Hasta La Gadget!

We sat down with Palm today and in addition to spotting that soft-touch cover we chatted them up on where things stand, how things are progressing, and various other clarifications about webOS and the Pre that have yet to be made. Palm’s staying pretty tight-lipped and under-the-radar at the show, despite bringing a Europe-friendly HSDPA handset to show off — they’re not making any big announcements along those lines until there’s a carrier firmed up, and not even clarifying what bands are supported. The build of webOS is exactly the same as what was at CES, and Palm still isn’t letting the device slip out of its firm grip for a bit of rogue hands-on time.

Palm did confirm that games are in development for webOS, and seems a little defensive at accusations that the OS can’t handle that stuff — Palm hasn’t changed its stance on app development, of course, there are no “native” apps allowed currently, but they seem more reticent to admit that web-style app development will limit gaming options. Perhaps they’re hoping Adobe’s Open Screen Project will save them some grief on this front, since Flash will be ready for webOS by the end of the year. Palm’s currently working with a small amount of developers in private beta, refining the SDK to their feedback and needs, and will slowly expand that as the phone approaches launch, but we don’t expect a full SDK to reach Joe the Coder until very close to before or after the launch. We asked about the potential for a soft keyboard, and they said that there’s no reason that developers couldn’t build their own — though we’re not sure how that would work. Out of the gate developers won’t have super deep access to the OS from what we understand — they wouldn’t be able to do something like Facebook’s level of OS-wide contacts integration, for instance — but Palm hopes to open those APIs up further down the line.

We get the impression that Palm feels version 1.0 of webOS is very feature complete, and that the most surprises we’ll get from here to launch will be mostly along the lines of 3rd party development and release details.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm confirms games are in development for Pre, drops a few other tidbits originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 06:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like offline Gmail on the iPhone wasn’t the only trick Google’s Vic Gondotra has up his sleeve during his talk at MWC — he also gave a quick demo of Google Maps running as a web app on the Palm Pre. Of course, what’s interesting there is that the Pre’s HTML-based SDK means that web apps can act like first class citizens on the device — which is probably why Vic called the Pre “arguably one of my favorite devices.” Hopefully that means we’re going to see a lot more Pre devs really blur the line between local and cloud-based applications, but for now we’ll just settle for the short demo video after the break.

Continue reading Google demos HTML5-based Maps on the Palm Pre

Filed under: Cellphones

Google demos HTML5-based Maps on the Palm Pre originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In a talk with investors Palm CEO Ed Colligan dropped a whole ton of previously undisclosed facts about Palm and the Pre. First off, he mentioned that other than the Centro making its way to other carriers, there will be no more PalmOS devices from Palm; they’re concentrating completely on webOS and Windows Mobile. They also clarified that they have partnerships with carriers in Canada, Latin America and Europe for the Pre, and that they plan on expanding in the US to carriers outside of Sprint in 2010. As far as patents go, Palm doesn’t sound too worried, citing 15 years of patents in the bank, a desire to respect intellectual property, and the fact that no action has taken place between Palm and Apple in that department.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm’s done with PalmOS, plans to get Pre on other carriers in 2010, speaks to patent issues originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We thought we’d seen all that Palm intended to reveal about the magical company-saving Pre at CES a few weeks back, but quality footage continues to roll in — and it just gets even better when it’s being shown off by an exec instead of your standard-issue PR type. Peter Skillman, Palm’s design VP, does the honors here with a 4-plus minute overview of some of the cooler things the Pre has to offer, including a demo of the Touchstone inductive charger at about 2:26 in (curious fact: it apparently uses the “same technology that are in gecko feet” to stick to the table). At the 2:06 mark, he puts down the Nokia N95 for looking like a post-apocalyptic industrial design nightmare of exposed hardware and mechanisms (our words, not his), which is kinda funny since we’d never really considered the N95 as a Pre competitor. Finally, he wraps up with a quick look at the Amazon music store starting around 3:19 — and at a first glance, it looks a heck of a lot prettier than the one we get on the G1. Not to say we’re going to let the prettiness of the store affect how much DRM-free music we buy. Wait, yes we are. See the full video after the break.

[Via PreCentral]

Continue reading Palm’s VP of design shows off Pre features, scoffs at N95

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm’s VP of design shows off Pre features, scoffs at N95 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While we were happy just to see pictures, Tom Conrad, CTO of Pandora, is one of the lucky few to have seen in action the innards of the software that keeps things moving on the Pre. He sat down with Palm Infocenter (on the wrong end of a zero-bar concall by the sounds) to talk details of webOS software development. Conrad clarified that, despite all apps being mixtures of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, webOS is more than just a big browser — it has direct access to local files and UI elements. However, he echoed the fears of others that this web-friendly programming interface won’t exactly be well suited for gaming, expressing hope that Palm will address this with integrated Flash support or some sort of a lower-level API to appease those who want to tap that OMAP processor directly. Hit the read link to hear the whole conversation yourself.

[Thanks, Jay]

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming

Pandora’s CTO talks about Pre, webOS development, gaming, and small children originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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