Ask99

I am so mad that they tell you NOW..if only I knew earlier

What d you all think...of those who have used a Palm and an Iphone

Palm gets back into the game with touchscreen Pre, WebOS : Ben Patterson : Yahoo! Tech

Palm was under serious pressure to hit a home run at CES today—and boy, did it deliver. Running Palm's gorgeous (if belated) new platform, dubbed WebOS, the touchscreen Pre could well be Palm's savior, and perhaps its biggest hit.So, as for the Pre itself (due on Sprint in the first half of this year, no pricing yet): It's got a big, 3.1-inch 480 by 320 touch display (yes, with multitouch and an accelerometer), weighs in at 4.8 ounces, and comes with a curved, slide-out keypad. Yes, it does Wi-Fi and 3G (EV-DO Rev. A, to be exact), as well as GPS (with turn-by-turn directions courtesy of TeleNav), stereo Bluetooth, 8GB of internal storage, a 3MP camera, a 3.5mm headset jack, and a removable battery.

But the key to the Pre is its OS, and WebOS—previously code-named "Nova"—is one of the hottest mobile platforms I've seen yet, rivaling both Android and Apple's iPhone OS.

At a glance, WebOS doesn't look all that different from the icon-driven, touch-based Android and iPhone platforms; you've got your main, wallpapered home screen, complete with a row of icons along the bottom for your standard e-mail, calendar, and calling features.

But Palm's done a few key things differently here, starting with the "gesture" area at the bottom or side of the screen (if you're, say, surfing the Web in landscape mode). For example, if you're browsing an individual contact in the Pre's address book, you can flick horizontally in the gesture area to go back to the contact list, or you can flick up for a translucent window shade of applications. Nice

TLK

I like the idea, but what about the hardware? Iphone is Iphone not just because of OS but also the physical phone is great, the feel, weight and design of Iphone is amazing.

BTW, what is the release date of WebOS based phones, do you know?

Ask99

the release is I think in 6 months.

I guess I cant compare with Iphone since I don't got any...did touch it though
Its just I like the Treo's features...the ease of switching from one application to another...I switched to a Blackberry...dont like it a whole lot...it took me days to figure out to change the vibrate and tone changes that I wanted...that is with the manual...Days

TLK

hahaa, I switched to Blackberry few weeks ago and my biggest challenge was to figure out the ring tone and vibrate stuff ..

that and screen lock but then I was impressed to learn that you can have different profile for when phone is in the holster and out of holster, and scree automatically gets locked as soon as you put the phone inside the holster.

Ask99

Oh God...that was horrible...The changing of the number of vibration and the tone...When I got it I was testing it and changed it to 2 vibrations...I was geting calls which was basically only 2 rings ...It was impossible to pick up te phone...hated it...I lived with it until I finally had enough...tried for many days..read the manual....checked all the info on phone...and finally finally after really getting into the nitty gritty stuff got the info...2 times edit ...pagal loge RIM people

TLK

But i really enjoy the Email Sync feature. I have three email accounts setup and get mail and can reply back to all three.

One thing maybe you can help me with, how do you dial a number if the number is given to you in the form of word.

For example, how will you dial 1-800-comcast from your blackberry

Ask99

let me see...Looks like you got to go to their website and ask this question...better yet get a home phone and figure it out

On the serious note I was reading abt the feature that takes in the oral words and convert it to texts and sends it to the phone...but I dont know if that woould be of any help in this situation

TLK

maybe I should ask that question separately then in this forum

And I also heard about that voice to text feature recently. Cant remember where I heard that

Ask99

Yes you should.

I read it in the help section in the phone

X2

as a former palm loyalist (yeah I rocked palm V back in 98 and then treo back in 02) happy to see them regain relevance, plus competition is good for consumers.

The question is on utlities. That is one thing I liked about palm then, many utilities out there. Apples app store really just stole a page from palm playbook. Let's see what happens next.

X2

...and I still dislike blackberry they need to design that clunker better

firenze

Why iphone is better:

1) Multi-Touch
2) Dedicated GPU
3) Ipod / Itunes Integration
4) OS X
5) Marketing (Apple Style)

Now nearly all of the technologies are copyrighted by Apple, so at least next 10 years we are not seeing any phone with Multi-Touch and that's the game changer..

Ask99

I hope they do well..I am not sure about the price too. The size used to be one thing I realliy disliked about Treo...this one according to them weight wise is lighter..I dont know about the size thugh.



I agree...I want to "accidently" drop my blackberry in water someday..

Do you like the Iphone better though?

Ask99

Have you used a Treo too before?

firenze

Yes ! its awful + sucks. Anyway who wanted to carry ipod + phone + exchange support .. separately

All in one is only: iphone !

TLK

I used Treo when it was manufactured by Handspring and not Palm. Later they merged I guess. It was a great leap over Apple's Newton (anyone remember that ), but at the end it was Apple who brought the concept of hand held computing to consumer with all the luxuries of touch screen and writing recognition ...

I know that non-apple loyalists can come and say that even apple stole the idea but its not just the idea, its how you execute that idea, and its hard to beat apple in the execution field.

X2

palm was the nly game in town for PDAs i mean the ipaq etc were nto able to compete. palm also did a decent job of a pda/phone combo

they started getting beaten up by RIM in that area but held their own for a while..

the iphone though was a game changer, they took concepts from many diff competitors and really executed them well..

TLK- btw first all paln stuff was made by palm, then they had handspring, and then i gues handspring went away.

Captain1

By "multi-touch" are you referring to "pinch" technology where you can zoom-in and zoom-out on a webpage (browser)? Palm Pre got that too

What do you mean by "dedicated GPU"?

Captain1

Palm bought Handspring.

TLK

Palm was first. Handspring was founded by two ex-executives of Palm and Treo was their brand. Palm then bought the company back.