Hasta La Gadget!

With the Pre just a few months from launch, Palm is wasting no time courting developers — the one group that is arguably most critical to the new phone’s success.

So far, it looks like developers are taking the bait.

Developing for Palm’s new webOS looks like it will be much easier than other mobile platforms,
says Chris Sepulveda, vice president of business development for
Pivotal Labs. "You can do some great things with the iPhone, but if you
are not a Mac developer you have to learn something
new," he says. "And there are lot more web developers out there than
Mac guys."

Sepulveda’s comment is focused on what sets webOs apart from other mobile environments: It only requires programmers to know JavaScript and CSS, which are simpler and easier to learn than other mobile programming languages. That’s in
contrast to iPhone’s Objective C based Software Developers Kit (SDK) or
Android’s Java based tools.

Sepulveda was one of a group of developers who attended a teleconference tutorial that Palm hosted on Wednesday, with help from O’Reilly Media, to introduce the webOS operating system. Palm CTO Mitch Allen led the conference call, which focused on the technical details of how to create applications for the Pre. During the call, Allen tried to drive home the point about how easy development would be. Allen
demonstrated a quick way to build an application even as developers who
had logged on wondered if it would be really as easy as shown.

"Palm alluded a lot to what makes the platform and web elements attractive to developers," says Ian McFarland, vice-president of technology for Pivotal Labs."The cost of learning is very low and people can use existing JavaScript libraries to speed up their development process."

Building developer following is important because it is developers who will create specialized, third-party software for the
device. That in turn, believe handset makers, will make their phones more attractive to customers — a strategy which appears to have worked very well for Apple’s iPhone. In addition to the developer teleconference, Palm has also courted developers by offering early access to its software development kit (SDK) to a few key companies.

So far it looks like the company has been successful in drumming up interest for webOS. "We had a huge crowd," tweeted O’Reilly Media referring to Wednesday’s online tutorial. However, neither O’Reilly nor Palm said exactly how many developers attended the teleconference.

Palm introduced the Pre at the Consumer Electronics Show last month to much critical acclaim. The phone has won kudos not only for its design but also for its OS, a completely new system designed from the ground up exclusively for the Pre.

webOS treats applications as "cards" and makes it easy to flip through the
deck of cards, view them at once and shuffle them. It allows for multi-tasking of apps and apps are live
even when minimized.

Palm has not said when it will makes its Pre SDK widely available to developers, but a select few already have had access to it. TeleNav, which offers turn-by-turn navigation systems for mobile phones is one of them. The company is working on a navigation app to be released on Pre; it doesn’t have a similar app yet for the iPhone.

"Earlier, to create an application for a phone, you needed developers with embeded programming skill sets — which is much more difficult to find," says Amit Patel, who leads the Pre development team at TeleNav. "Now Palm has made it easy and has provided some very good tools for app development."

Enthused Palm developers are already organizing themselves. A week after the Pre’s release, programmers plan to get together to have workshops in over 60 cities worldwide. Called preDevCamp it aims to exchange ideas and tools for webOs developers. Palm has not yet announced when the Pre will be available on Sprint, the exclusive telecom carrier for the phone.

A strong area of interest to developers has focused on how well the Pre can handle games. Games are one of the most popular categories of apps on the iPhone.
They are also one of the few categories where paid apps still find
takers. Addressing that issue, the Pre will give game developers plenty of room to unleash their creativity, Allen told developers Wednesday. "There are great web based games that will work well in this (Pre’s) environment," he says. "Other category of games require deeper access to the OS and that is something we intend to improve as time goes on."

And in contrast to Apple’s iPhone, Palm Pre will support Adobe’s Flash technology. Palm hasn’t commented though when Flash will come to the Pre. Flash on the phone could open up a window for a whole new set of gaming apps, says Sepulveda. "Once Flash support comes to the Pre developers will have a lot of options there for gaming," he says.

Applications built for webOS will not have backward compatibility. But
Palm has reassured developers that it will offer tools and techniques
to migrate their existing apps to the new operating system.

Also see:
6 Reasons Why the Palm Pre Is Special
Palm Unveils Its Long-Awaited Smartphone, the Pre
Video: Hands-On With the Palm Pre
New WebOS Is Palm’s Secret Sauce
Up Close and Personal With the Palm Pre

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

There seems to be no shortage of chatter about celebrities and their new Palm handsets today. We already knew that stars attending the Independent Spirit Awards would be getting a swag bag containing — among other things — a Palm Pre, and based on the coverage we’re seeing from the event (held on the 21st), they at least got to handle them. It’s actually difficult to say if Palm was giving the device out that night or putting people on a waiting list, but what it does make clear is that the Pre can’t be too far from launch if the company felt comfortable enough to throw them into such an uncontrolled setting. Does this mean the release date is nearer than we think, or is Palm just hoping that a little of that star power rubs off on the phone? Either way, we’re super jealous of Eliza Dushku.

Update: According to a Tweet from Palm (which links this post — meta!), these were just there to be played with, not handed out.

[Thanks, Marques]

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm Pre handled, handed out to celebrities? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sprint Nextel has bagged exclusive carrier rights for the Palm Pre until the end of the year, according to CNBC, citing an anonymous source.

The highly anticipated smartphone from Palm is expected to launch by the middle of the year, which would give Sprint a six- to nine-month hold on the phone.

Palm had announced Sprint as the carrier for the Pre when it launched the device at the Consumer Electronics Show last month. But the company has still not officially disclosed how long the phone will be available just on Sprint before it makes its way to other carriers. Palm has not commented about the speculation.

Palm and Sprint have built a symbiotic relationship over the years. The $100 Palm Centro has had a successful run on Sprint. And now Sprint
needs the Pre to lure customers. On Thursday, Sprint announced that it lost 1.3 million customers in the fourth quarter and posted $1.6 billion in losses.

The Pre could help stanch the bleeding and even bring in new users. But Sprint’s position as the third place carrier and users’ unwillingness to pay cancellation fees to move to Sprint could take a toll on Pre sales, says analyst Jack Gold, president and principal analyst at consulting firm J. Gold Associates.

Also see:
6 Reasons Why the Palm Pre Is Special
Palm Unveils Its Long-Awaited Smartphone, the Pre
Video: Hands-On With the Palm Pre
New WebOS Is Palm’s Secret Sauce
Up Close and Personal With the Palm Pre

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Sigh, we knew it was too good to be true — data tethering has been removed from the Palm Pre’s spec list on Sprint’s site and replaced with a “connector” section. We don’t know if Sprint’s just trying to clean things up or if it muscled Palm into killing the feature in order to drive new Simply Everything + Mobile Broadband subscriptions, but we do know that we’re having a hard time turning these frowns upside-down. Come on, Sprint, say you don’t mean it, okay?

[Thanks, Christopher and Evan]

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm Pre no longer features data tethering on Sprint website originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We sat down with Palm today and in addition to spotting that soft-touch cover we chatted them up on where things stand, how things are progressing, and various other clarifications about webOS and the Pre that have yet to be made. Palm’s staying pretty tight-lipped and under-the-radar at the show, despite bringing a Europe-friendly HSDPA handset to show off — they’re not making any big announcements along those lines until there’s a carrier firmed up, and not even clarifying what bands are supported. The build of webOS is exactly the same as what was at CES, and Palm still isn’t letting the device slip out of its firm grip for a bit of rogue hands-on time.

Palm did confirm that games are in development for webOS, and seems a little defensive at accusations that the OS can’t handle that stuff — Palm hasn’t changed its stance on app development, of course, there are no “native” apps allowed currently, but they seem more reticent to admit that web-style app development will limit gaming options. Perhaps they’re hoping Adobe’s Open Screen Project will save them some grief on this front, since Flash will be ready for webOS by the end of the year. Palm’s currently working with a small amount of developers in private beta, refining the SDK to their feedback and needs, and will slowly expand that as the phone approaches launch, but we don’t expect a full SDK to reach Joe the Coder until very close to before or after the launch. We asked about the potential for a soft keyboard, and they said that there’s no reason that developers couldn’t build their own — though we’re not sure how that would work. Out of the gate developers won’t have super deep access to the OS from what we understand — they wouldn’t be able to do something like Facebook’s level of OS-wide contacts integration, for instance — but Palm hopes to open those APIs up further down the line.

We get the impression that Palm feels version 1.0 of webOS is very feature complete, and that the most surprises we’ll get from here to launch will be mostly along the lines of 3rd party development and release details.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm confirms games are in development for Pre, drops a few other tidbits originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 06:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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