Hasta La Gadget!

Palm has done its darnedest to keep the riffraff away from webOS development while it finishes up its Mojo SDK for webOS development, but the floodgates have finally opened with an opportune leak of Mojo to Torrent-vill. Naturally, Palm will still be locking out unapproved developers from releasing their creations to the App Catalog for the time being, but this should hopefully give the everyman a chance to hone apps in anticipation of a day of approval — and should really beef up the homebrew community in the meantime. The other good news is that Palm is actually adding developers to its “early access program” at a fairly rapid pace, announcing that it doubled its membership this week, and plans to double it again next week. It’s all coming together.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm’s Mojo SDK beta for webOS leaks into the wild originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Palm had its quarterly results conference call yesterday and although CEO Jon Rubinstein and CFO Doug Jeffries kept a pretty tight lid on the future product talk, they did say that licensing webOS to third parties isn’t “a religious issue for us.” That’s pretty vague, sure, but we can’t help but immediately think back to the golden age of Palm OS, when licensees like Sony put out amazing devices like the Clie PEG-NZ90 that we’ve lovingly mocked up with a webOS screenshot above — we’re sure Palm’s upcoming handsets will be interesting in their own right, but we’d love to see a manufacturer like HTC riff on webOS the way it’s tweaking Android. Of course, Jeffries also said Palm has “no plans at this time to even talk about” licensing, so this is all just a pipe dream for now, but let’s not ruin the moment, okay? Hit the read link for the full call transcript.

[Via GearLog]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm says licensing webOS “not a religious issue” originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A million downloads, impressive. Even more so when you consider that fewer than 30 applications were available for download from the App Catalog to a single device (the Pre) available only on the number 3 carrier (Sprint) in the US. Unfortunately, Palm’s not offering any official numbers — the figure comes via industry analysts who suggest 150,000 Pre devices shipped since the June 6th retail introduction for an average of about seven apps downloaded per phone. Imagine the numbers had Palm’s SDK been ready prior to launch.

[Via NY Times Blog]

Palm App Catalog sees 1 million downloads to 150,000 Pre owners originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now that we know the iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre share extremely similar 65nm ARM Cortex A8-based internals, it’s time to break out the stopwatches and see how these blood brothers stack up. Anandtech has the first head-to-head tests we’ve seen, and it seems like the 3G S has the slight edge, loading a series of web pages 11 percent faster and a whopping 54 percent faster than the iPhone 3G. Not too shabby, but not exactly a thorough drubbing either — especially when you consider webOS is still 1.0 and there’s likely some optimizations to come. Full results at the read link.

Update: Anandtech had some uncharacteristically bad math going on — the 3G S is actually 21 percent faster than the Pre, which is quite notable considering the similar hardware and WebKit-based browsers.

Filed under: Cellphones

iPhone 3G S and Pre head-to-head benchmarks: iPhone wins originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Jun 2009 23:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The spotlight this week may be pointed at the iPhone 3GS—and with good reason—but it’s not the only flavor of smartphone ice cream. Here’s a quick path to more info about all smartphones (and no dumb ones!)

• The four big carriers, the four best smartphone platforms, the best information you’re going to get on the subject anywhere: Smartphone Buyer’s Guide: The Best of the Best

• Got a few smartphones already in mind? We probably reviewed them:
Palm Pre (WebOS)
iPhone 3GS
BlackBerry Bold
BlackBerry Storm
T-Mobile G1 (Android)
T-Mobile myTouch 3G (Android)
Samsung Omnia (WinMo)
Note: There’s no Nokia Symbian smartphone on this list because at the moment in the US, there’s no handset we feel confident to recommend.

• Since surfing the web is one of the biggest reasons to choose a smartphone—and one of the biggest differentiators between smartphones—it’s worth it to glance over the Mobile Browser Battlemodo, and its little sister, the Windows Mobile Browser Battlemodo.

• If you’ve already whittled it down to Palm Pre vs. iPhone 3GS, check out our roundup of reviews and news stories for each: Pre vs. 3GS: How To Make the Right Decision. Or you could just skip to this sweet flowchart.

• OK, OK, so you’re set on that durned iPhone, but which one? The $99 3G? Or $199 step-up 3GS? $100 is a lot to think about (even if it amounts to less than two months of actual service): 3GS vs 3G Feature Chart Comparison