Palm's recently announced Pre
With all the bad news that has been coming out of the tech world about Palm in recent years, one would think it was as troubled as Yahoo. And while that was true it didn’t mean that the guys over at Palm didn’t have something big up their sleeves. Well it was big alright and unlike all the other gadgets at CES that (although great) didn’t quite make it into the “awesome” crowd (with the exception of Mpowermat and Window’s 7).
Take a look at the Palm Pre. Palm’s first new phone to run their all new webOS™ which integrates all the phones major features into the internet. At a first glance the phone would look like a cross between the original HTC Touch and the iPhone, but although HTC has worked on with Palm in the pass, Palm has said in no uncertain words that HTC is not responsible for this masterpiece.
The Palm Pre features a 3.1-inch touch screen that carries 24-bit color and a 320×480 resolution HVGA display. The phone is pretty compact and weighs just 4.76 ounces (135 grams) and has a width of 2.3 inches, 3.9 inches in hight and only 0.67 inches thickness (59.0mm, 100.5mm and 16.95mm respectively). The phone also has a full QWERTY keyboard that resembles that of the Centro but has been refined a bit by larger and more spaced keys.
The phone supports a bunch of communication services other than just voice of course. Palm has integrated full IM, SMS and MMS support as well as support for Microsoft® Direct Push Technology, Outlook amd POP3/IMAP (Yahoo, Gmail, AOL etc).
The phone also supports 3G EVDO Rev A via Sprint’s 3G network, GPS (built in), ambient light sensors, accelerometer as well as a proximity sensor. Wireless connectivity is perfect. WiFi 802.11b/g (sorry no n), WPA, WPA2 801.1x authentication, Bluetooth® 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support are all supported on the phone. As for laptop tethering, that is supported via Bluetooth.
Audio, video and image formats are very good and quite a few formats are supported on the Pre that you won’t find on other Smartphones. Audio formats supported include MP3, AAC, AAC+ (unprotected), AMR, QCELP, and WAV. Video formats supported are MPEG-4, H.263 and H.264. Image formats supported: GIF, Animated GIF, JPEG, PNG and BMP.
Palm was serious about making this phone a viable contender with the other more established players in the market and so it expanded the options for storage. The phone carries 8GB of internal storage (7.4GB available to user) and USB mass storage support. A MicroUSB connector with 2.0 Hi-Speed support is also present as well as a 3.5mm stereo headset jack.
But probably the most interesting feature of the new Pre is its Palm® Touchstone™ charging dock which supports wireless charging. Just a few years ago the idea of charging a device wirelessly was the talk of April Fool’s jokes, but thanks to Palm® and Touchstone™ its finally a reality.
The phone will be sold exclusively on the Sprint network in the US while a 3G friendly version is to debut in the coming months. So far Palm has been keeping the silent lips on a price and release day although they have said it will be available this quarter. Seeing that the phone is squarely targeting the HTC Touch Pro, iPhone, Blackberry Storm and others its only natural that this phone will carry a price tag of under $200 but, as said before, that has yet to be confirmed.
A full gallery of all the promo pics of the new Pre can be found in the gallery after the break. Courtesy of Palm.com.
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