Hasta La Gadget!

The Droid, and Android 2.0 as a whole, isn’t going to kill the iPhone. That’s ridiculous. Teamed with the iPhone, though, it just straight up murdered Palm—the same way that Microsoft brought Apple to its knees decades ago.

Reviews aren’t even hitting yet, but the early consensus is clear: Android 2.0 is the first version of Google’s OS that’s really grown-up. And now, with hardware like the Droid and the Hero, it’s not just a technological triumph, it’s the kind of thing that people—and not just leery, jaded tech blog readers—can connect with, and actually use. This is huge for Android.

iPhone OS is already a superpower with massive adoption, a huge app store and a bright future. They’re not going anywhere. They learned their lessons about the importance of volume and apps when I was still a kid. But what about the other two smartphone players that consumers really love? You know, Google vs Palm? Think Apple vs Microsoft, circa the late 80s.

Hear me out: With version 2.0, Android is sitting on the cusp of greatness. And Palm? They’ve got a nice OS, but with just two handsets and a tiny user base they’re up against a wall. Google is old Microsoft: They’ve got a open development platform, tons of hardware partners. They’re going to start having problems with this strategy—you know, fragmentation, device support issues, etc—but as with Microsoft, it’s going to serve them well, and make them huge. Palm is old Apple: With inhouse hardware and iffy developer support, they’re just insular. What that means:

• Hardware partners: Who isn’t developing an Android phone nowadays? Motorola, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson, and HTC dwarf Palm’s hardware partner list, which consists of “Palm.” Don’t get me wrong, the Pre and Pixi are nice pieces of hardware—like Apple always had—but it’s tough to compete with such a broad lineup with just two devices, both of which are somewhat polarizing. Android is the new Windows Mobile, but in a good way.

• Apps: Apple learned from their past mistakes, and actively courted developers from the start. Android’s start was slower and more organic, but seems to so far correlate with handset adoption, meaning it’s growing, and it’s about to grow a lot more. More apps=a better user experience=joy for Google. Palm has introduced paid apps, but it’s not clear why anyone would want to invest in development for such a small userbase. (The first paid app, if you remember, was an air hockey game.)

• Apps, again: Android came before webOS, and likewise the Android SDKs came well before mojoSDK. But no matter how far into the future you look, Google has Palm beaten from a developer standpoint. If Android handset sales start to approach iPhone territory—tens of millions—the combination of a huge potential market and powerful development tools, especially SDK 2.0, will make the choice for developers obvious: Go with Apple, or go with Google. Palm won’t even register.

• Resources: Google can dedicate tremendous amounts of money and time to developing Android, as their pastry-themed release schedule can attest to; Palm is hanging by a thread, and they haven’t issued a truly major update to their OS since it came out. Google can lose money on Android for as long as it wants—they’ve got Microsoft-level buoyancy, those guys—while Palm has to turn fast profit by building and selling phones, lest their nervous investors jump ship.

• Google is an app development powerhouse: Their apps are becoming more and more central to the general smartphone experience. Apple and Palm both use Google’s maps and search, but naturally, Android always has a later, greater version of both. It helps for the company behind a platform to supply a few killers apps for it too—just look at Office and Window 2.0.

And take what happened yesterday, with Google Navigation for Maps. Google can just will a free turn-by-turn navigation app into existence. Palm can’t do this. They can license Google’s technology, sure, but that leaves them at the mercy of a competitor.

BlackBerry handsets are safe in their own way—suits need their keyboards, and familiarity is worth a lot—and Windows Mobile is on a fixed heading for total irrelevance, as evidenced by their once-strongest ally, HTC, talking about the OS like it’s in hospice care. But there are just three true consumer smartphone OSes out there—the ones that don’t feel like complicated smartphones, but which do all the same tricks.

And assuming Apple’s is safe—and it is—that leaves two. Like Microsoft once was in the desktop computing space, Google is poised for a meteoric rise, and like Apple, Palm should be bracing themselves for hard times. For all the similarities, though, there’s one difference: Palm probably won’t be able to pull through.

Sprint’s just gone public with its plans for the Pixi: a single c-note, payable November 15th. It’s not the aggressive, bottom-scraping pricing I was hoping to see for Palm’s second, daintier webOS device, and just $50 less than the Pre.

The Pixi is generally thought of as a hardware downgrade from it’s older brother, because that’s basically what it is: With a smaller screen, no Wi-Fi and a gimpier two-megapixel camera, it’s more or less a neo-Centro. Sure, the keyboard’s a bit easier to type on, and the device is slimmer, but Sprint (and Palm) really should’ve shaved another $50 of off this thing: It’s a drop in the bucket next to what Sprint will make from each Pixi’s two-year service contract, and would go a long way toward making the Pixi, which has to compete with not just the Pre, but a decent spread of $50-$100 entry-level smartphones, a decent buy.

And seriously, still with this rebate stuff? The Pixi’s technical price is $250 dollars, yanked down to earth by a $50 instant rebate and a $100 mail-in card. But Best Buy, Radio Shack and Walmart credit the MIRs instantly, so what’s the point?

In any case, the Pre didn’t sell for full price for more than a few months—in fact, as John Paczkowski notes, Amazon has it on sale for $100 right now—so with any luck we could see a Pixi deal in time for the holidays. And even without any luck, within a few months after that. [Sprint via BusinessInsider]

You know how easy and natural it is to hang up a call on a cellphone by sliding it closed or flipping it shut? It’s a small satisfaction that’s been lost on touchscreen-only phones, but it would seem to still make sense on something like, say, the Palm Pre — just not to Palm, it seems. Well, it looks like unofficial patch maker KeyToss has now finally stepped in and done what Palm hasn’t, and produced a patch that does nothing more than let you end a call by closing the slider on your Pre. Who knows? You might even start hanging up on people just for the fun of it. Hit up the link below for all the necessary details on installing the patch.

Filed under: Cellphones

Unofficial patch lets you hang up Palm Pre calls by closing the slider originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The European operators are really liking mid-October for their Pre launches, and that trend continues now that Spain’s Telefonica has unveiled an October 14 availability date for Spain’s very first webOS device. The phone’s being offered on plans that will bring the cost of the handset itself down to anywhere between €0 and €219 (about $322) — and if you’re wondering exactly what you have to do to get it for absolutely free, well, you’ll be shelling out €60 or more a month in voice plus €15 in data. You’ll be able to pick it up both online and in your friendly local Telefonica shop, so it’ll be interesting to see if any lines start forming — just how many Palm fanatics are their in Spain, anyway?

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm Pre coming to Spain on Telefonica on October 14 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, things just got interesting. The very evening of the App Catalog’s launch of paid apps, Palm has made a very different kind of announcement: it’s going to let developers skip out on the App Catalog if they so choose. Devs will be able to submit an app to Palm, who will turn around and give them a URL for open distribution of the app over the web — without a review process getting in the way! The App Catalog will still exist for those who want to use it of course, with a $50 entrance fee to get an app inside — and we’re guessing it’ll remain the only way to distribute paid apps — but the new URL distribution should decentralize things just a little bit. In other good news, Palm will be dropping the $99 annual developer fee for folks building open source apps, and hopefully that free ride applies to App Catalog entry as well, though now there’s web distribution to make it less of a sticking point. Palm’s also going to open up its analytic data to developers, and even is giving away Pres and Touchstones to the audience members of the little shindig privy to this announcement — clearly the company is making a strong play for developers, and who doesn’t like to be loved?

[Thanks, Lawrence]

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm throws the doors open: review-free app distribution over the web, open source developers can hop in for free originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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