As you'll have seen from other Internet news sources, Palm have launched their long-awaited next generation platform and flagship, the 'Pre' [pronounced pree]. Having been propped up again and again by venture capital money, we've all been wondering what was there to keep the investors excited, and now we know. It's non-Symbian but very much of interest, see the details and comment below.
Read on in the full article.
The pre has the OMAP3430 as its CPU with PowerVR SGX 530 embedded GPU as part of the SoC. This is the first non-Japanese mainstream implementation of OMAP3 in a handset. Nokia take note!
looks very nice but if you're going to implement a slide out keyboard why not do so in landscape?
Is-a-nice!
Looks very nice. Let's hope their support is better than it has been in past; my wife's unlocked Centro (which is a very nice device BTW) still has the infamous "phone locks up when answering the phone" bug, which Palm seem unable or unwilling to do anything about...
@dougalzene
Palm's CEO said they decided on vertical slider as they didn't see much difference in usage/speed compared to horizontal.
webOS looks like it implements some of the things on my wishlist - centralised contacts with presence, unified messaging (I don't care what medium the message is sent over) - wrapped up in a sexy UI.
Even though they are producing a GSM version, it probably won't be out in the UK for a while though 😞
UI looks nice.
Can see the Android influcence on the top bar and the OSX dock influence at the bottom.
Or at least, that's what occured to me.
Multiple calendar layers sounds excellent. I really think that weak built-in PIM apps are going to lose Symbian market share.
After the Palm LifeDrive I vowed never to get another Palm again, it crashed everytime you actually wanted to do anything with it other than switch it on, actually it even crashed just switching it on sometimes. The worst part of it though was that the device was useless until you got back to your PC and restored the backup which took ages. Then you had the mess of some file types you had to convert on a PC first and some you could open directly etc etc.
I am sure the new platform is entirely different though?
I am a Nokia fanboy and very happy with my E71 but the new Palm OS touch UI rocks - all the good stuff from the iPhone plus real multi-tasking.
There are some vids of it in action over MobileBurn.
Finally some holistic approach to agenda, contacts and messaging... I can only hope that Nokia takes that approach too for the N97.
The new interface looks very nice, and the more competition in the smartphone world the better.
and the OSX dock influence at the bottom.
It reminded me of the buttons that used to be below the screen on classic Palm devices (and most other PDAs of the 1990s). Maybe OSX borrowed the look from Palm, and now Palm is taking it back? 😊
I suspect Psion were in there first with the old series 3 and it's app bar buttons below the screen? =)
Palm seems to have re-invented itself. The Zen of Palm lives again!
We should not under estimate the significance of the Pre. Unlike Apple, Palm will have multiple devices to sell. I think the iPhone and the G1 look very unsexy now when compared to the Pre. If we get Office and Exhchange email sync then the Pre will be the first device to cover all the needs from entertainment to business (it has A2DP and a battery you can replace unlike the iPhone).
Well, one area where both the iPhone and the Google Android G1 fail miserably at is in battery life.
If the Pre gets the same - or worse - battery life then it might as well be DOA.
It's gonna be hard for them to attract developers, though. There are too many competing platforms and it may (ironically enough) end up being bad for the end-user...
Nokia's market share will shrink even lower in the future...
Other manufacturers are already developing superior devices and software. What I don't understand, why does it take a super giant Nokia years upon years to bring something new to the market while a struggling company like Palm can make a new and innovative OS.
It will probably take Nokia 2 to 3 years to release OMAP 3 series on smartphones. Funny this CPU is not even mentioned by AAS in the PalmPre spec. Tech geeks deliberately missing out this detail? Nokia / Symbian bias?
Seems like my money is going elsewhere again.
Doesn't sound all that innovative to me. What does the new OS do that Symbian doesn't for instance?
Also your point about OMAP3 is irrelevant (and inaccurate in my opinion). What is it that Nokia's current phones cannot do that more CPU power would then allow for?
We've already got 3D graphics with and without hardware acceleration and video playback.
Just watch the demo starting 18 minutes into the Palm press conference.
The phone is designed to multitask with the best notifications system ever seen.
The apps themselves multitask. Can the symbian email program have multiple windows where one is listing the inbox, another reading an email and then another window reply a completely different email? Can symbian show multiple windows of different sms conversations?
The Pre completely integrate messages/contacts/calendering from multiple accounts and show as one. Does S60 do that?
Palm got the touch ui with the seperate gesture area and multiple cards concept dead on.
Looks good! Lets just see if the reality is as good as the promise.
Compared to what's on the market now, Symbian looks incredibly dated. Nokias hardware looks best in my eyes but their OS is so dull.
I don't care about Pre though. I don't use Gmail and Facebook and don't like it's hardware. I'm in the market for an E51 successor. Hope they haven't scrapped that Stella from their roadmap.
Nokia's market share will shrink even lower in the future...
"even lower"?
Nokia are at something like 35-40% of global phone sales, and they've more or less kept within that market share for the past five years. Their nearest rivals have always been on 10 - 20% at most (Apple is on something like 2%).
Other manufacturers are already developing superior devices and software.
Funnily enough, Nokia are also already developing superior devices and software, that's how the manufacturing business works. 😊
Compared to what's on the market now, Symbian looks incredibly dated
I think the widget desktop on the N97 looks pretty funky.
Funny this CPU is not even mentioned by AAS in the PalmPre spec. Tech geeks deliberately missing out this detail? Nokia / Symbian bias?
(sigh)
I have never EVER seen a Palm or Windows Mobile or iPhone site accused of bias because they fail to cover Symbian devices.
If AAS was somehow anti-Palm we wouldn't be covering the Pre at all, but we are covering it, and saying it looks quite nice. I think that makes AAS much less biased than your average smartphone site.
But that's not good enough for you, you think because we didn't talk about its processor too we must be being bribed by some anti-Palm conspiracy.
What IS it with all these accusations lately that AAS is getting paid by Nokia? What would you like us to do to prove we're an independent site?
AAS has nothing against Palm (or any other OS), in fact AAS used to run a sister site called All About Palm before the platform went into hibernation. And as I keep reminding people, the journalists on AAS also write about other platforms for sites that are about other platforms.
The reason AAS covers Symbian so much is because... shock horror... this site is called All About Symbian.
Tzer2 I think all the "fans" that doubt AAS integrity need an "audit" report to prove that there is no biasness...:con?
The apps themselves multitask.
This is a misuse of the term multi-tasking.
I believe you are refering more to tasks and data being more seemlessly integrated, which is something entirely different.
Can the symbian email program have multiple windows where one is listing the inbox, another reading an email and then another window reply a completely different email? Can symbian show multiple windows of different sms conversations?
For a start, there is no such thing as 'the Symbian email program'. That aside, the messaging application doesn't show these different views because it wasn't designed to, in the same way that any application can only display content in the way it was designed. There is nothing to stop an email application being written which has any number of windows that one so desires.
The Pre completely integrate messages/contacts/calendering from multiple accounts and show as one. Does S60 do that?
Unregistered wrote:Can the symbian email program have multiple windows where one is listing the inbox, another reading an email and then another window reply a completely different email? Can symbian show multiple windows of different sms conversations?
One of many things I miss from Series 80..
Well, one area where both the iPhone and the Google Android G1 fail miserably at is in battery life.
As for the iPhone, it very much depends on what you do with it. For instance, music playback will last forever... My E90 would need at least two full charges to keep up. Overall, on 'average use' the iPhone is good for 3 days easily. My N95 8GB would only last two days with the same use.
Dynite is right, the Symbian OS itself does allow those things, it's just the built-in Messaging application on Nokia phones is rather old-fashioned. There's nothing to stop companies writing properly integrated messaging and mail apps on Symbian.
That's why a lot of people have turned to third party S60 mail applications such as ProfiMail, though Nokia is now catching up with its own updated apps that are designed to replace Messaging.
The original reason why Messaging didn't do multiple windows etc was probably the physically small screens that S60 devices had, as they were more phones than PDAs. However the new bigger screen touch-based S60 devices should offer a lot more design options for SMS and mail clients.
Tzer2 I think all the "fans" that doubt AAS integrity need an "audit" report to prove that there is no biasness...
They would just claim the auditors were being bribed by Nokia... 😊
It's the same sort of paranoid witch-hunt logic that Senator McCarthy used to use: assume everyone is against you, and when they deny it you must assume they're lying.
Seriously, anyone who thinks we're some kind of extension of Nokia's marketing department needs to read AAS's reviews more closely. Every single one of them highlights the failings of devices as much as their successes (and absolutely every device from every manufacturer does have notable drawbacks).
For instance, music playback will last forever...
Pretty much all these new gen devices have massive playback times, the 5800 is rated at 37 hours (I think) and even the cheapo 5320 has 24 hours so at a couple of hours music a day you'd be listening for weeks (though the charge would probably leak out anyway if you wait that long). Apparently the dedicated audio hardware in newer phones helps to reduce the power drain of music player software.
Tzer2 wrote:Dynite is right, the Symbian OS itself does allow those things, it's just the built-in Messaging application on Nokia phones is rather old-fashioned.
It's funny how the Series 80 Messaging application was so much more advanced than its 'old-fashioned' successor... 😉
Tzer2, that's exactly what I'm saying. The default messaging program, it doesn't do those things. (Actually does any S60 client do it?)
On a desktop computer u can open up a zillion emails. But the built in symbian email/sms clients were designed in mind to INLINE do 1 thing at a time. Another one, if you open up a file from the symbian file manager, well you've basically locked it up. The file opens inside the file manager yet u can't run a second instance of file manager to look up something else. Quickoffice, you can't open up multiple files at the same time. (u can cheat by using file manager to open file 1 while u use quickoffice to open file 2)
Most symbian apps are very linear and inline in usage and design. This approach worked when as Tzer2 said but things change.
Suppose symbian/developers rewrites the apps. Well now you need a better way to manage & switch between whats open and once again Palm shows the way.
Dynite, if you watch the their CES press conference, you'll see what their multi account integration means. And its so clear they designed their apps/os with multitasking in mind.
Another one. Suppose you open up 3 web pages inside the s60 webbrowser and u switched away to do something else. Well holding the menu key only shows you got one web browser open but u can't directly switch to a specific one of the opened web pages as u got to switch it inside the web browser program.
It's interesting to see that Palm, whose main claim to fame was to have a totally non-multi-tasking OS, are now being held up as the paragons of multi-taskng...
I suspect the restriction on the number of windows which Nokia Messaging opens is based on the same philosophy as only allowing Web to open one window (unless you use some workarounds), that is, to prevent stablity issues due to memory limitations; however, as S60 phones are being shipped with ever larger amounts of RAM and Internal Memory, these restrictions are starting to look both outdated AND unnecessary.