It was just about a couple of years back when you mention Palm and smartphones images are straight away locked in your head and not the hottest commodity in the world - palm oil. If you’re a little more attentive to gadgetry, Treo means something to you. From then on, Palm slipped into the deepest market share pit and took them years to climb up. This time, they just might climb up and probably be fighting with current giants like RIM and Apple for the smartphone segment. Palm Pre, before even being put on the shelf, had pumped Palm stock up $1.15, or 35 percent, to $4.45. Nothing near the $14 mark which was 2-years ago, but its a good start.
“Our intention was never to build an iPhone killer but to build a killer Palm product,” - Mr. Rubinstein, Executive Chairman of Palm
In Vegas yesterday, Palm unveiled a sleek new smartphone, the Pre, on Thursday and an exclusive partnership with Sprint to distribute it. The touch-screen device and the new operating system inside it, WebOS, break new ground in the fiercely competitive smartphone market. The phone’s selling points include an emphasis on fast Web browsing and efficient multitasking. While MacOS has been 8-years old while Blackberry, over a decade, WebOS offers an innovative technology and could offer more than the other two, as Palm executives claim.
Connections
Nothing is concrete for now, but the new Palm Pre promised to offer a fast internet browsing and responsive phone control through its spanking new WebOS. It has GPS, supports most network like the 7.2 Mbps HSUPA connection, EDGE, wifi with 802.11 b/g protocol. Of course, it supports all email protocols (POP3, IMAP, PUSH)
Multimedia
The camera is a cool 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash. It supports various sound (MP3, AAC, AAC+, WAV, AMR) and movie playback (MPEG4, H.263, H.264). All this can be clearly seen through its 3.1″ (480 x 320 pixel) screen with 16-million colors.
iPhone Killer
It has everything that an Apple iPhone has including the cool factor. But what makes it better is it has a comprehensive full QWERTY keyboard, stylus and finger touch inputs which makes it one up as compared to iPhone virtual keyboard only.
Verdict
We’re yet to see the actual thing run live and how consumer accept it. For a new OS, developer support is very important to grow. By grow, I mean new application that users love to use which translates to revenue. Its hard to see beyond this as developers are used to Windows Mobile and iPhone which has been here for ages and more important generate millions already.
But the iPhone needs a killer and this time, it looks promising for Palm. Of course, it could be a major turn off as a contract with Sprint is in the line which means, again, users can’t really choose. iPhone fanboys, please don’t skin me just yet.
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