I got some exciting news today.
I, like so many others have been patiently(?) waiting for the Palm Pre to hit the stores. The buzz about the device has been tremendous since it was first seen at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this January. Critics have been saying that the Palm Pre can be the savior of the Company, which has been the victim of what was considered by critics to be poor management decisions while at the same time, competing manufacturers RIM and Apple made significant inroads to what had been Palm's dominance in the PDA and smartphone industry with the Blackberry and iPhone.
Now for the exciting news. What was once rumored that Palm's 20,000 plus software applications would not run on the new Web OS platform of the Pre turns out not to be the case. That means for millions of Palm loyalists, the programs we have come to know and depend upon will be available to use on the Pre. Software developers will come a-runnin' to develop applications for Pre that are currently iPhone favorites since the accelerometer technology on Pre will support them, and they won't be restricted by the same development constraints they have with Apple, at least if Palm's current position for software development holds true.
Yes, there will be an app for that.
I always mention in my iPhone workshops that Apple raised the bar for everyone with the device, its capabilities and many of the novel yet useful applications have heightened our expectations for our smartphones moving forward. I thank them for that. iPhone does not have everything I as a mobile professional need, however. The 3.0 software update will add some of the features other devices offer, such as MMS, but in my opinion there will still be some ground left uncovered. Palm Pre will cover that ground and much more, and personally I can't wait.
Information regarding the Palm Pre has been hard to find, but as the still undisclosed date becomes closer. information is coming to the surface. The information below is from a web article at Fox News, you may link here for the entire article.
"Like the rest of the smartphone bunch, it's got all the latest bells and whistles: audio and video playback, a standard 3.5-mm headphone jack, Wi-Fi, 3G, GPS, Bluetooth, push e-mail, a 3-megapixel camera. The QWERTY keyboard, similar to those on the Treo and Centro, slides out from the bottom. An accelerometer repositions the screen 360 degrees around, twice as far as the G1 or iPhone. The camera's got an LED flash, but there's no zoom or video-recording capability for now. An ambient light sensor automatically adjusts screen brightness. There are also a couple of things I wish the Pre had but doesn't — a memory-card slot for additional storage (it's got 8 GB built in), a stylus or trackball for when my fat fingers can't accurately select something. Palm won't narrow down the Pre's release date beyond "first half of 2009," but the Palm reps I met with said it'd be "soon." Rumors have Sprint store personnel already being trained in demonstrating it to customers, indicating a "street date" of late April or early May. The Palm people also said the purchase price would be "very competitve," which to me indicates about $200".
More great news. When I purchased my iPhone, I was taken aback by the limited phone plans offered by AT&T for the device, When you purchase an iPhone, there is no flexibility with plans as you might find with other phones. Pre will be first exclusively offered on Sprint, which has the "Everything Plan", where $100 gets you unlimited access to phone, internet, text messaging and email. It's the plan I currently have and although it's a few bucks more than the previous monthly plan I had on T-Mobile, it is certainly worth it to me. Palm Pre qualifies for the $100 plan, and anxious anticipation would be understating my feeling right now.
Is Palm Pre the iPhone killer? Perhaps. The iPhone is a cultural phenom and Apple's marketing strategy has been nothing short of masterful. As a consultant I get numerous emails daily from people asking me my opinion about various smartphones and features to consider. The iPhone questions lead the pack right now. There are many long-suffering Palm loyalists who truly hope Palm Pre is a hit, and will probably toss the Blackberries they were forced into by the void left by Palm over the last 18 months or so. No disrespect to the Blackberry, which I have really come to appreciate, but a Crackberry addict has nothing compared to a Palm Loyalist. So, until the day of great anticipation arrives, I will scour the earth (like Marsellus Wallace in "Pulp Fiction") for the latest developments to share.
I wish I had an app for this.
Comments(7)