Palm announced their latest offering during CES 2009 – the Pal Pre smartphone with a completely new OS which they call the Web OS. Owing to this announcement, Palm’s stock shot up 34.85%.
In what is being touted as a significant announcement in the touchscreen smartphone arena, the Palm Pre challenges the competiton with the following features:
- 3.1 inch 480×320 screen
- Curved vertical slider for full QWERTY keyboard
- 3MP Camera with LED Flash
- EVDO rev.A, WiFi, bluetooth
- Gesture area on the screen for navigation
- Removable battery
- Micro USB with USB mass storage support
- 3.5mm Headphone Jack
- Wireless charger
Palm has developed a new platform called Web OS for the phone. The name itself suggests that the OS will be deeply integrated with the web.
The phone sports a nifty new feature called Synergy which can pull all your contacts and calendar events from Facebook, Gmail, AIM etc and organize them into a single list by eliminating duplicates. Synergy also lets you communicate with your friends over text, google talk or AIM all from the same window. Cool eh?
The UI is super cool and smooth. You can seamlessly switch from one application to another using your finger. There is also a gesture bar, which is the black surface under the screen, which you can use for navigational gestures. This lets you use the phone on the go easily as it is too difficult to reach the top of the screen while you are on the m,ve. You can also drag your finger up from the Gesture Bar to the screen, hold it for a second, and the wave dock will appear, making it easy to quick launch another app. They have also thrown in an accelerometer.
The phone has got a wireless magnetic induction charger called the touchstone.
The browser is based on webkit and hence renders pages well like the iPhone and Android’s browsers. There is an Amazon music store app which lets you purchase music online.
Palm has also launched the Web OS SDK in private beta. The App store equivalent is called the App Catalog and will let you purchase apps over the air just like Apple’s App Store.
And last but not the least – Palm Pre features copy/paste and MMS support – something the iPhone is still not able to deliver despite repeated requests from the user community.
It’s going to release the first half of 2009 on the Sprint network in the US, probably at a rumored price of $399.
[Via Gizmodo]
[Images from Gizmodo]
One response to “First Look: Palm Pre”
Not til the Palm Pre did I really fall in love with smart phones. It's a blackberry-iphone hybrid that is sleek as hell. Pls. I hope they sell this in Europe soon.