First impressions: The return of Palm – The Palm Pre

After pioneering a revolution in mobile devices like PDAs and smart phones, Palm, as of recent times, has found itself more and more out of the market due to stiff competition. Currently it is ranked fourth after the likes of Apple, Research In Motion(RIM) and Windows Mobile. All that is pretty much set to change if what Palm showed in CES lives up to its promise. And there is a high chance that it would.

Enter the Palm Pre. This is Palm’s latest entrant in the land of mobile devices, more specifically the smart phone segment. This segment is dominated by Apple and RIM. Even though Palm did have some success with its Centro, Treo and Treo Pro lines of phones, it was nowhere near to regaining the coveted leader position. With the Pre, Palm is pretty well set to pose a challenge that is serious enough to even topple the revered Apple iPhone.

If looks could kill or rather dethrone the iPhone, the Palm Pre has it. If functions and performance can poach users, the Pre has that. If coolness is such an important factor that entire cults grow around that, the Palm Pre is well equipped. The new design features a touch screen interface along with a slide out full keyboard. It sports Palm’s latest operating system the WebOS. The combination is stupendous.

The Pre is not only a pretty looking phone, but packs a mean punch too. There is innovation at its best coupled with legendary usability. Here’s a look at a few innovations that the Pre comes with.

Wi-Fi, GPS and email are standard on the Pre. The new Synergy system also allows a user to see all the conversations with a certain contact in a chat style. The universal search feature allows searching across contacts, Google, applications and even Wikipedia. Pretty cool, huh!

The Pre treats each running application as an activity card. Multiple applications can run in parallel and a user can switch between these running instances or activity cards with the mere flick of a finger. No longer do you have to close your email application to browse a web site. All notifications, like the ones for new messages, appear at the bottom of the screen and does not interrupt the user’s current activity. Quite nifty I say.

The calendar application in the Pre can show a combined logical view of calendars stored in Outlook, Google Calendar and Facebook. Also if a single contact is stored in different applications, they can all be linked together.

The browser is full featured and fast. It supports full HTML and has the now ubiquitous zoom and pan functions. Also all the applications installed on the phone are constantly updated via the internet. This gets rid of the rather dull “Update now” function.

Another innovative feature is the Touchstone wireless charging station with which the Pre can be recharged. The Pre attaches to the Touchstone device through magnets and remains in position without any cables or wires connecting the two. The phone can be used while charging.

The Plam Pre appears to be of fantastic value with the necessary looks and coolness. Check out the following gallery of images taken from the Palm website:

Here are the specs as detailed on Palm’s site and do not forget to watch the keynote presentation:
Carrier
Sprint
Operating system
Palm® webOS
Network specs
3G EVDO Rev A
Display
3.1-inch touch screen with a vibrant 24-bit color 320×480 resolution HVGA display
Keyboard
Physical QWERTY keyboard
Email
Microsoft Outlook® email with Microsoft® Direct Push Technology
POP3/IMAP (Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, etc).
Messaging
Integrated IM, SMS, and MMS
GPS
Built-in GPS
Digital camera
3 megapixel camera with LED flash and extended depth of field
Sensors
Ambient light, accelerometer, and proximity
Media formats supported
Audio Formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, AMR, QCELP, WAV
Video Formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264
Image Formats: GIF, Animated GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP
Wireless connectivity
Wi-Fi 802.11b/g with WPA, WPA2, 801.1x authentication
Bluetooth® 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support
Memory
8GB of user storage (~7.4GB user available)
USB mass storage support
Phone as laptop modem
Bluetooth tethering
Connector
MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
Headphone jack
3.5mm stereo
Palm® Touchstonecharging dock
Compatible
Dimensions
Width: 59.5mm (2.3 inches)
Height: 100.5mm (3.9 inches)
Thickness: 16.95mm (0.67 inches)
Weight
135 grams (4.76 ounces)

Android can beat Apple and the iPhone

The latest entrant in the sphere of mobile operating systems in Google’s Android. The OS has been received well by the mobile content development community and has been gaining steady momentum. T-Mobile’s G1 has also received very good reviews and some(including myself) have called it better than Apple’s iPhone. 

There are quite a few reasons that are in favour of Google Android. Here are a few:

• Android is open source and free to use and customize. This also makes it more attractive for adoption by a large number of mobile phone vendors.
• There are certain features in-built like cut-n-paste that are still to make their way into the iPhone. 
• Android apps are developed using Java that run on a specialized virtual machine. This aspect makes it attractive to a larger pool of developers than the iPhone.
• The Android Market has set policies that would let developers keep a majority share of the revenues earned through it. This is in contrast to Apple’s App Store policies.
• Google has promised to have very little control over the Android Market.
• Coming from Google, Android has the backing of a behemoth and top-notch quality is ensured.
• Being open source, community based development can introduce newer features to this operating system much faster than any other.

In fact Android adoption has seen a steady rise. From developers to mobile phone vendors everybody seems to be jumping on to the Android bandwagon. Here’s a list of few news item that come up on CNET.com when you search for Android in the news section:

• Kyocera joins Android phone bandwagon
• Google Android and Symbian to merge?
• Report: Motorola expanding Android team
• Coders get 70 percent of Android Market revenue
• MySpace’s Android application goes live
• Maverick puts Google Talk on Android G1
• Motorola preps its own Android phone
• Capitalism still alive: EA on Android games
• Google adds Android app for Flickr photos

It’s pretty clear that interest amongst developers and vendors is increasing with respect to Google’s Android. Amongst mobile phone vendors Kyocera, HTC, and Motorola are already on to it. It’s only a matter of time before a lot more follow this trend. If this continues, Android’s appeal would surely surpass that of the iPhone’s. 

So is Android the beginning of the end of Apple iPhone’s dominance in the smart phone segment?

Palm use Android, scrap Nova

Arguably Palm is considered to be the company that started the smart phone trend. Initially Palm was just a maker of hand-held computers or PDAs. Later they merged the PDA to the cell phone and thus was born the smart phone in the form of the iconic Palm Treo lineup. Ironically, even though global adoption of smart phones has increased over the years, Palm’s market share has seen a steady decline.

With more and more smart phone vendors offering PDA capabilities in their phones, Palm’s niche PDA market saw a steep decline. The company faced tough times and even sold off their software division. Later they re-acquired the same. For the past few years Palm is going through a very rough patch.

This is very surprising for a company that has a brilliant team of technical experts and who have in the past created superb products for the mobile professionals. To get back to a healthy state Palm even started making smart phones based on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform. Though this helped the company it did nothing to reinstate it in its former state of glory. Of late with the Centro smart phone, Palm saw some success. They followed it up very recently with the Palm Treo Pro that was received well by the consumers. However the Treo Pro was running on the Windows platform – not something with which you would expect to set the market ablaze.

For quite some time now, Palm has been reported to be working on its next generation operating system based on the Linux platform. Known as the Nova, its still away from seeing production by at least a year. The bigger question is would Palm’s fortunes turn around with Nova, now that we have multiple mobile operating systems in the market? Operating systems like Apple’s Mac OS, Nokia’s Symbian, etc. have gained a lot of popularity. RIM’s Blackberry is still supposed to be the be-all and end-all of smart phones. And the latest entrant in this field is Google with its Android operating system. 

So does it make sense for Palm to spend time and money after its Nova? Wouldn’t it be more prudent to just take Android and then work your magic on it? I sincerely believe that Palm should try to embrace Android. Not only is it backed by a powerhouse like Google, but it provides an extendible platform on which Palm can start building its next generation of applications. For Android Palm would not have to pay any licensing fees since its open source. 

Palm has the capability and the prowess to turn around by embracing the Android platform. The question is will it?

Google’s app store aka Android Market

Google’s mobile operating system Android has generated a lot of interest among developers. This was also helped to a large extent by Google’s Android challenge that resulted in a lot of applications being developed for the Android platform. It’s no secret that the HTC Dream or the T-Mobile G1 is going to be the first Android powered phone to reach the market. In a previous post, I had mentioned that whether or not the Android phone really poses a challenge to the iPhone would be determined by how Google is going to offer consumers applications for the phone. Well, looks like Google was listening and the answer comes in the form of the Android Market place.

The Android Market would be available in its beta version on the first handsets to hit the market. Through the software consumers can download new applications for their Android powered phones. The software will be in the YouTube style where developers can publish content easily. Google says that support for unpaid applications will be provided initially and later on a policy for supporting paid applications will be worked out.

Whether the Android Market will be as successful as Apple’s App Store will really be decided by how much developer interest is generated by Google. The least we can expect is that the more popular applications on the App Store would be replicated for the Android Market.

Google Android against the iPhone: An uphill task

Yahoo has rolled out a new mobile search site tailored to be used on Apple’s iPhones and iPods. In spite of growing number of problems being reported against the iPhone, the user acceptance of the device is unquestionable. iPhone is the undisputed king at present and it would take a huge effort to even pose a challenge to its position let alone dislodge it.

Many people are touting Google’s Android to be the next big thing with the potential of displacing iPhone from its venerated position. Surely its not going to easy though.

For starters, the number of iPhones that have been sold is in itself a record. Can any other phone, be it from Google or anybody else, really match that? The phone industry has been revolutionized ever since the iPhone was launched. Apple thinks differently and thinks for the users and that philosophy has been embodied in the iPhone. As of now, the iPhone seems to be the yardstick against which all other phones would be measured. Would the Google phone measure up to this high standard? This remains to be seen.

Apple’s iPhone has also got a lot of support. With companies like Yahoo, etc. offering customized offerings for the iPhone, the dominance is being further entrenched. With Mobile Me and the App Store, Apple has also strengthened its position. The controversies not withstanding, the App Store has registered record number of downloads. With the possible introduction of a subscription based iTunes in September, Apple is surely offering a whole lot of options for the users.

Google’s Android is surely facing a much tougher challenge when compared to what its search faced. The dominant search engine before Google was Yahoo. But the advantage that Google had was that Yahoo decided to bask in its glory of being the leader and did very little to further cement its position. Google took full advantage of that. But in Apple, Google has a more difficult opponent. Not only does Apple enjoy a huge fanbase but the company is always trying to improve its products.

The competition that Google would face in Apple would be something totally new for them. Going by Google’s credentials this should be a very keenly fought contest.