Apr 09

Palm’s Jon Rubinstein: ‘I think we have a better product than Droid’

Posted in: droid, palm, pre, Today's Chili, verizon, webos

It’s been a rough month or so for Palm, as the only thing keeping the company’s tanking stock price from falling completely into the gutter are buyout rumors — RIM here, HTC there, even Lenovo, for some crazy reason. But that’s apparently not enough to get CEO Jon Rubinstein down: he just sat down with Fortune for a remarkably candid chat, saying that although his company hasn’t done so well, he still thinks there’s potential — and that he obviously wishes some things had gone better. The big one? The Verizon launch — and Jon thinks that if the Droid and Pre had had their launch dates flipped, the Pre would have done better.

One of the analysts on our earnings call asked if we had launched when Droid launched, and Droid launched when [we] launched at Verizon, would the story have been opposite? I said I think we have a better product than Droid, and customers would have been happier with it.

It’s certainly an interesting thought experiment, but we’ve always said that the Pre’s marketing had a lot to do with its failure on Big Red as well — and Palm apparently agrees, since it’s fired its ad agency and Jon told Fortune that Verizon’s changing their ads as well. As for the buyout rumors? Well, obviously Jon didn’t say much, but it sounds like he’s not too interested — although that can always change if the right suitor comes to the table . We’ll see if Ruby actually manages to turn things around — we’ve got some ideas on how to make that happen. Hit the source link for the full interview.

Palm’s Jon Rubinstein: ‘I think we have a better product than Droid’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Apr 2010 16:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apr 09

webOS port of Xorg in the works, OpenOffice support the inevitable result

Posted in: palm, Today's Chili, video, webos

In the absence of a full, editable version of Documents To Go (DataViz still hasn’t released it), this might be of some serious interest to the Palm community — or those that are willing to muck around a bit, anyway. X.org’s X server implementation has been successfully shoehorned onto a Pre, meaning that we’re well on our way to being able to run arbitrary Linux-based X11 apps on our phones — including the mighty OpenOffice, as demonstrated here. It seems we’re still a ways off yet; the devs have some file system issues to work through, which they say will likely take “weeks to months, rather than days” to fix, but it’s a promising start. What, you’d never dreamed of running a desktop office suite on a 3.1-inch display? Follow the break for video.

Continue reading webOS port of Xorg in the works, OpenOffice support the inevitable result

webOS port of Xorg in the works, OpenOffice support the inevitable result originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apr 06

Report: Android Rises, Microsoft and Palm Sink

Posted in: Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, nokia, palm, Smart Devices, Smartphones, Today's Chili, webos, Windows Mobile, windows phone 7

nexus one.jpg

Market research firm comScore has released new share numbers for the major smartphone platforms–and they’re pretty telling.
During the three month period from November 2009 to February 2010, Android rocketed from 3.8 percent to 9.0 percent of the U.S. market for smartphones.
However, that didn’t come at the expense of U.S. leader RIM (up from 40.8 to 42.1) or the second place Apple (treading water at 25.4 percent). Instead, Android’s gains came straight from Microsoft, down from 19.1 to 15.1 percent, and Palm, which fell from 7.2 to 5.4 percent even counting webOS devices.
Overall, 45.4 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones in an average month, up 21 percent from the same period last year.
As for overall handset brands, Motorola, LG, and Samsung are in a rough three-way tie at 22.3, 21.7, and 21.4 percent, respectively. Nokia and RIM are in a distant fourth and fifth, with 8.7 and 8.2 percent. (RIM’s number here is much lower when considered against the entire cell phone industry, as RIM only makes smartphones.)
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Apr 01

Verizon Mobile Hotspot on webOS devices now free, Pre Plus and Pixi Plus fall to $49.99 and $29.99

Posted in: hotspot, mobile hotspot, MobileHotspot, palm, Today's Chili, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless, vzw, webos, wifi

Whoa, we didn’t see this one coming: Verizon just slashed the cost of its 3G Mobile Hotspot feature for the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus all the way down to $0, effectively giving you a broadband modem for your laptop, iPod touch, and up to three other devices for $60 less per month than you’d pay with a MiFi that accomplishes exactly the same function (and $50 less than any other tether-capable Verizon handset). For some, this alone could be reason enough to take the plunge and become a webOS user, we’d wager. Here’s Verizon’s official statement on the matter:

“Customers who purchase or upgrade to a Palm Pre and Palm Pixi will get the Mobile Hotspot for free. Existing customers who already have the service will find charges on their next bill will be $0.00.”

Add that in to the fact that the Pre Plus is now $49.99 and the Pixi Plus is now $29.99, both with buy-one-get-one-free deals tacked on, and yeah… what do you want to bet there are some wide smiles over in Sunnyvale this morning?

Note: This isn’t an April Fool’s joke — try pricing a Pre Plus on Verizon’s site and add the Mobile Hotspot feature at checkout.

Verizon Mobile Hotspot on webOS devices now free, Pre Plus and Pixi Plus fall to $49.99 and $29.99 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Apr 2010 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 31

AT&T getting ‘practice’ Pre Pluses tomorrow?

Posted in: att, palm, rumor, Today's Chili, webos

It looks like AT&T will start taking delivery tomorrow of Pre Plus units that are being specifically designated as high-security, SKU-less “practice devices” that are only to be used off the sales floor for training purposes, though when training is complete, they can be moved to a live store display. That certainly lends weight to a launch happening sooner rather than later, counter to rumors earlier in the month that we might not see them on shelves until the peak of Summer. Of course, we don’t know how long the training sessions are going to run — our leak here gives no indication of that, nor of a retail release date — but considering that we first saw this form factor back in January of ’09, it’s seriously in everyone’s best interest to fast-track these. Our fingers are crossed.

[Thanks, Eric L.]

AT&T getting ‘practice’ Pre Pluses tomorrow? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 23:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 31

Reports of webOS 1.4.1 update now coming in, Update: 1.4.1.1 available for Sprint

Posted in: firmware, palm, palm pre, PalmPre, pre, Today's Chili, update, webos
It doesn’t appear to do anything groundbreaking like overclock your Pre, but it looks like the webOS 1.4.1 update is now starting to trickle out to at least a few lucky users. According to PreCentral, one of the first reports to come in was from a Pre user who also happened to be one of the first to get the webOS 1.4 update while he was in Vietnam, and has now managed to snag the 1.4.1 update while residing in Holland. That was later followed up with a second report from a Sprint customer in Washington, but things seem to have been relatively quiet since them. Still no official word from Palm either, but the update does seem to be as minor as the number revision suggestions, with it weighing in at just 6MB. Receive yours yet? Let us know in comments.

Update: So that’s what the update does — according to Recombu, the update should allow European webOS users to finally spend their hard-earned quids and Euros on paid apps. PreCentral additionally reports that O2 Germany customers can now download the Mobile Hotspot app. Cheers!

Update 2: We’re getting a 1.4.1.1 10mb patch on our Sprint Pre as we speak, while a list of changes has arrived on Palm.com with one notable difference — the old NFL Mobile App has been renamed Sprint Football Live — but otherwise it appears to be the same. Meanwhile the word on PreCentral is that Verizon customers may be in for a wait of up to a few weeks for their own update, so slowing the pace of update checks to just once every 5 minutes would appear to be a reasonable course of action.

Reports of webOS 1.4.1 update now coming in, Update: 1.4.1.1 available for Sprint originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 29

Stats: iPhone OS is still king of the mobile web space, but Android is nipping at its heels

Posted in: ads, Android, AndroidOs, Apple, Google, iPhone, mobile internet, mobile os, MobileInternet, MobileOs, RIM, smartphone, Smartphones, statistics, stats, symbian, Today's Chili, web, webos

AdMob serves north of 10 billion ads per month to more than 15,000 mobile websites and applications. Thus, although its data is about ad rather than page impressions, it can be taken as a pretty robust indicator of how web usage habits are developing and changing over time. Android is the big standout of its most recent figures, with Google loyalists now constituting a cool 42 percent of AdMob’s smartphone audience in the US. With the EVO 4G and Galaxy S rapidly approaching, we wouldn’t be surprised by the little green droid stealing away the US share crown, at least until Apple counters with its next slice of magical machinery. Looking at the global stage, Android has also recently skipped ahead of Symbian, with a 24 percent share versus 18 percent for the smartphone leader. Together with BlackBerry OS, Symbian is still the predominant operating system in terms of smartphone sales, but it’s interesting to see both falling behind in the field of web or application usage, which is what this metric seeks to measure. Figures from Net Applications (to be found at the TheAppleBlog link) and ArsTechnica‘s own mobile user numbers corroborate these findings.

Stats: iPhone OS is still king of the mobile web space, but Android is nipping at its heels originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Mar 2010 10:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 26

Pre gets a nasty 800MHz overclock patch for all 1.4 users to enjoy (at one’s own risk) (updated)

Posted in: hack, palm, palm pre, PalmPre, pre, Today's Chili, video, webos

Looking to harness the real power inside of your Pre (or Pre Plus) — and you’ve upgraded to webOS 1.4? If that’s the case, you’re going to love what a couple of Palm-loving hackers have come up with. Namely, a major overclock kernel patch for the device which boosts the CPU speed from a measly 500MHz all the way up to a finger-searing 800MHz (there’s also a more tame 720MHz variation available). The two phone magicians, unixpsycho and caj2008, had previously tapped into the power of the Pre’s CPU on webOS 1.3.5 with a small file that can be semi-easily installed using WebOSQuickInstall and a tiny bit of Linux command-line activity, and now it’s on for 1.4. So far, it looks like phones being tested with the somewhat risky tweak haven’t experienced too much of the normally expected issues (crashes, freezing, phones exploding). Also a surprise is the fact that the creators of the hack say battery life drain is only an additional 2-4 percent hit… though if you’re already struggling to make it through a day, this could be the nail in the coffin. We installed the patch on a Verizon Pre Plus, and we definitely observed a noticeable bump in app load times and improved fluidity when working with the phone — though we’ve already had one major crash. If you don’t mind possibly destroying your phone and must have a faster device right now, you can check out the patch in action and learn how to get it yourself in the video after the break.

Update: From the looks of things, that crash we experienced early on is likely due to a bug in webOS 1.4 and not related to the overclock. Actually, we haven’t experienced any further problems… in fact, the phone is seeming super speedy, and battery life has not taken a substantial hit, verifying caj2008 and unixpsycho’s claims (so far). Someone at Palm should take note — these guys have some good ideas!

[Thanks, G. Scott]

Continue reading Pre gets a nasty 800MHz overclock patch for all 1.4 users to enjoy (at one’s own risk) (updated)

Pre gets a nasty 800MHz overclock patch for all 1.4 users to enjoy (at one’s own risk) (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 26

Fan-Made WebOS Commercial Beats Palm’s Efforts

Posted in: ads, Phones, pre, Today's Chili, webos

This fantastic ad for the WebOS comes not from Palm, a company which has proven itself unable to make a compelling commercial for the Pre, but from a fan.

Heiko Thies is the fellow behind this video spot, which manages to be both exciting and slightly edgy. It also totally makes me want to buy a Pre.

The ad does what an ad should, especially when it is for a product as cool and capable as the Pre: It shows the phone in action. The jerky handheld camera is great, too, somehow setting it apart from the superslick iPhone ads.

We expect the shaky-cam made rotoscoping the animations tricky, though. It comes over like a cross between Minority Report and District 9, both great films already.

If Palm aired commercials like these — instead of the creepy lady commercials they ran last year — the company might have a chance of capturing the hearts and minds of geeks everywhere. Of course, it might have to do a few more things to stay alive, as early adopter and Epicenter editor John C. Abell argued last week.

Nice work, Heiko. I’m off to watch it again right now. Palm: Hire this guy right now.

Fan-made ad for Palm webOS by ThiesFX [YouTube via Mashable]


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Mar 26

Fan-made Pre ad gets the point, why can’t Palm? (video)

Posted in: ad, palm, palm pre, PalmPre, pre, Today's Chili, video, webos

We’ve already talked (at length) about Palm’s failure to properly present its wares to the public. Using promotional campaigns that have fluctuated between gimmicky and creepy, the company has never allowed its superlative WebOS its time to shine. As if to illustrate our point to perfection, a loyal Pre user has put together his own, extremely professional, advert for the device, which manages to achieve — in a mere 30 seconds — what Palm has been struggling with for nearly a year. It shows off the handsome device, the effortless multitasking, the variety of apps, integrated services and video capabilities, and, most importantly, emphasizes the sheer beauty and ease of use of WebOS. See the video after the break.

[Thanks, Chris F]

Continue reading Fan-made Pre ad gets the point, why can’t Palm? (video)

Fan-made Pre ad gets the point, why can’t Palm? (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Mar 2010 04:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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