Hasta La Gadget!

There’s no shortage of disparate and sketchy launch date predictions for the Pre, but here’s one with a little bit of meat to it. Boy Genius Report has a purported End Of Life list for Sprint, which lists the projected deaths of various phones, along with the planned replacement, with a bit of overlap in timing to keep things moving along smoothly. The Pre shows up as “target in-stock 3/15,” replacing the Palm 755p, which is slated to fizzle out in late May. Similarly, the Palm Treo Pro is slotted for February 15th, replacing the 800w, which lines up with the phone’s known launch date. Naturally, we can’t vouch for the origination of this list or its accuracy, but it sounds reasonably legit, and it’s the best thing we’ve got on a Pre launch date up until now — and quite a bit more encouraging than the prospect of waiting until the summer.

Update: Boy Genius Report has updated its post, and says that while the March 15th launch is possible, they “wouldn’t bet on it,” and see a May or early June launch as more likely.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm Pre landing mid-March? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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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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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When Palm launched its Pre last week at CES, we were both blown away and pretty overwhelmed. Besides issuing new hardware, the company also demoed a completely original operating system called webOS which incorporates some pretty heady ideas about what a mobile phone can do. Now that we’ve had a little time to step back, we’re taking a more methodic look at the device and its software, and hoping to answer some of those nagging questions you’ve been asking. Read on for a look at everything we know about the phone right now.

Continue reading Palm Pre: everything you ever wanted to know

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm Pre: everything you ever wanted to know originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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