Hasta La Gadget!

Man, we can’t get enough Peter Skillman — check out this 25-minute Pre hands-on demo Palm’s VP of design did at CES. Sure, there’s some overlap with what we saw Matias Duarte demo during the announcement and the shorter Skillman video we saw yesterday, but there’s also some stuff that slipped under the radar — like the Touchstone’s “gecko feet” in action at 1:48, a kinda-sorta unboxing at 2:29, an impressive email / IM / SMS multitasking demo at 12:10, and a peek at the video player at 20:09. Skillman also confirms that the Pre will do MMS, but video recording capability and Touchstone pricing remain a mystery. There are also some friendly iPhone and BlackBerry comparisons — amusingly, he asks for a phone from the audience so he can show off the comparatively higher quality of the Pre’s screen and gets a little flustered when handed the super-high-density BlackBerry Bold. Whoops! Overall, though, it’s interesting to see Petey Skillz basically just use the Pre for so long — he throws quite a bit at it, and it never seems to hiccup or slow down, which is definitely encouraging. Video after the break.

Continue reading Another Pre hands-on video with Palm’s VP of design

Filed under: Cellphones

Another Pre hands-on video with Palm’s VP of design originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Palm Product Manager Matt Crowley is holding a week-long Q&A session about the Pre on Facebook, and some pretty interesting discussions are taking place. Most interestingly, so far, is Crowley’s answer when questioned about the (for many) cringe-inducing lack of a microSD slot on the company’s much-hyped device in-the-making: “Design was the highest goal on the Palm Pre project. The phone has to look and function great in the hand and up against the face on a call. The decision to include or not include expandable storage is an easy one when design is the highest priority. The physical size of the device would have been compromised if we added another physical component to Pre. Just a millimeter can seriously impact the curvature of the design in a way that minimizes the design intent. We wanted to maintain a slick curved slider design without building out too much thickness. When you look at the two parts of the product and see how thin they really are, you may be amazed that we were able to fit everything in. And yes, all the stuff does fit.” Now, we’re pretty into the design of the Pre, but this kind of strikes us as a lame answer. Regardless, you can toss your own questions into the ring until January 28th.

[Via Palm Infocenter]

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm: lack of microSD slot on the Pre purely a “design” decision originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For those of you who weren’t listening in to Apple’s earnings call today, you missed a prime moment of defensiveness when Tim Cook fielded a question about how the company plans to stay competitive amidst new entries from the likes of Google and, more recently, Palm. What seemed like an answer due to end with a “we’ve got some great new stuff on the way” slant, Cook dovetailed into how the company views its new smartphone competition. In his words:

Q: “There are other iPhone competitors coming to the market: Android, Palm Pre. How do you think about sustaining leadership in the face of these competitors?”

A: “It’s difficult to compare to products that are not yet in the market. iPhone has seen terrific rating from customers. Software is the key ingredient, and we believe that we are years ahead of our competitors. Having different screen sizes, different input methods, and different hardware makes things difficult for developers. We view iPhone as primarily a software platform, which is different from our competitors. We don’t mind competition, but if others rip off our intellectual property, we will go after them.”

And then the follow-up:

Q: “The Palm device seems to directly emulate the iPhone’s innovative interface. Is that what you’re referring to?”

A: “We don’t want to refer to any specific companies, so that was a general statement. We like competition because it makes us better, but we will not stand for companies infringing on our IP.”

Now, we’ve heard Apple sound off on its intellectual property before, but the way a somewhat innocuous question about new challengers in the mobile arena got turned into a not-so vague threat of legal action is a bit stunning. Could it be that the Pre is Apple’s first real multitouch, capacitive-screen competition, and the device just happened to be co-developed by Jon Rubinstein… formerly of Apple? We’re not taking any flying leaps here, but the preempted initial answer seems to suggest that the folks in Cupertino may not take every new threat so coolly.

Apple on smartphone competition: “if others rip off our intellectual property, we will go after them.” originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For all those commenters in our recent Palm Pre feature wondering just exactly what kind of battery we could expect to see in the device, wonder no more. According to Dieter Bohn over at the newly christened PreCentral, the phone will use the exact same battery as the Treo 800w and the Centro — a 1150mAh model. Apparently Palm reps were happy to snap the back off the device and show the source of its juice off. That same size battery is used in the G1 as well, and Dieter notes that there’s an aftermarket 1350mAh version which could offer more power. Certainly such a small battery — a size which we know leaves a lot to be desired in a next-gen phone like the G1 — isn’t music to our ears, but since we don’t know how the Pre handles power consumption, there’s still plenty of questions to be answered. And hey, you could keep a spare around, right?

Update: Jenn at Pocketables tells us that the battery is 1200mAh as told to her by a Palm rep at CES.

Update 2: We’ve just gotten word from Palm that this actually isn’t set in stone yet. In their words: “We’re still doing some final development and testing various user scenarios as part of carrier certification.”

[Via Palm Infocenter]

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm Pre to use Centro-sized battery (Updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Jan 2009 02:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While we were happy just to see pictures, Tom Conrad, CTO of Pandora, is one of the lucky few to have seen in action the innards of the software that keeps things moving on the Pre. He sat down with Palm Infocenter (on the wrong end of a zero-bar concall by the sounds) to talk details of webOS software development. Conrad clarified that, despite all apps being mixtures of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, webOS is more than just a big browser — it has direct access to local files and UI elements. However, he echoed the fears of others that this web-friendly programming interface won’t exactly be well suited for gaming, expressing hope that Palm will address this with integrated Flash support or some sort of a lower-level API to appease those who want to tap that OMAP processor directly. Hit the read link to hear the whole conversation yourself.

[Thanks, Jay]

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming

Pandora’s CTO talks about Pre, webOS development, gaming, and small children originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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