Jun 05

Palm Exec: Pres SDK is Coming Soon

Posted in: palm pre, Smart Devices, Today's Chili

small-pre.jpg

One of the more frustrating aspects of the new Palm Pre is that most developers still haven’t been able to get hold of the Pre’s Mojo SDK for developing third party apps.  So far, it’s only been available to a short list of preferred partners.

Developers’ wait will end soon, Palm VP of Global Sales Dave Whalen said at a press event this morning. The public SDK will be coming “very close to launch,” he said, though he declined to add whether that meant within weeks of the phone’s launch on June 6th.

The Mojo SDK is unusual because it’s based on Web-page-design languages such as CSS and Javascript, rather than on traditional hardware programming languages such as C++. Whalen said at the event that the SDK’s design would let developers get up to speed very quickly.

For now, developers and users aiming at the Pre can check out the MotionApps Classic emulator, which runs many of the 30,000 existing PalmOS applications on the Pre. We have a full review on PCMag.com, and we’re keeping an application compatibility list here on appscout.com.

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Jun 05

Palm Pre hits eBay prior to official launch: just $900 and a fistful of shame

Posted in: cdma, palm, palm pre, PalmPre, pre, smartphone, Sprint, Today's Chili, webos

Look, if this were one of those elusive GSM Pres, we might be able to understand this. But seriously — $899.99 for a Palm Pre that you won’t get until launch day anyway? ‘Course, there are those certain folks that are born everyday, but we couldn’t caution you enough to steer clear here. After all, lines won’t even be a problem come tomorrow, right guys? On another note, how did some chap from Encino end up with five of these gems? White panel van delivery or something?

[Via GadgetVenue]

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Palm Pre hits eBay prior to official launch: just $900 and a fistful of shame originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 05

Palm Pre designers sit down to talk, reminisce and revel

Posted in: palm, palm pre, PalmPre, smartphone, Sprint, Today's Chili, webos

By now, you know precisely what the Palm Pre is capable of. You know the ins and outs of the user experience, and you’ve probably got a solid idea of whether or not you’ll be lined up come June 6th to claim one as your own. But here’s a side you probably haven’t heard: the voice of the design team. At long last, the masterminds behind Palm’s comeback phone have finally sat down to talk about the build process and what drove them to create both the Pre and webOS. Not surprisingly, most of it came from the desire to truly revolutionize the mobile experience, one that’s been generally poor for far too long. In separate (but equally awesome) interviews, Michelle Koh and a gaggle of design engineers (including Matias Duarte, Mike Bell, Peter Skillman and Michael Abbott) have opened up to spill their soul on rejuvenating the company with a single product. We won’t issue any spoilers here, but we’d argue that the read links below are required reading if you’re even remotely interested in this handset.

Read – Michelle Koh interview
Read – Design team interview

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Palm Pre designers sit down to talk, reminisce and revel originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 04

Confirmed: Palm Pre’s iTunes support is very, very hacky

Posted in: hack, itunes, palm, palm pre, PalmPre, pre, Today's Chili

Careful analysis of a Pre’s identity to its host system when connected via USB has now confirmed what’s been suspected for a few days now — the way it hooks to iTunes is very shady indeed. Turns out that the Pre identifies itself as an iPod when it’s in Media Sync mode, but only on the system’s mass storage interface; the root USB node still comes through as a Palm Pre, which Apple could easily tease out and block if it so chose. We’re still up in the air on whether Cupertino would actively move to do that, but regardless, you’ve got to give a tip of the ol’ hacker hat to Palm for its wild ways on this one.

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Confirmed: Palm Pre’s iTunes support is very, very hacky originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 04

Palm Pre Review Matrix: What Everybody’s Saying

Posted in: engadget, feature, palm, palm pre, pre, Today's Chili, top

When a bunch of reviews hit, it’s useful—and sometimes funny—to see how they echo each other, and how they differ.

In the Palm Pre reviews, nobody used the word “iPhone” as much as WSJ’s Walt Mossberg—he was a third more likely to use it than his colleagues David Pogue (NYT) and Ed Baig (USA Today) were, and he even lead with a discussion of it, before mentioning the Pre. Nobody wrote nearly as long as Josh at Engadget: His review is over 10,000 words; ours, the next longest, was just over 3,000. There was a lot of consensus here, though notable disharmony when it came to Sprint service and the Pre’s tight keyboard.

And nobody, but nobody, mastered the metaphor like Jason Chen. Except maybe David Pogue. Read on…

Of course, there’s no way to fit even all the main points into the review matrix, so if you want to go and check out the other reviews for yourself, damnit, you should!

*Apologies for not including Steven Levy’s piece from Wired. We saw it too late to include it in the mix.

• NYT – David Pogue
• USA Today – Ed Baig
• WSJ – Walt Mossberg
• Engadget – Josh Topolsky
• Gizmodo – Jason Chen

UPDATE: Check Out All These Other Palm Pre Reviews
• Time – Josh Quittner
• Newsweek – Dan Lyons
• PC Magazine – Sascha Segan
• Laptop – Mark Spoonauer
• SlashGear and MyPre – Vincent Nguyen
• PC World – Ginny Mies

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Jun 04

Where to Buy Your Palm Pre

Posted in: palm pre, Phones, Sprint, Today's Chili

palm_pre0604

The reviews are in and the consensus is that the Palm Pre is a stunning device and a worthy competitor to the iPhone, despite drawbacks such as a tiny keyboard, short battery life, and a sparsely-populated App Catalog.

The phone will be available exclusively on the Sprint network starting June 6 and is priced at $200, after a $100 mail-in rebate, when you commit to a two-year contract with Sprint.

If you want to buy one, here’s where to find the Palm Pre:

And if you buy from Best Buy or RadioShack you don’t have to mail in your rebate. At these stores, the rebate is instantly deducted at the register.

Sprint is trying to manage expectations around the Pre. Lynn Fox, a company spokesperson told the New York Times that Sprint doesn’t expect long lines at its stores because the Pre is no iPhone. “We are not like Apple,”  she said.

So how excited are you about the Palm Pre? Will you stand in line to get it? Vote in the poll below and let us know.

Will you be getting the Palm Pre?




  • Yes: I will be lining up this weekend for it
  • Yes: When my contract runs out
  • No: It isn’t perfect. The battery life sucks and, dude, where are the apps?
  • No: Palm What?
Created on Jun 4, 2009

View Results

Photo: Palm Pre (Jim Merithew/Wired.com)


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Jun 04

Video: Hands On With the Palm Pre

Posted in: hands-on, palm pre, Phones, Today's Chili, video

You’ve read the review. You’ve dived deep into the news articles. But what is the Palm Pre really like? Check out this video where we take a magnifying glass to Pre’s features and show you how the little device aggregates data from your online life, utilizes the WebOS to create “cards” and even syncs with iTunes. We even mention some of the phone’s pratfalls. Watch out for that borderline atrocious battery life!


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Jun 04

Sprint and Palm admit that they don’t expect wild lines for Pre

Posted in: palm pre, PalmPre, pre, smartphone, Sprint, Today's Chili, webos

It’s hard to say what changed between May 20th and today (any ideas, Verizon / AT&T?), but it seems that Sprint’s tone on the impending Pre launch has shifted just a bit. In a new report over at Bits, we’re told that both Sprint and Palm are informing the public to not expect lengthy lines on launch day. Naturally, both firms are spinning this like it’s a good thing, with Palm’s Lynn Fox proclaiming that “[Palm’s] not like Apple.” Mark Elliott, a spokesman for Sprint, even went so far as to say that it was actually attempting to “manage the exact opposite” of long lines, noting that Sprint wanted “each customer to get the experience” rather than being rushed in and out. Honestly, the spin factor was most obvious when he outed this line: “[Success] is not about having a line out the door; it’s about being able to treat each customer and make sure they’re happy with their decision.” Alrighty then.

[Image courtesy of IDR]

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Sprint and Palm admit that they don’t expect wild lines for Pre originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 04

In case you missed our Palm Pre review…

Posted in: palm, palm pre, PalmPre, pre, review, Today's Chili, webos

We wouldn’t want you to feel left out of the biggest blockbuster phone launch of the year (or at least this week), so be sure to hit up our behemoth Palm Pre review before all your friends do and start spouting off the spoilers. We heard that Shia LaBeouf totally dies at the end.

Continue on to read the full Palm Pre review

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In case you missed our Palm Pre review… originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 04

Mossberg Confirms, New iPhone Coming Next Week

Posted in: iPhone, palm pre, Smart Devices, Today's Chili

Apple_iPhone_Pics.jpgReading Walt Mossberg’s review of the Palm Pre is amusing, because Mossberg obviously has the next iPhone and can’t talk about it. Read between the lines: he’s straining to compare the Pre to the un-announced iPhone on his desk. He wants to do it so badly. But he can’t, because that would steal Apple’s thunder.

When you’re suffering from a case of NDA-itis that badly, it’s no surprise when things slip out around the edges. In this case, Mossberg confirmed that Apple will indeed release an iPhone next week. And did I mention that he probably has it?

“I’d note that the new iPhone to be unveiled next week will have lots of added features that could alter those calculations,” he writes.

Wording is important here. He couches many of his other iPhone predictions in “I expect” or “rumor” language: “I expect to see an iPhone with up to 32 gigabytes of memory, video recording, a higher-resolution camera, a compass, and greater operating speed. Plus, there are persistent rumors that Apple will announce at least one iPhone at a drastically lower price than $199.”

But the first sentence is declarative, definitive: that new iPhone is to be unveiled next week. Not “expected to” or “rumored to.” We’ll be there, on Monday morning at 10 AM PT, and we’ll be liveblogging.

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