Hasta La Gadget!

It’s been about a year since Palm pulled itself back from the brink of imminent destruction with the announcement of webOS and the Palm Pre, and even less time since the products announced actually hit the market. In that time span, the company has issued another handset (the small, less powerful Pixi), released a number of over-the-air updates to its OS (nine in all), and created and disseminated a slew of developer tools, including iterative releases of its SDK and a new web-based development environment called Ares. Throughout the ups and downs of the past 12-or-so months Palm has been “back,” the company has stuck with Sprint as its lone carrier partner in the US — so while it’s been innovating and tweaking on its platform and devices, the third-place partner has kept it from the larger audiences AT&T or Verizon might offer. Now — almost a year to the day — Palm has turned around and opened its devices up to the country’s largest carrier, in addition to bumping the specs and features of both phones it offers (the Pre getting an additional 8GB of storage and double the RAM, the Pixi is now equipped with WiFi). All the while significantly improving its SDK (with the new native Plug-in Development Kit) and app distribution model. So can Palm finally really get this ship sailing, court the developers it badly needs, and deliver on the promises of webOS, or is it too little, too late? Read on to find out!

Continue reading Palm Pre Plus (and Pixi Plus) review

Palm Pre Plus (and Pixi Plus) review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yeah, yeah — we’ve seen a fairly weak effort to ape the Pre before, but this… this is the knockoff webOS device your shady side has been waiting for. A dead ringer for the Palm Pre, the Cool K07 boasts a luscious 2.8-inch touchscreen (320 x 240 resolution), a T-Flash card slot, a 2 megapixel camera, inbuilt speaker, MP3 / MP4 player, a blazing fast connection to the web (GPRS, if you must know), Bluetooth, an FM radio tuner, alarm clock, a few games and room for 1,000 contacts. Granted, there’s none of that fancy “Synergy” stuff, and we’re guessing you won’t find any “cards” or “multitasking” here, but for $128 unlocked and room for the SIM card of your choice, how on Earth could you complain? Exactly. You can’t. Or maybe that’s just stunned silence we hear…

[Thanks, Dechris]

Keepin’ it real fake, part CCXLIX: Cool K07 is the ultimate facePalm originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just to clarify right out of the gate, the “year” Fast Company is referring to is 2009, but nonetheless, it’s an award we’re sure Jon is happy to have. 11 geeks were found worthy of the “Geek of the Year” award in ’09, with the likes of Evan Williams and Biz Stone (Twitter), David S. Goyer (the creator of Flash Forward on ABC), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Neill Blomkamp (the writer of District 9) joining him. The justification for Jon making the cut?

“He came on board as the new chairman of Palm and brought about the Web OS and the Palm Pre, the start of a line of products that is the best hope for reintroducing the geek masses to Palm.”

After speaking with him on our first-ever Engadget Show and falling head over heels in love with webOS, we can’t help but agree. And yes, after last year’s introduction at CES, it’s all we can do to contain our excitement for this Thursday.

Palm’s Jon Rubinstein named a ‘Geek of the Year’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For those viewing this on a Palm device, here’s your direct link: Download Engadget for webOS

Engadget now available for Pre and Pixi: the first webOS app of 2010 (and 1000th in the Catalog)! originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Jan 2010 03:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Look, let’s not beat around the bushes — Verizon Wireless will one day stock Palm’s Pre. It’s a rather well documented fact, and at this point the only real question is “when?” Judging by a mysterious Wi-Fi Certificate that just popped up, we’re beginning to think that the waiting period is nearly up, and with CES 2010 happening in a week, there’s hardly a better time for us to really start believing. If you’ll recall, Sprint’s Pre snagged a Wi-Fi Certificate number of P100EWW, and just this summer we spotted a few leaked Palm devices within VZW documents with “P101” and “P121” monikers; lo and behold, the certificate for this elusive dual-mode (WiFi and cellular) smartphone boasts a P101EWW label. We aren’t trying to read too deeply between the lines or anything, but if this isn’t a Pre destined for Big Red, we’re eager to know what kind of new mobile Palm has lined up for its presser at CES.

[Thanks, Rehman]

Continue reading Palm smartphone pops up in WiFi certification database: is this Verizon’s Pre?

Palm smartphone pops up in WiFi certification database: is this Verizon’s Pre? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 05:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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