Yesterday was my first post and I basically described this blog as a place where I’ll post my condo related purchases. But today I’m more interested in talking about my next cell phone purchase and it’s my blog so I’ll do it and you’ll like it.
My next cell phone will be the Palm Pre. The Pre is a new smart phone designed by a dying company to compete in a saturated market with well established rivals (Blackberry, Apple, Windows Mobile). And you know what? I’m pretty sure Steve Jobs and Bill Gates pissed themselves a little bit after seeing this phone.
And here’s why…Palm’s been working on this “new” phone since 2007. Unlike HTC and Blackberry (both of whom came out with crappy touch phones), Palm didn’t try to assimilate an existing operating system into a touch screen capacity phone- like apple, they developed a new operating system meant to be used by a touch screen phone. That distinction is HUGE, and this Apple approach to doing business isn’t a coincidence. Palm, in a very Bill Gates I’m-gonna-buy-up-the-world move that I’m surprised Microsoft didn’t do before, went out and hired Apple’s best tech guys to run their company. The biggest and most influential hire happened back in ’07 when Palm, in the steal of the freakin century, poached Jon Rubinstein away from Apple. While you may have never heard of him you definitely know his work, scan the Wikipedia copy and paste job below:
“Steve Jobs charged Rubinstein with coming up with a portable music player on a rushed, 8-month timetable.[10][11] It was Rubinstein who recognized the utility of the iPod’s key technology, the tiny, 1.8-inch hard disk drive on which music is stored; he came across it while on a routine visit to Toshiba.[10] Engineers there had developed the drive, but were not sure how it could be used.[10] It was Rubinstein who assembled and managed a team of hardware and software engineers to ready the product.[12]
The team’s engineers needed to overcome a number of hurdles, including figuring out how to play music off a spinning hard drive for more than 10 hours without wiping out a battery charge.[12] Rubinstein’s production contacts proved invaluable, too; the iPod’s sleek, minimalist design, with its high-gloss, engraveable metal back, was a mass-manufacturing triumph.[11]
The success of the first-generation iPod was almost overnight.[14] The business became so important to Apple that the iPod was ultimately spun off into its own division, which Rubinstein took over.[10]
For those of you that skipped the above section Wikipedia says Rubinstein is a geek god. But Rubinstein couldn’t do it by himself so he went out and hired most of Apple’s iPod and Iphone division- the most significant hire being Paul Mercer. Mercer is the dude that developed the iPod interface. The point I’m making here is that this phone and its operating system is the product of two years of development by Apple’s top guys. Palm was being run out of business and in that desperation they went out and basically stole from Apple.
Ok, so now that you know why the Palm Pre isn’t just another in a long line of iPhone wannabes let’s talk about the phone itself. The new OS is called WebOS and as the name implies, it’s constantly connected to the web. Your contacts, calendars, and lord knows what else are pulled and organized (without duplicates) from your various internet sources (gmail, facebook, outlook, etc.). So let’s say you use gmail for your email, facebook to keep in touch with friends, outlook for work and calendar, and google as a secondary personal calendar- this phone will automatically take the phone number you have for a contact, add that persons email address from your gmail account, add the profile picture plus any other contact info given on facebook, and then compile all of that info for each person in one place. Let’s face it, while outlook and gmail and facebook all give the user the ability to compile all of a persons contact info in one place, no one ever actually does that?!? Palm recognized this and found a solution anyway. Brilliant.
And, unlike the iPhone the Pre allows for true uninhibited multitasking. Other than a few core apps such as the phone and iPod player, the Iphone requires it’s users to completely close out one application in order to use another. The Pre, by use of an ingenious ‘card’ system allows users to move back and forth between however many applications they want while the other apps just run in the background.
AND the phone has a tactile keyboard. I know the iPhone touch keyboard is by far the best touchscreen keyboard in the business, but it will never ever ever ever measure up to a tactile keyboard and Palm gives you one.
Other features include an App Store, itunes recognition (the phone syncs with iTunes), multi touch browser (like the iPhone), wireless touchstone charger (yes you read that correctly), and some other features that are pretty standard with most smart phones.
I’m a huge fan of the iPhone, in fact, I’m a huge fan of all Apple products and this phone may as well have been made by Apple. Palm stole Apple’s top guys and gave them 2+ years to come out with something better and by all accounts they may have just done that. The phone comes out June 6th on Sprint, I suspect other carriers will have a version of the Pre shortly thereafter. After I get the phone I’ll post a much shorter follow up review on my thoughts.
