Unveiled at CES, the new Palm Pre turned lots of heads and shows much promise. From the early Treo 650′s, 700′s, 755′s, and 800w models, Palm has come a long way in almost completely redesigning their flagship phone. The older candy bar design has been ditched in favor of a vertical sliding design. Not only does this allow more screen space (3.1″ to be exact), it pleasantly hides the famous Palm keyboard. But wait, that’s not all! Palm not only hid the keyboard, they also made the phone slimmer overall. A Treo 755p comes in at 20.3mm thick, the HTC Touch Pro is 18.05mm thick, and finally, the Palm Pre comes in at only 16.95mm! While not as thin as the 12.3mm thick iPhone, a full hardware QWERTY keyboard is well worth the trade off.
Before I get into any more discussion of the new Palm Pre features, here are the specifications for the upcoming smartphone:
- High-speed wireless (EV-DO Rev. A or HSDPA, depending on version)
- 802.11b / g WiFi with WPA, WPA2, 801.1x authentication
- 3.1-inch 24-bit color 480 x 320 display
- Dedicated gesture area below display
- Slide-out portrait QWERTY keyboard (banana slider)
- Integrated IM, MMS, and SMS messaging
- Email: Microsoft Outlook with Microsoft Direct Push Technology
- POP3/IMAP (Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, etc). So it does push exchange email, but the rest is not push. Built-in GPS
- Bluetooth 2.1 EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support
- High-performance browser
- 3 megapixel camera with LED flash and extended depth of field
- 3.5mm headphone jack
- 8GB of internal storage (~7.4GB user available)
- USB mass storage support
- Phone as laptop modem – Bluetooth tethering
- MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
- Proximity sensor for detecting when phone is near face
- Light sensor to automatically dim display
- Audio Formats: MPS, AAC, AAC , AMR, QCELP, WAV
- Video Formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264 Image Formats: GIF, Animated GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP Ringer mute switch
- Removable rechargeable battery
- Width: 59.5mm (2.3 inches) Height: 100.5mm (3.9 inches) Thickness: 16.95mm (0.67 inches)
- Weight: 135 grams (4.76 ounces)
The Palm Pre’s design and display are amazingly stunning. The screen is finally flush with the rest of the phone instead of recessed like the previous Treos. Resolution was bumped up just a tad to 320 x 480, the same resolution as an iPhone. Not only was the resolution bumped up (up from 320 x 320 in the previous Palm Treos), but the color depth was increased as well. No more 16-bit, 65k colors. Say hello to vibrant, 24-bit, 16.7M colors! Photos and videos will surely look much better when viewed in 24-bit colors versus the 16-bit colors which are commonly found on most smartphones (HTC Touch Pro, previous Treos).
The entire Palm OS seemingly evolved into something much, much better than the aging PalmOS. This new version, dubbed the “Palm webOS”. If you’ve ever owned or played with a Treo, you know how “snappy” the PalmOS is. Nothing has come close to matching the “snappiness” of the PalmOS. Not Windows Mobile, not Android, and not iPhone OS. Here are some examples of what I mean by “snappy”. “Snappy” means that when you press your home key, you see your home screen without any lag (e.g. waiting for items on the home screen to populate). When you open a program, it does so quickly and does not take ages like in Windows Mobile. It even comes down to more subtle things, like scrolling through programs, opening documents, switching to the phone, receiving calls, etc. If the new Palm webOS is anything like the original PalmOS, expect to see great performance improvements. Not only that, but the webOS interface is completely new. You can finally multitask like a king and not lose track of where you are!
The new proximity sensor also looks pretty cool. How well this will be implemented depends on time; we’ll just have to wait and see. I can already see some developers making a motion detector application to utilize the proximity sensor. Bedroom security system anyone (lol)?
Standard 3.5mm headphone jack. FINALLY! Away with the useless 2.5mm jacks! You can finally use your regular (possibly high quality) headphones to listen to music instead of either having to use the crappy 2.5mm headphones, or having to use a degrading 2.5mm to 3.5mm converter. I’ll also note that H.264 support right out of the box is awesome and greatly appreciated!
Engadget speaks of a wireless charger, but there isn’t much information on it yet. Hopefully, it will work exactly the way it sounds, charge your phone wirelessly! If so, holy cow!
One of the only downsides I can find about the Palm Pre is the screen resolution. While it totes full 24-bit color support on a 3.1″ screen , it comes with a price of 320 x 480 HVGA resolution. Why, why, why can’t we have a VGA 480 x 640 screen?! From the pictures on Palm’s website, webpages and text seem to look fine in HVGA resolution, but you would have to see it in real life to get a good look.
It looks like the Palm Pre is going to be released only for Sprint, according to their website. Lots of people are anxious about its release after seeing the marvel at CES 2009. it will be interesting to see how the Pre stacks up against other smartphones once it hits the consumer market.
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