Link of interest: the Palm Pre launches

[slitchfield]

As you'll have seen from other Internet news sources, Palm have launched their long-awaited next generation platform and flagship, the 'Pre' [pronounced pree]. Having been propped up again and again by venture capital money, we've all been wondering what was there to keep the investors excited, and now we know. It's non-Symbian but very much of interest, see the details and comment below.

Read on in the full article.

The pre has the OMAP3430 as its CPU with PowerVR SGX 530 embedded GPU as part of the SoC. This is the first non-Japanese mainstream implementation of OMAP3 in a handset. Nokia take note!

[dougalzene]

looks very nice but if you're going to implement a slide out keyboard why not do so in landscape?

[Hooligooner]

Is-a-nice!

Looks very nice. Let's hope their support is better than it has been in past; my wife's unlocked Centro (which is a very nice device BTW) still has the infamous "phone locks up when answering the phone" bug, which Palm seem unable or unwilling to do anything about...

[mattrad]

@dougalzene

Palm's CEO said they decided on vertical slider as they didn't see much difference in usage/speed compared to horizontal.

webOS looks like it implements some of the things on my wishlist - centralised contacts with presence, unified messaging (I don't care what medium the message is sent over) - wrapped up in a sexy UI.

Even though they are producing a GSM version, it probably won't be out in the UK for a while though :(

[Dynite]

UI looks nice.

Can see the Android influcence on the top bar and the OSX dock influence at the bottom.

Or at least, that's what occured to me.

[neilhoskins]

Multiple calendar layers sounds excellent. I really think that weak built-in PIM apps are going to lose Symbian market share.

[NickAnstee]

After the Palm LifeDrive I vowed never to get another Palm again, it crashed everytime you actually wanted to do anything with it other than switch it on, actually it even crashed just switching it on sometimes. The worst part of it though was that the device was useless until you got back to your PC and restored the backup which took ages. Then you had the mess of some file types you had to convert on a PC first and some you could open directly etc etc.

I am sure the new platform is entirely different though?

I am a Nokia fanboy and very happy with my E71 but the new Palm OS touch UI rocks - all the good stuff from the iPhone plus real multi-tasking.

There are some vids of it in action over MobileBurn.

[snoyt]

Finally some holistic approach to agenda, contacts and messaging... I can only hope that Nokia takes that approach too for the N97.

[Tzer2]

The new interface looks very nice, and the more competition in the smartphone world the better.

and the OSX dock influence at the bottom.

It reminded me of the buttons that used to be below the screen on classic Palm devices (and most other PDAs of the 1990s). Maybe OSX borrowed the look from Palm, and now Palm is taking it back? :-)

I suspect Psion were in there first with the old series 3 and it's app bar buttons below the screen? =)

[jah]

Palm seems to have re-invented itself. The Zen of Palm lives again!

We should not under estimate the significance of the Pre. Unlike Apple, Palm will have multiple devices to sell. I think the iPhone and the G1 look very unsexy now when compared to the Pre. If we get Office and Exhchange email sync then the Pre will be the first device to cover all the needs from entertainment to business (it has A2DP and a battery you can replace unlike the iPhone).

Well, one area where both the iPhone and the Google Android G1 fail miserably at is in battery life.
If the Pre gets the same - or worse - battery life then it might as well be DOA.