Palm Unveils Palm Pré running Palm WebOS
Today at CES, Palm is celebrating its comeback by showcasing a spanking new device called Palm Pré and a new OS called WebOS. The device will be available on Sprint network at launch scheduled for 1H09 and other networks for later.
The OS seems to be very responsive, intuitive, eye-candy graphics and tons of innovative features. The “desktop search” like feature allows to enter few letters and the results come back immediately (contact, calendar, program, etc.) it it can not find locally, the device then offers to go to the Web (Google, Wikipedia, etc..) to look for the keyword. The browser seems to be very fluid with thumbnails displayed of the most frequent visited sites (Chrome-like). The Webkit based browser auto-rotate features built-in but I am wondering how to enter data in landscape mode. The keyboard is for portrait mode use only. No answer about Flash support.
Palm also announced tied partnership with Facebook, Pandora, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, AOL, Fandango. However there were no pricing, App store, media store (Amazon?) nor SDK announced. From Palm: “Any web developer can use CSS, HTML, and JavaScript to develop applications for the OS” but again no word about compatibility with app written for PalmOS.
One last thing: The Palm Pré has an innovative wireless charger called TouchStone that lets you charge by setting it on the paperweight-like charger. No cord. (very cool).
Quick specs
- 3.1-inch, 320 x 480, multi-touch display. Half-VGA
- Below “gesture area.” allows manipulating data, photos, etc., without the need of touching screen
- Accelerometer, proximity, ambient light
- EV-DO Rev. A,
- WiFi 802.11b/g
- 8GB storage
- GPS,
- Bluetooth stereo (A2DP)
- Texas Instruments latest processor TI OMAP3430
- 3-megapixel camera with flash.
- removable battery
- Slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
- Sync with Exchange (incl. OTA)
[Source Palm Blog]
No comments yet.