smartphone. I'm really enjoying it. they provide a lot of information, real details, and it really fits all the styling that I've seen thus far for the phone. Kudos to Palm, they really seem to be nailing this device.

With any major phone announcement, it important to consider what kind of software it can run, just like with your computer. The iPhone was really the first phone to allow people to develop mobilephone software quickly and inexpensively for a mass-market consumer device. Now that's just the standard. competing devices running software such as the Google android platform allow for completely open source free to the world development that has fostered some very interesting innovations.

With the announcement of the Palm Pre's new WebOS, there is also a slew of other interesting announcements such as the software development kit for the phone and how that will be handled. Early reports from developers who have had a chance to work with the SDK for the pre indicate that the phone is going to be extremely capable. Not just hardware wise, but software wise as well.

The Palm Pre's WebOS seems appropriately named. The software that runs on top of it is built using a modern web-like rapid application development kit they call Mojo MVC. It uses a combination of HTML 5, JSON, and other modern(developer friendly) technologies to deliver a software platform that could rival that of the iPhone.

From what I understand, Palm is working to be very much the opposite of how Apple has treated its developer partners. While Apple tries to restrict your capabilities as much as possible, Palm is trying to open up as much of their phone as they can. This is a much different approach that is much more akin to what Google is doing than what Apple is. in fact, it sounds like Palm is doing everything that they can to be as developer friendly as possible as a way to become the anti-iPhone in the eyes of developers.

Everything I've seen thus far points to the possibility that Palm might just have a winner on their hands. It's too early to tell yet, but if developers like the tools of barehanded. They tend to write better software. If this phone has the best software, people will flock to it in droves. Look out Apple, you've got some real competition.