Thursday, March 26, 2009

The Palm Pre

These are exciting times for Palm, the makers of the Palm Pilot.

Palm has been hard at work on the Palm Pre.


The Palm Pre is not *just* another mobile OS. This is mobile platform with features and underlying workings that do not exist on today’s mobile devices.

Apart from the standard list of features, the two that really stand out are:

- Multitasking
- Developing Apps in HTML and CSS!

Multitasking on a mobile device is a mean feat. Screens are smaller, form factors change, SLOW processing power, SLOW graphics and difficult input methods.

The Palm Pre multitasks apps like a deck of cards. Every card is an application and here’s where it gets even better, the STATE of the app you minimize is STORED and restored just like it was before the app was minimized. As an example, if you were composing an email message, you could minimize the compose window, then watch a movie and return to the email in the state it was left.

Developing apps in HTML and CSS consumes less dev time. No more fiddling with pesky SDK’s and learning a whole new API. Notepad or a HTML WYSIWYG tool is all that is needed.

For the last 10 years, a lot has been expected from Palm. Palm after all, has mobility built into its DNA. At a time where mobile devices didn’t do a lot apart from creating calls and a bunch of a few address book apps, the Palm Pilot was a Personal Device Assistant.

Palm Pre is slated for release in the first quarter this year. I do hope they release a GSM unlocked version too.

Palm has revisited the ideas and concepts that made Palm Pilot a success back in the day and engineered a modern WebOS platform that is ready for today and the future!

http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/