Palm Pre - Slated to be best smartphone yet. Period.

Palm makes a strong comeback with the announcement of their new Palm Pre smartphone with WebOS… Apple grunts and groans…

Could it better than a Blackberry Bold, a Windows Mobile Phone and an Apple iPhone? How could it better when it’s not even out? Because, if innovation can teach us one thing it’s that technology gets better over time, it progresses.

Two years ago we saw something special and that of course was the iPhone - one of the most innovative and breathtaking electronic devices to come out of the Cupertino campus. But now, Palm has a chance to impress developers and consumers with a slick new device whose operating system is far more important than the plastic shell around it.

The company that brought you the Palm Pilot is making a strong comeback with their new Palm Pre mobile smartphone bundled with the Sunnyvale, CA company’s new operating system known as webOS.

Palm has also managed to stir up feelings in the Apple camp with Apple CEO Tim Cook telling journalists “We will not stand for people ripping off our IP,” referring to Palm ripping their beloved iPhone’s UI and much more. Apple claims that their multitouch patent is just that - theirs. But competition is healthy, for the economy, for technology and for us - consumers. We want the best and coolest products and a major way companies achieve these results is through healthy competition. Whether they have copied the iPhone UI or not is a totally different matter.

For now, we’ll take a look at the phone, it’s underlying features, specifications, official Palm pictures and talk about application development for the phone. We wish Apple and Palm a fun time arguing over patents and who invented what. Both companies undoubtedly have lucrative patent portfolios. The fact that Apple is so upset and making noise before the phone has even hit the streets simply means one thing - this is the first phone that will compete head on with the iPhone and could perhaps take it down.

Please read the entire post, check out the Hi-Res photo gallery and click external links to the Palm Developers Site… after the break!

It’s been a busy year for smartphone manufacturers with 2008 bringing us Google’s G1 smartphone with Android backed by the Open Handset Alliance, RIM released their first ever touchscreen device, the BlackBerry “Storm” to disappointment and Apple continued pushing forward with the iPhone 3G. Let’s not forget Microsoft with their Windows Mobile pda platform running on a myriad of devices such as HTC portables.

The new Palm Pre gives you a 3.1-inch multi-touch display with a 320 x 480 resolution and a full QWERTY keyboard that slides out from the bottom. Of course, the phone features the common accelerometer sensor, widescreen browsing, and everything else that we first saw on the iPhone including a 3-megapixel camera, HSDPA (world-capable GSM version coming shortly after the initial launch), GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, 8GB internal memory and the latest mobile operating system - Palm’s new WebOS. The device comes with a MicroUSB port and Palm’s revolutionary wireless charger, the Touchstone.

WebOS is Palm’s new operating system aimed to be better and faster than anything the smartphone market has seen before. This is achieved through a high performance processor from TI and a Linux-based operating system. Of course, iPhone is based on OS X which is based on BSD Unix. What’s cool about WebOS is the fact that developers will be able to write applications that leverage local resources on the phone while still retrieving data from the network. The ability to access local resources and increase performance, response times and take advantage of bluetooth, GPS and other hardware has always been an advantage of the Java Mobile Platform (J2ME). Now, it’s coming to WebOS.

According to Palm, if you know knows Javascript, CSS, HTML and XML you can write apps without having to learn a new language - which is amazingly good news for a lot of developers out there that have to juggle many programming languages. The Palm Mojo Application Framework is not quite ready for developers andwill be available shortly

WebOS will also sport advanced memory management so that you can multi-task (ala listen to music while surfing the web while chatting with your buddies). Something impossible on the iPhone due to its under-powered ARM CPU. Thanks to the innovation over at Texas Instruments, the Pre uses TI’s High-Performance OMAP3430 65-nm cutting edge processor with leading multimedia, graphics, imaging and security never before seen on a mobile device. Check out TI’s OMAP3430 specifications at the end.

Palm’s new WebOS is a winner in many regards including responsiveness, ease of us, capability, multi-tasking, design and has set some high goals coming into the market.

Interacting with applications looks great and most interaction is done through shuffle gestures using the center button. With the high performance TI OMAP Processor WebOS is the ability to multi-task and switch between active applications. This will be a big feature for the phone as you can now surf the web, finish a quick SMS and listen to your favorite music all at the same time - big advance. All applications are treated like cards in a deck; you shuffle through them and using finger gestures move them out of the way or close them permanently.

A new synchronization tool known as Synergy grabs all of your Facebook, Outlook, MySpace and Gmail data and combines it in an intelligent way for your phone to display the info. Your friends’ AIM, Google talk or other chat status appears conveniently in the contact information for that person intelligently providing you with the data you need at the time. Palm has yet to release an emulator for the Pre much like T-Mobile did with the Google G1.

The PalmPre truly looks and feels like an amazing device. It is hands down the best smartphone we have ever seen or played with. Unfortunately our time was limited. The physical design of the phone feels great in the hand and the keyboard is truly a winning factor in todays Smartphone War. According to Gartner Research, 36.5 million smartphones “or handsets with computer-like features such as email,” were sold globally in the July-September quarter.

Having a keyboard has always been a major factor for smartphone users simply because typing a few dozen emails using a touchscreen is a pain.

Palm seems to have figured out how to combine the best we have seen in smart-phone devices over the years into one sleek and solid unit, but only time (and maybe a court hearing or two) will tell if the Pre will solidify its place in the community and the market.

Eventually, everyone will have flexible OLED devices and flying cars but until then, let’s embrace technology and innovation so that we can have cooler stuff to play with!

Click here to see TI’s High Performance OMAP3430 Processor for the Pre

Click here to go to the Palm Developer Site for the Palm Mojo Application Framework

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