By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
A few weeks ago, it seemed that Palm as a company and most importantly, as a mobile platform, was done for. In the world of Blackberries, iPhones, Windows Mobile phones and Symbian smartphones — Palm, which could be credited fro creating the smartphone, was just played out, moribund and lost.
Its operating system harkened back to the pre-millenium it showed. The inability to multi-task, the flaky Wi-Fi implementation and and it got to the point where the best OS to run on a Palm Treo was Windows Mobile. For loyal Palm users everywhere, this was an outrage and they began to seek the comforts of alternative smartphones. Now Palm is back and in surprising fashion has unveiled the Palm Pre and a new OS.
More impressions on the Palm Pre after the break
The Palm Pre, which was designed and developed in part by Apple engineers responsible for the iPod and which were subsequently hired by Palm brings a lot of features and functions as a camera phone, a portable media player, a mobile Internet client and relies heavily on Palm’s own WebOS.
Great Revelation
The Palm Pre seems to be a strong contender and may just be the device that puts Palm back on the map and we are happy about this since Palm has always been a nostalgic favorite of ours since the days of the Palm III and even as they acquired Handspring to absorb the very first Treo, the last product that really kept Palm in business.
The Pre integrates multi-touch features and a full tactile keyboard, which is a powerful statement to make in the wake of products like the Blackberry Storm which is trying to offer multi-touch to an established thumb-board market. The Pre, its seems, is giving its users all options. Right now it will only be available in the US Sprint network — a 3G GSM model is in the works but no news on when it will be available to networks outside of the US. Canadian users will likely see a version on Bell or Telus networks.
Innovation In Effect
What do you get with the Pre? A 3.1 inch 24-bit color screen, a 3-megapixel camera with an LED Flash, 8GB internal memory, EV-DO, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It also features an innovative wireless charging system that uses electromagnetic induction system which uses a ‘Touchtstone’ dock that charges the device upon contact.
The new OS is based on the cloud and doesn’t seem to have a desktop equivalent, it should be interesting to see it in action. For now we have to content ourselves with the reviews from the US. We hope Palm has a few more of these in the works, maybe even a non-smartphone version for those who are clamoring for a PDA with Wi-Fi. We’re watching with great excitement as this story develops further.