CES 2009: Palm Pre smartphone with new webOS announced
9 Jan 2009 | CES , CES 2009 , Palm , Smartphone | 10 comments
CES 2009 - Maybe the biggest surprise at the 2009 CES is the announcement made by Palm. After the failed attempt to launch a laptop companion thing for your smartphone (yes, the Foleo), Palm attempts to get back into the game with their newly announced smartphone called the Palm Pre.
Likey any other phone announced in the last year or so, it highly resembles the iPhone design, except that unlike the iPhone, its 3.1-inch (480x320 pixel) touchscreen slides up to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard. It is also ergonomically curved, just like the Sony Ericsson Xperia to give you extra comfort while writing.
Other features include a 3 megapixel camera with LED Flash, micro USB, 3.5mm headphone jack, EVDO, WiFi, 8GB of internal storage, GPS, Bluetooth and the feature I've been craving for a very long time, a wireless charger! Awesome.
The Palm Pre runs on a newly created platform called webOS, an operating system designed to be used with a touchscreen-baed graphical UI. It comes equipped with a number of apps and it uses technologies such as XHTML, CSS and JavaScript, so that's all you need in order to created applications for this device. The Pre will be the first smartphone to use the webOS.
The Palm Pre will be launched in the first half of 2009 on the Sprint network. Pricing was not revealed, but don't expect this thing to be cheap.
~ 10 comments ~
ok, this is sweet! But how does wireless charging work exactly?
magnetic induction - same way electric toothbrushes do it
Really happy for Palm. They deserve this after the stupid Foleo.
I'll probably get one if the price isn't too high.
Idk. With the pricing of the sporm,iphone, and omnia @ $200 and the dare and instinct @ about $130, the palm pre might be affordable! Let's hope for $200!
This phone looks sick! I cant wait to get it :)
this phone is the best thing on sprint ima be the first one to get it !!!!!
I'm a bit concerned about a phone with a relatively unknown operating system. At least with a Windows Mobile based device, you know you can add and install a variety of additional third party applications without major compatability problems. I enjoy customizing my smartphone and getting it to do the things I specifically need it to do. It would be unlikely to do that with this phone and the WebOS Operating System since any applications will be proprietary and cost a significant amount of money.
I am intrigued by the description of the features associated with the Palm Pre, esp. the WebOS platform. I do agree that additional apps may be proprietary to Palm. If Palm want to compete with the Windows Mobile on the application level, they should offer downloadable apps like windows for little or no cost.
I just hope you folks are looking at the restrictions for some of those 'fancy' features that the Palm Pre offers. At least I'm glad I did. If you're gonna buy this phone outside of the USA, you better make sure you're hooked up with a pretty good service provider.
Overall, I feel positive that the phone will make an impact with good marketing on its side and user feed back. Let's hope the bugs are discovered and fixed b4 I decide to buy one somewhere down the line.
Sprint sucks, so won't get the phone....phone looks good.
the camera has a flash ? and is the little silver button on the botton like the one on the iphone that takes you to the main screen ?