Hasta La Gadget!

CES 2009 brought us a new player in the smartphone upper-echelon. Let’s drill down and see how the Palm Pre compares with the iPhone and Android’s G1.

1. Multitouch touchscreen/gesture control: All three are capacitive, only the Pre and iPhone have multitouch. The Pre’s glowy little “gesture area” has dropped the touchable real estate all the way down tto the bottom of the phone, which is great for being able to navigate with one hand and not interfere with the screen at all. The wavey dock you bring up from the bottom looks awesome, but can you use it out of the box without a second thought or page through the manual? That’s my question. Advantage: iPhone/Pre tossup.

2. Multitasking: One of the beefiest of our beefs with the iPhone SDK is its insistence on Apps running one at a time. The G1’s notifications drawer was definitely a step in the right direction, but the Pre’s interface is the first smartphone OS that was built with multitasking as a core design element. Resembling the Xbox’s old Blades, or a less-jarring OS X Expose even, the Pre’s “Cards” interface always places you in the context of every app running for fast switching, and notifications from other apps don’t pull you away completely from the task at hand. Multitasking is hugely important on a phone, and it’s a good sign that Palm recognizes. Advantage: Pre

3. Hardware: Adrian says:

While the hardware is definitely high quality, I’m not entirely blown away by the design. It looks really nice, and original, but it’s a little too cutesy in shape and kind of reminds me of an oversized pebble. A slightly larger screen could have definitely been put to good use, and I really don’t like the black space on the sides of the screen.

A phone with a built-in QWERTY still hasn’t touched the iPhone in terms of sleekness and pure sex. And it might still be a while. Advantage: iPhone

4. Development platform: The Pre’s “Web OS” sure sounds nice—all developers need to know is JavaScript, HTML and CSS? Sounds good in theory, but building a mobile app will never be as easy as cranking out a new theme for your Tumblr. Palm’s stressing ease of development, though, so it will be interesting to see how it stacks up against Apple’s solid, familiar-to-devs OS X-based SDK and Android’s fully open source approach. Advantage: Pre? If it’s straight-up JavaScript, that’s a lot of programmers ready to go. Note: we had iPhone here before, but we’ve switched with a qualification. Developer community still goes to iPhone for volume.

5. Web Integration: The Pre subtly integrates the internet into the phone at every opportunity, and it’s awesome. Contacts get pulled in from Facebook, Gmail, IM and and scanned for dupes; the messaging app shows your last several emails, IMs and SMS with that contact in a single window. Really, really smart stuff. Advantage: Pre

6. App Store/developer community: A smartphone is only as good as the software it runs. On the Pre, Palm is still keeping application delivery details like pricing behind the curtain, but they did say the app delivery will be entirely handled by the phone (without a desktop app), which is a shame. They’re saying that they’re not going to duplicate Apple’s Hobbesian app approval black box mistake, which Android has also hasn’t fallen for, but there will be an approval process based on “security and stability.” But as we know with Android, a dev community needs enough devices in the hands of consumers to reach critical mass, which the Pre will have to match. Advantage: iPhone, even with the black box, but Android and Pre’s more open stances are reassuring.

7. Wireless charger: We’ve seen wireless charger tech for years at CES, but it’s taken this long for a major consumer gadget to come bundled with its own wireless charger in the box. Whoops, it’s not in the box, sold separately for unknown $$. But still: Bravo. Advantage: Pre

8. The Network: Dan Hesse, Sprint’s CEO, gave our coast-to-coast 3G test a shout out in his press conference. Of course he did: Sprint won (in download speeds). Sprint was the only major carrier without a powerful, hype-catching smartphone choice, and now they have one. The Pre is a data-centric phone with a network we’ve proven to be strong in a large swatch of the country—that’s a good combo. But would you switch to Sprint for the Pre? Ugh. Advantage: Not cut and dry for everyone, but we stand by our numbers: Sprint is the best 3G network in our tests.

9. Physical keyboard: It’s preference, but one held by a large swathe of the gadget buying public: physical QWERTY keypads are still the mainstream input of choice. Touch is getting better all the time, but a lot of people still want physical keyboards. But better yet is the ability to choose; unfortunately, the Pre doesn’t have a soft onscreen keyboard, and its slide-out is the same meh QWERTY from the Treo Pro. Advantage: It’s preference, but on me, the iPhone’s soft keyboard can’t be beat.

10. Camera: The Pre has an LED Flash for its 3MP camera, something both the iPhone and G1 lack. Flash cellphone photos are ugly, but for a lot of people, they’re good enough. So credit for throwing it in. Advantage: Pre

11. Battery: Apple’s still an outlier with their non-removable battery; like the G1’s, the Pre’s comes out for a spare swap too. We’ve heard Apple’s reasons for this a million times, we know the drill, but removable batteries will never stop being handy. Advantage: Pre

12. Copy & Paste: Yep, Pre’s got it. iPhone still doesn’t. Advantage: Pre/G1

13. Browser: All three use a browser based on WebKit, which has become the standard for the mobile web. We couldn’t put it through our Mobile Browser Battlemodo ringer obviously, but what we saw looked great, and it’s the only other mobile browser besides the iPhone that supports multitouch zooming. Advantage: iPhone/Pre

So there you have it. We’re excited. Are you?

Hey, I just had some time to play with the Palm Pre, maybe the most important handset to be announced in two years, and here’s what it was like to use it. Updates coming.

The Palm Pre is a lot smaller than I initially thought it would be. A good size comparison would be an iPod classic with a big hard drive. In terms of thickness, it’s definitely not as thin as the iPhone, or even the bold, but it’s an acceptable size considering it’s a slider.

The Pre’s Web OS UI and and UX really looks great. After watching (and using) for 20 minutes, It rarely looked (or felt) unresponsive, choppy, or laggy and it’s clear a lot of thought was put into the design, especially with regard to how the phone would be used with fingers, as opposed to a stylus or d-pad

The Card system is really a great way to keep your information in front of you and know what you’re working on. When you launch an app, you can drag it onto your phone desktop to create a new card, then when you’re finished with a card for a specific app, closing it is as simple as flicking the card upwards.

The input technology that doesn’t involve the screen is also top notch. Palm created the gesture bar, which is the black surface under the screen, because they found it was too hard to control a touchscreen phone with one hand, especially when trying to reach the upper part of the screen. The Gesture Bar streamlines some of the navigation so you can use the phone on the go.

There’s also an accelrometer that works with apps like the web browser and photo viewer, which automatically rotates the screen depending on its orientation. It’s the same as what’s on many other phones, but it’s worth noting that the accelerometer works quite well.

If you’re working in a specific app, you can drag your finger up from the Gesture Bar to the screen, hold it for a second, and the wave dock will appear, making it easy to quick launch another app. The trackball, which feels similar to that of the G1 and Blackberry phones, provides another quick way to get around the Web OS interface.

There’s also the keyboard. It pretty much looks and feels the same as previous Palm keyboards of late, which isn’t spectacular, but it works well enough. When asked why they opted to go with the vertically oriented slide out keyboard, Palm had two main reasons—they didn’t see much less of a difference in effectiveness when compared to a horizontal slider, and found that more people messaged holding the phone vertically. Second, they said there aren’t really any other smartphones with a vertical QWERTY slider, so it makes the phone more recognizable.

While the hardware is definitely high quality, I’m not entirely blown away by the design. It looks really nice, and original, but it’s a little too cutesy in shape and kind of reminds me of an oversized pebble. A slightly larger screen could have definitely been put to good use, and I really don’t like the black space on the side’s of the screen.

I think this phone’s biggest appeal will be the central role the internet plays in the OS. The way it pulls data from various web services, and melds it into its own framework is top notch. I think being able to text, and gChat and send IMs over AIM all from the same window is such a benefit to the user to not have to switch windows for 3 different apps for messaging. And obviously, you won’t be talking to someone on a bunch of different messengers at once, but over a period of a week, you might have convos over these different services, and it’s good to keep track of all these interactions in one place.

The browser is also a far cry from Blazer that was on the Treo’s Garnet OS. The new browser is built on top of Webkit, just like the Android and iPhone browsers, and renders full pages in under 10 seconds. The zoom and drag/pan functionality is very much like the other browsers, both in operation and feel. There was no glitchiness and the browser was extremely responsive.

I also love the way you can search for something on your phone, and then shoot that same query up to Google or Wikipedia without having to launch your web browser. It’s another way the internet has subtly worked its way into the phone without being constricted to a specific app or browser.

The design influence of the iPhone OS is definitely apparent in Web OS. The App dock that sits at the bottom of the home screen is definitely a page out of the iPhones playbook, and for good reason—it works well. The design of the menus such as the contacts list take that same simple approach of not showing more than you absolutely see on any one page, something the iPhone perfected.

The screen is beautiful, and it really shows when looking at photos, which are so bright and colorful, I’d almost say it looks sharper than any other phone.

The camera takes really beautiful photos as well. Even in lighting that wasn’t super bright, colors came out rich, and though a little grainy, it didn’t suffer the same washed out, sandy look that other camera phones generate. This is also due in part to some image post processing that takes place behind the scenes of the camera app.

As far as video recording goes, it’s not available on the Pre for now, but it’s something Palm is looking at for future upgrades. I find this slightly disappointing, because Palm is touting this as an internet phone, and user generated video is a very big part of what’s going on in the online world. A feature where you could live stream or auto upload to YouTube seems like an idea that fits in with the Pre philosophy. I think this absolutely has to be added in the next year.

The Apps and SDK for Web OS i think will be promising. Palm will make the SDK available to anyone to use, but there will be an App Store which will be accessible on the phone only and an approval process for apps. Palm says there are always exceptions, but they will not play the role of Big Brother so much when it comes to apps. What they are mostly concerned with are the security and stability of the apps. Making sure there aren’t apps that crash or provide holes for their phones to be hacked. They also say they will work close with select partners on app and give them access to deeper areas of the OS that are not available in the SDK.

Like Android, there is an Amazon music store app that looks and smells very similar to that on the G1. It lets you preview songs, as well as download from the same screen.

When I asked Palm about flash on the Pre, they said it wasn’t something they were talking about for now. But Dan Lyons over at Newsweek claims that the phone will run flash on it.

It also has a few features not found on the iPhone, which include copy and paste and MMS messaging, something hardcore iPhone users have been clamoring for since its introduction.

I asked Palm if the Pre and the Web OS platform will be married to the Sprint service, and they said that Web OS-based products will eventually be available on other carriers, but they have no specific announcements on that.

[More Updates will come in this post very shortly. Stay tuned, and check out the rest of our Palm Pre coverage here.]

From an earlier set of impressions:

It transcends what a mobile device should feel like. It’s smooth but also tough enough to feel like you’re using something that’s going to last. I really like how the back of the slider is reflective like an iPod touch (might be good for the ladies and their make-up too).

The display looks richer in color gamut than any handset I’ve ever seen (almost like a mini Cinema Display). The GUI seems fluid enough so that it’s not overtly cheesy and plasticky looking (transitions are still rough around the edges sometimes and not always as snappy as you’d like.) Speakerphone seems more than adequate for being Monophonic (totally useable for listening to music/calls.)

This is just like OS X, Expose, Spaces, Spotlight—uninterrupted multitasking. Even the cal is like iCal—on the desktop OS. When you get a call, the OS puts what you’re doing down at the bottom, instead of dumping it like on iPhone. [Palm Pre Details; Palm Pre’s wireless charger; Palm Pre Full Coverage on Gizmodo]

[Correction: I passed these notes off to a colleague who stated that I, Brian Lam, got to handle the phone in an earlier version of this post. That was an error in communications in the heat of the moment, and I’ve updated it to say that the impressions were from a friend. We will have more photos and impressions in a bit from our own experience with the phone. The post is now under Adrian Covert’s byline, because the new hands on impressions are his.]

The new bad-ass Palm Pre phone charges wirelessly. That is, it’s got a magnetic induction charger—like a toothbrush—called the Touchstone. More info during our hands-on. [Palm Pre Details]

In a few moments, we will see the fruits of the Palm team’s many months of labor, and the Palm fan’s answer to what the Post-Treo revolution looks like. Updates.

It’s a lot for them to live up to, but we’re resetting our expectations and approaching the lagging company’s new model line with an open mind.

We’re guessing we’ll see a brand new phone, perhaps running the new OS, but who knows. What we do know so far is that Palm is rumored to announce a touchscreen slider running the Nova operating system, that according to descriptions, is squarish in appearance.

Palm first announced plans to release a new operating system back in May 2007, but they’ve delayed it so many times, I’m halfway convinced this event is just to announce they’re delaying it again.

10:40 AM: This event has a more epic feel than the average CES press conference. I’ve already seen a lot of recognizable faces around here, including the omnipresent Robert Scoble. As someone said nearby, “it feels Apple-y.”

10:45 AM: I’m getting the feeling that Palm is trying to seduce us with the romantic mood lighting, mellow music, and abundance of Vitamin Water. Is this their attempt at a reality distortion field?

10:55 AM: Not a lot going on right now, but Palm’s product marketing manager is talking big game about the upcoming announcements (in vague terms, of course). She says we should be pleased.

11:01 AM: Event starting. Jon Rubenstein is talking about how he used to work at Apple. Then he packed up and moved to Mexico.

11:04 AM: Rubenstein says that mobile devices are the next wave of technology. This might be the obvious statement of the day.

11:06 AM: Jon Rubenstein has just brought Palm CEO Ed Colligan up to the stage.

11:07 AM: Colligan says lifestyle and usability is more important to Palm than raw features and “buttons”. Talking about the instant on capability of the original Palm Pilot as an example. He wants to try and make the technology “invisible”.

“Mobile is in our DNA. We don’t do computers, we don’t do refrigerators or set top boxes. We do mobile.”

11:08 AM: It’s interesting how Palm has to resell itself today, but is reaching back to its roots. In contrast, Jobs believes that looking back means being crushed.

11:10 AM: Colligan says he has a new twist on the same product. Talking about how we use so many websites and our data is all over the place. Smartphones let you browse that information, but they don’t make it easy to access it. Simplicity seems to be the overarching theme here.

Colligan suggests it would be cool if we could seamlessly have our images from Facebook show up in the same place as our email and calendars.

11:14 AM: The whole new Palm OS is built with developers in mind. Developing apps, Colligan claims, is so easy.

New device coming now!! It’s called the Palm Pre.

Palm Pre “will help you live your life more effectively.” The design looks like an oblong rounded rectangle.

It has a 3.1 inch 480×320 multitouch screen that slides vertically to reveal a keyboard. The slider action is curved, sort of like the SE Xperia X1. It also has 3MP Camera, LED Flash, EVDO rev.A, WiFi, bluetooth, a gesture area on the screen for navigation and use, a removable battery, micro USB, USB mass storage support,and a 3.5mm Headphone Jack.

There’s a gesture zone between the screen and button that lets you carry out pre-programmed actions with a few finger movements.

11:21 AM: The new UI is called Web OS, and it’s designed to be so simple, you only need to focus on the information and content you want, not the OS itself.

They’re demoing the Web OS UI right now. It looks a really responsive, aesthetically appealing design. It has alot of the same flick navigation as the iPhone and it looks really polished. The UI has a quick view that organizes data into “Cards” that can be rotated with your finger and it shuffles from card to card.

The phone itself reminds me of the Treo 680 in shape, except all there is on the front is a screen and a button. The main UI has a gesture zone, that lets you perform certain

One of the big new features is something called Synergy, which can pull contacts from all your sites (Facebook, Gmail, AIM, etc…), gather and organize them into one coherent list on the Palm Pre. It has dupe checking so you don’t have the same contacts listed multiple times. It does the same thing for calendar events.

Web OS has been designed to work with your finger. All the demos are being done without a keyboard and stylus. Synergy can easily go from checking email, to scheduling meetings in a calendar, to IMing someone in your contact list.

Threaded SMS is still in Web OS, and you can even send IMs from the same window.

You can use the keyboard to do more than send texts and emails. The Pre has a predictive text feature that will bring up menus and apps based on what you type. It will cross reference your input with what you have on your phone, and it presents the info almost like search results. You can even take your input string and look for google results. They call it Universal search.

The web browser has a big URL bar at the top that can also be used to enter a search query. It renders full pages. While demoing the web browser with SF Gate, the presenter became fixated with a link that read “The Joy of Vole Sex.” The crowd got a rise from that.

In other news, web pages render pretty quick, and navigation doesn’t seem choppy at all.

The music UI is now on display. he just went from one “card” to the music UI, selected a song, then quickly switched back to his email screen. The app switching looks really really fluid, and lets you keep all your data in front of you, so you don’t lose track of what you’re doing.

When you’re working in an app, the apps adapt when notifications (texts, emails, missed calls, etc.) pop on on the screen, so you dont get completely sidetracked. When writing a sticky note, for example, the sticky takes up the whole screen, but when you get a notification, the sticky morphs into half size, and the notification takes up the bottom half.

Rubenstein is back on stage, to introduce a wireless, inductive charger for the Palm Pre. It’s called Touchstone. It looks like a hockey puck.

Colligan is back on stage now and says its the “one phone you can use for your entire life and really enjoy it.”

Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint is now on stage. He says Sprint will carry the Pre, and says it will feel comfortable for first time users, and really likes how easily you can move between apps.

Hesse just gave us a shout out on stage! He’s talking about our big 3G Coast to Coast test. He was also sure to mention how well Sprint fared in that test. He then talked business nonsense for a few minutes and disappeared. But he did mention that the Pre will be a good fit on the Sprint network.

The Palm Pre will be available first half 2009, and will have partners such as Facebook, Pandora, Google and others providing content and apps for the phone.

They’re touting how easy app development for Web OS is. You basically just need to know JavaScript, HTML and CSS.

And that’s the end of the event. To recap, we saw the Palm Pre, Web OS, and a movement to integrate the internet seamlessly with these two new products.

There are loads of games in the App Store for the iPhone/iPod Touch, but if you want to save money and space, which are the true essentials? Here are our 10 must-haves.

While there are enough good games in the App Store to fill up multiple pages on your iPhone or iPod Touch, you don’t need that many, nor do you need to spend that much money. If you focus on filling certain genres with single games and not doubling up on multiples, you can make yourself the ultimate “games page” of apps. Here’s the list.

Touchgrind: This skateboarding game was designed from the ground up for the multi-touch iPhone platform, and it shows. The completely unique control method of using your fingers as legs on a skateboard immediately makes sense and is totally addicting. As you get better, the new skateboards that are unlocked with high scores continually feel just within your grasp. $4.99

Galcon: Galcon is a space-based strategy game that delivers super-short games, which is perfect for the iPhone. Rather than getting dragged into games you won’t finish, Galcon lets you play a bunch of one or two minute games. You can refine your strategy with each game, and every time you lose it’s just too easy to try again. Lite: Free; Pro: $4.99

Fieldrunners: Many call this the best game in the App Store, and it’s tough to argue with them. A tower defense game with a super-high degree of polish, this is the definition of addicting. Basically, you want to set up weapons to stop soldiers for storming your towers. You earn more cash for more weapons for every guy you stop, and you lose health for every guy who gets through. And then you can’t. Stop. Playing it. $4.99

Line Rider iRide: You’ve probably played Line Rider on the internet in some form or another: you draw a bunch of lines, then a little man on a sled gets tossed down your makeshift track. The controls are simple and work great on a touchscreen, and you can play in short bursts, saving your maps for later. It’s intuitive enough that there’s virtually no learning curve, but you can spend countless hours working on your masterpiece of sledding physics. $2.99

Uno: You know Uno, you love Uno. But here’s a version that involves no pesky shuffling. If you’re more of a poker fan you probably went for Texas Hold ‘Em, which is cool, but if you ask me, Uno is a much more fun card game. After all, what fun is poker when you’re gambling with pretend money? $5.99

Rolando: This is a wonderful, cartoonish platformer that uses simple controls that are easy to learn but are used in increasingly complicated and challenging ways as the game progresses. You control a series of little balls—Rolandos—by tilting your iPhone and swiping up to jump. But you can control many of them at once, and there are also obstacles and switches you can manipulate. It’s got a high degree of polish and will suck you in from the first level. $9.99

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D: This is our favorite racing game, despite not being fully sold on the accelerometer controls of iPhone racing games. But because of that, you really only need one, and this should be it. Great graphics, good stability and plenty of variety add up to make this the essential iPhone racing game. $5.99

SimCity: This port of SimCity 3000 is stunning. This is no gimped version of SimCity, dumbed down for a touchscreen. It’s the full game, complete with advisers and all the building types you can handle, with intuitive touchscreen controls. Finally, you can build the epic metropolis of your dreams whenever you sit down and have a few minutes to kill. $9.99

Touch Hockey: FS5: Air Hockey on the iPhone is just like regular air hockey, minus the high probability of getting one of your fingers smashed with the puck. Simply put your finger on the mallet and try to score some goals. It’s also fun to play with two people, with each person holding an end of the iPhone. And hey, no quarters required. Lite: Free; Pro: $1.99

Trism: This is essentially a modified version of Bejeweled, and if you know that game then you know why you’d want it on your iPhone. It’s a classic puzzle game, one that makes the transition to the touchscreen beautifully. You’re trying to get three pieces of the same color together to make them disappear, and depending on how you’re holding your iPhone, the resulting tumble of pieces will happen in a different direction. It adds a new level of strategy to the game while retaining what made the original so awesome. $2.99

[A Bonus 11th game, From Brian: I’d like to add Motion X Poker Quest to the list for its amazing use of the accelerometer and in game physics used to roll the dice, as well as beautiful graphics and sounds and addicting game play. ]