Yesterday Sprint announced that they too will carry the Google Nexus One. This makes it one of the few smartphones you can get on all 4 US networks with no real variation (and maybe the only one that’s not a Blackberry). There’s no announced date and price, so we’re going to have to wait and see.
PreCentral is reporting that their sources in the developer community have confirmed that the upcoming WebOS update 1.3.5 will remove the worst “feature” of WebOS: The App Limit.
As it stands, if you have a Pre without any kind of app limit extender (like the brilliant FairDinkum, now built int PreWare), you can’t install more than 253 MB. Back in the PalmOS days this wasn’t awful (especially since most of us ran our apps off SD/Micro/Mini), but in the “App Age”, it’s unforgivable.
It looks like Palm finally got the memo.
Will this spur developers to churn out more apps? Who knows? All we care about is that now we won’t have to chose *which* fart app to install. Woohoo.
(Seriously though, get me Documents2go for Pre and Flash and I’m all set. Thanks Palm).
IDC, a Market Research firm, has issued their regular report on the top selling smartphones. The period in question is the 3rd Quarter of 2009 and no-one should be surprised to hear that the iPhone is on it twice. There’s one Android phone on it, the MyTouch3G, but that debuted in the 3rd quarter, as I recall, so not such a shock. The Hero, Moment, Driod etc are all 4th quarter devices, so we’ll have to wait and see.
The Pre made a surprising showing, moving from 8th most popular in Q2 to 6th in Q3. A good sign, but as noted, a lot of new phones came out in Q4, so don’t be surprised to see it get knocked off the list entirely.
A bigger surprise is number five, the Blackberry Storm. That’s right, no II. It’s interesting that with all the vitrol heaped on this device online, it still outsold the Pre, MyTouch, and came up right behind the iPhone3G.
Not surprising is the lack of WindowsMobile devices, as all the new stuff came out in Q4. The rest of the list is utterly dominated by Blackberries, both old and new.
We’ll be keeping an eye out for that 4th Quarter report to see if the Driod really was a gamechanger….
In the seemingly never-ending war to see who can price the Palm Pre cheaper, Amazon has now dropped the Pre to 80 dollars with no activation. This scuppers our commentor yesterday’s enthusiasm for Amazon’s $25 Pixi price.
Sure, these are just for new activations, but with deals like these and the ones at PreCentral, why would *anyone* get a Pixi when a Pre isn’t much more?
It’s gotten the the point where I’m half expecting a Black Friday announcement of the Pixi as a free phone with activation.
In the meantime, consumers are turning out to be the real winners in this…
Clutching onto my Nokia E71 (one of the 3 cell-phones I use on a daily basis) I just read on Mashable how Nokia announced the slow phasing out of S60 for the iPhone / Android competing opensource-asized Maemo. The phase out is expecting to occur on all Nokia Smart Phones by 2012.
Could Symbian really not shape up and build a killer touch phone OS the way Palm did? I mean if Palm could do it… maybe Maemo is the hiatus they will need.
Stan at Mashable was a bit bold indeed when he said S60 is not good enough. For what it is it is very good. I often feel a sense of ease when using it on my E71. But he is right, it is no flashy Android iPhone killer. If Stan is right in reporting that Symbian will remain the main platform for E-Series devices that makes sense. I have friends that work in regular corporate jobs who runaway screaming when it comes to using an Android or iPhone like device for work… its just to much, to distracting and not capable of dealing with the fast blackberry like pace of business as usual.
But Stan also makes a good point. “While we’re thrilled to see more Nokias on the powerful Maemo platform, running two mobile smarpthone OSs and two separate app stores will definitely cause confusion to the customers.” From a branding perspective he is correct.
Nokia can lessen the confusion a bit if they market it well. Symbian as a business like device, Maemo for everything else.
But the larger question here in the US is, does anyone care. I mean, I am a Nokia fan boy that for the most part does not use a Nokia (my main phone is still the iPhone). I am still convinced that as far as phones go, Nokia builds the best of them…I mean a majority of the world cell phone users cannot be wrong. But the question remains, will Americans pick up the Maemo lingo like they have picked up “Android” and “Windows” and “Palm” and “iPhone.” Or will these just remain fancy and expensive Nokia’s. It seems these days the Operating System is king, so they better hope not.
It’s interesting how married to Operating Systems people can become. My first computer was an Apple IIGS, but then we swiftly moved to Windows. I used to join in deriding Macs, then I got one. Mac OS, especially 10 and up, became my OS of choice. However, I still used Windows (and occasionally Linux) on a daily basis. I’m basically platform agnostic. A platform is a tool, and the one that works best for you is the best… for you. There is no perfect platform for everyone, for computer or phone.
I mention this because of discussions I’ve been having with some fellow techies. This week I finally broke down and bought a Pre. The reactions from my iPhone, WindowsMobile and Blackberry using friends (Sort of sad, but I don’t personally know a single Android user – no I’ve never met Justin) were almost comical in their predictability. I even got complaints about the Pre from a fellow Pre owner… because he’s really a Blackberry user. I’m not saying they’re wrong – I’m just saying the Pre is closer to my “ideal” phone than most of those other options (In fact, I recalled a doodle I drew ten years ago and it resembles the Pre to the point of scariness).
Every phone does its job in one way or another and every phone does it for someone. The cell market is really big enough for everyone. So how about we all just calm down and let people find the right solution?
So, why is the Pre my “perfect phone” (so far, anyway?)? Click the read link and find out.
[Warning – this thing is a fricking essay. I clearly have no life.] (more…)
Holy cow, what a week. Every time Mordy or I sat down to write a post, something else happened. I’m going to try to condense it all into one week, going by topic. Bear with me: (more…)
As many of us know, Apple announced a new iPhone, the 3GS, within days of the Palm Pre’s launch. The release was widely believed to be rushed out the door to steal some of Palm’s thunder since the Pre seems to be treading on all sorts of Apple’s turf (syncing with itunes comes to mind).
The primary difference between the iPhone 3G and the new 3GS is the speed of the CPU and graphics. Most of the time, end users won’t notice any performance difference (the platform was already pretty speedy), however this speed boost is planned to spark a whole new set of high end games, further pushing the iPhone platform as a gaming device.
Ready for the irony? ZodTTD, developer of PSX4all (an app that plays full-blown Playstation games on mobile devices), has just released a Palm Pre version of his game platform to follow up his version for the iPhone 3GS. And you know what? The Pre version outperforms the iPhone 3GS!
I, for one, find this rather disappointing for Apple. Its bad enough that many iPhone fans are already dismissing the 3GS as not substantial enough of an upgrade to renew- but it turns out that new customers who want top notch game performance might also now dismiss the 3GS (the Pre’s keyboard may prove more useful for game controls as well).
Which begs the question- what demographic is the 3GS for? Is it simply for people who want 32GB of storage?
I’m not really concerned for Apple, however- I’m certain that there are enough fans out there who will buy the 3GS. I’m just underwhelmed.
Here are some interesting things from DigitalLook, but not exactly interesting enough to be their own article (no offense to the vendors, who were all awesome)
Note that I do have photos, but I seems to be mangling the photo functions of the blog, so I will be holding off on adding them. (more…)
Well, the Pre’s release day came and went. If you haven’t been following the press (read: bloggers), the initial impressions are rather promising… however, the inter-webs are full of the standard nitpicking and critics that follow any large-scale launch (anyone remember when early iPhone 3G adopters claimed the battery life would keep it from getting off the ground?).
In fact, ifixit.com has already dissected theirs and shared the images and initial impressions. The hardware is decent, but the OS is what will ultimately save Palm as a company (Quote: “WebOS is so cool! We love how natural it feels to swipe between applications and multitask with Web, Twitter, AIM, and Pandora”).
Of course, it will be hard to win over any Apple fans. Most of them are still holding their grounds with the claim that the iPhone is still the superior platform.
User impressions aside, how did this release effect Palm as a company?
Industry analysts are hesitantly calling the launch a success, with an approximated 50,000 units sold. While that’s a good, healthy number, you have to remember that Apple sold a whopping 146,000 in their opening weekend, nearly 3x as much as Palm. The difference, according to insiders, is that Palm didn’t have the stock to sell more phones than that… “You can’t sell 100k+ phones if you don’t have 100k+ phones to sell.”
In fact, many people who waited in line for their Pre were turned away when store after store ran out of stock.
The bottom line here, is that it may not have taken off with as big of a bang as the iPhone, however it IS doing relatively well all things considered. Only time will tell where it goes from here.
What makes Palm’s stance so uncertain, however, is that there is a planned announcement this afternoon from the Apple camp, with many claiming a new iPhone will be announced. Palm’s thunder may be stolen before they have a proper chance…
Well, the Pre’s release day came and went. If you haven’t been following the press (read: bloggers), the initial impressions are rather promising… however, the inter-webs are full of the standard nitpicking and critics that follow any large-scale launch (anyone remember when early iPhone 3G adopters claimed the battery life would keep it from getting off the ground?).
