Palm's Pre Goes a Step Further Than the iPhone

A year and a half ago, Palm (PALM) bet its future on its new operating system and the phones that go with it. After an extended development period, Thursday in Vegas, the company finally showed its hand.

To a boisterous CES crowd mixed with people harboring both high expectations and some expectations of failure, the company revealed webOS and the Pre handset. The 8GB phone comes loaded with GPS and WiFi. It has a 3.1inch screen and a 3 megapixel camera. The user interface is fully touch-enabled, working with gestures and point contact. It also hosts a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

Unlike some smartphones which resemble clunky, iPhone clones, the Pre looks sleek and attractive. At 3.96 inches by 2.35 (.67 thick) it’s slightly smaller than Apple’s (AAPL) ground breaker, though a bit thicker due to the slide out keyboard (see comparison chart. Article follows after.).

	Palm Pre	iPhone 3G	B.B. Storm		T Mobile G1
Length	3.96in	4.5in	4.43in		4.6in
Width	2.35in	2.4in	2.45in		2.16in
Thickness	.67in	.48in	.55in		.62in
Weight	4.76in	4.70oz	4.8oz		5.6oz
Screen Size	3.1in	3.5in	3.25in		3.2in
GPS	yes	yes	yes		yes
WiFi	yes	yes	yes		yes
Camera	3 MP	2 MP	3.2MP		3.2MP
Storage	8GB	8GB or 16GB	1 GB plus microSD Card	192MB RAM, 256MB ROM, plus SD Card Expansion

In a tip of the hat to Apple (where Palm’s Jonathan Rubinstein earned his stripes building the iPod line) and the company’s magnetic power cables, the Pre goes a step further. It can be recharged with a wireless magnetic charger (sold separately). It also supports a USB mini-cable.

Inside the case, the Pre is loaded with technology. A proximity sensor is set up to disable the touchscreen and turn off the display when the phone gets close to your face. To save power, an ambient light sensor can monitor the environment and dim the display to save power in a dark room. Like the iPhone, an accelerometer measures movement and reorients the display from horizontal to vertical as needed.

While the hardware is slick – polished enough to measure up with other high end smartphones – the fate of Palm and the Pre (which, given the stakes, seems aptly pronounced "pray") lies with the software. Palm’s calling the OS a “new kind of platform” and CEO Ed Colligan is pledging “game-changing simplicity.” In a press conference, he said the pair will "redefine the center of your access point to the internet."

Some of the features are indeed innovative and brilliantly simple in their result. Contacts, for example, are automatically linked across multiple accounts. Synergy, as Palm is calling this feature set, can seamlessly integrate and synch address books across accounts from Outlook (Exchange supported), Google, Facebook or elsewhere. The same is true for email aggregation.

Calendars too are designed for cross-usage integration. A Pre owner will be able to maintain separate calendars for home, personal or professional events. When desired, the OS can “layer” these to view on one calendar, or it can keep them separate.

Other features include the ability to run multiple applications simultaneously, integrate instant messaging and text messaging displays, full multimedia integration (including support for album cover art and browsing), and a faster “desktop grade” browser that will handle most web coding standards (CSS, HTML, XML), Flash excepted.

The Pre is scheduled to be available first in the United States exclusively in the first half of 2009. Initially, Sprint (S) will have it exclusively. At a later date, a world-ready UMTS version will also be available. Sprint’s pricing hasn’t been determined.

Palm’s financial health has fallen precipitously while the company’s worked to develop the new systems. In the second quarter, Smartphone sell-through was down 13 percent year over year to 599,000 units. Smartphone revenue was down 39 percent to $171.0 million. Adjusted EBITDA (Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) for Q2 totaled a loss of $55.8 million. Palm raised extra capital from Elevation Partners to help carry the company forward through the delivery of the new OS and phone.

The stakes for the company are unquestionably high. It will take some time to determine if the Pre and OS will be significant enough to restore the company’s fiscal wellbeing, and bring back market share lost in recent years to Apple and RIM’s (RIMM) innovations. The smartphone market is highly competitive. But if the measure of a phone is features others will likely copy, at first glance, the new Palm OS does impress and the Pre is off to a sound start.

Comments

[rd4sndk:]

I look for Palm to be bought out by HP, Dell or MS. This has to be their only hope and they have a good chance. Buying Palm now could earn you a handsome return when the purchase is announced.

Jan 09 05:29 AM

[Sachin:]

as of now it seems to be a good iPhone competitor but as rightly said "Apple was also not sleeping all these months".

Jan 09 06:17 AM

[RK:]

The world already has Symbian, OS X, Android, RIM, Win mobile. That is 5. The new Palm OS makes it 6. This cannot last. I see only 3-4 standing at the end. OS X, Win mobile, and Android would be my bet due to they are funded by deep deep pocket companies.

Jan 09 09:22 AM

[FreeRange:]

Nothing new in this phone. This is not a game changer and will not save this dying company. It may be a new OS, but it cannot compete with the cross platform integration of the iPhone, or the Apple ecosystem of desktop, cloud and phone/hand held computer.

Jan 09 10:10 AM

[Zoltan L. K...:]

Has anyone tested the Pre? How is the user experience, stability, etc.?
The slide out keyboard could make it easy to break. Its design doesn't look very revolutionary (a bit like older Nokia models). Does it have MMS or just a link to pics?

Jan 09 11:42 AM

[jmmx:]

Sounds really nice, and I wish them well. It looks like they have done a great job.

The one thing it will never have, however, is the Apple “ecosystem.” Also, when the next iPhone comes out the graphics will be astounding!

So it will have its followers, but it will remain 3rd tier - in the “others” category. I agree with RK, it should narrow down to 3 or 4 OSes: iPhone (probably redone as full or mini version of OSX), Android will be second because it is Linux based. Then there will be one or two from [Symbian, Win] I really don't think there is room for others.

Jan 09 12:40 PM

[User 334767:]

I've done a comparison on how Pre stands to Nokia N97 read at
senseapplied.com/index.../

Jan 10 11:29 AM

[F. J. Taylor:]

Ho-Hum! Yet another would-be "iPhone killer" - YAWN!

This device, while it has some positive features, is nothing new or different or game-changing (unlike iPhone). It is merely another wannabee "skating to where the puck is" and owes any of its virtues to Rubenstein (formerly Apple, as noted), whereas Jobs and Apple follow Gretsky's maxim of "skating to where the puck is going to be."

I wouldn't be bothered with a Palm device, even if I didn't LOVE my iPhone so much. I have had minus zero interest in them since they bought out Treo and quit developing it for Mac. I had a Tungsten for a while and was NOT impressed. I ended up giving it away.

Jan 10 09:47 PM

[bryanz:]

RK makes a good point... Look at the desktop OS mix. There's Windows, OS X, and Linux... much beyond that and you're not just niche, you're uber-niche. And the other OS's are all pretty well established.

Another point I saw brought up was whether or not the WebOS would be backwards compatible with Palm's previous apps. A lot of people who are hanging onto their Palm Pilots would probably love to upgrade to a 21st century device, but if they don't take that into consideration they'll probably upset some of their most loyal customers.


On Jan 09 09:22 AM RK wrote:

> The world already has Symbian, OS X, Android, RIM, Win mobile. That
> is 5. The new Palm OS makes it 6. This cannot last. I see only 3-4
> standing at the end. OS X, Win mobile, and Android would be my bet
> due to they are funded by deep deep pocket companies.

Jan 10 10:56 PM

[KenC:]

For some reason your headline and your story don't seem to match. I read the story to find where the Pre is a "step further" than the iPhone and didn't see any reference to it.

It's not like I don't want to see Palm do well, as I have 1000 shares still, but looking at the hardware, there's nothing there that screams a "step further". Right a mag induction charger. Looks nice but man, I still need to have two of those, one at home and one at work. It'd be better if it just used the iPhone USB cable, then it'd connect to tons of existing peripherals! Mini-USB adapters are just not as plentiful.

The bottom line is that I don't expect to see the Pre until the very end of the "first half" of 2009, and that would mean being launched 2 years after the iPhone. 95% of the ideas are cribbed from the iPhone, and we still have to see how well it executes. I mean, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and not some canned presentation of a beta OS.

Jan 12 12:51 AM

[Seth:]

Ken - Editors occasionally adjust headlines as they deem necessary. The vast majority of the time they nail it. Sometimes, as with anyone's efforts, the mark can be missed a little in the effort.

Here, you're correct. No question. The original headline when published on Metue.com was "CES 2009: Palm Pre Gets the Spotlight." The reworked version on SA suggests the Pre is better, or will beat, the iPhone. As you noted, that's not the take of the article.

My take - to restate it in a sentence or two - The Pre and WebOS have some impressive, and well thought out, features. The phone is a slick device. first look, it impresses. Will it help Palm? probably. Will it be enough to grab "real" market share or take away from the iPhone or other devices out there (RIM, Apple, Nokia, etc)...that's much harder to say.

The products all have their strengths and weaknesses and will win raves or critisms depending on the needs of the reviewer.

Palm's facing a lot of challenges. They've made a nice device, and with it, now the company's story is sure to be a lot more interesting. iPhone killer? no. interesting competitor or addition to the iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Nokia smartphone world - looks like it.

Jan 12 02:43 PM

[KenC:]

Thanks for the response Seth, I figured as much. What's with editors that they need to sex up stories? Anyhow, I hope Palm can sell the Pre in more outlets than the Treo Pro.

Jan 12 05:40 PM