Palm has pulled a rabbit out of the hat! The new Palm OS powered Palm PRE was announced CES and its a KILLER. For the first time, we are referring to an iPhone competition as a real KILLER. Not only does it counter the iPhone; it also stands face up against the Blackberry’s, WOW – We are excited!
The Blackberry competition for the iPhone i.e. the STORM failed to accommodates a physical keyboard along with a touchscreen. Just like Nokia 5800, Omnia, the original HTC Touch and many others. This is where the PRE catches up. As it is the original Palm Treo’s were known for integrating a touchscreen with the QWERTY, such that you need not use the Stylus extensively. Here, PRE carries that forward thinking and goodness of PALM.
The PRE also features the accelerometer that adjusts the Portrait mode and Landscape mode exceptionally well.The PRE features touch features like flicking the screen to scroll or just close apps by pushing them out etc. By far this is better than what we have seen in competition to the iPhone. Also, as reported the PRE also lets you arrange and manage all running apps nicely. Pinch to zoom touch gesture is also present!
Proximity sensor and Light Sensor is also present, just like the iPhone. The Palm Pre also has a dedicated gesture area below the display.
The original Palm DNA is still alive with a ringer mute switch to toggle the silent mode. Something that the iPhone copied 😛
Mobile Internet is something Palm is again competing with the iPhone fiercely. The Palm Pre browser runs on WebKit and is smoother than the iPhone Safari. (Have you noticed that little lag while scrolling long pages on the iPhone?)
PRE features a 8GB internal memory with USB mass storage (uses microUSB port). Of course, GPS, Bluetooth AD2P and WiFi as well. Pretty well balanced against the iPhone. And did we mention you can Forward SMS messages? And also copy and paste! 😛
Even the camera is better at 3.1MP with a FLASH + Video Recording (Correction: Pre doesn’t support video recording yet). Battery is removable and the phone is light weight and much more compact/handy.
The Palm Pre runs a OMAP3430 processor which can give clock speeds in the range of 600MHz to 1000Mhz. While the iPhone processor is capable of delivering in the range of 600-667MHz,it is clocked down in the range of 400Mhz. The Palm PRE certainly has the horse power to compete the iPhone with its inherently responsive OS. For some reason, I always found Symbian and Windows Mobile slow. And that’s why we always appreciate the iPhone for its OS which is super fast (of course with a little cheating :P), but having used the Treo’s extensively, I can bet that Palm will match it. :P)
(Though the first impressions by engadget says “The touchscreen isn’t quite as responsive as the iPhone or G1 — or it could be the OS, there seems to be a tiny lag between a tap and an action — but it’s still pretty great” I suspect the device they looked at would be optimized a little more before hitting the markets later this year). Update: Ok as I read – engadget is playing with a prototype which will be refined before launch.
Where iPhone still rules:
1. Touch gestures. They have an incredible touch technology and a patented display technology backing it.
2. The AppStore! (Though PALM is coming up with a SDK, and its own appstore.)
3. Gaming Experience (No 3D gaming for Palm at the moment, but you never know …)
4. Pricing, Brand, Mass reach, and the iPod user base to market
More on the pictures and details on Palm PRE @ OnlyGizmos!