Palm Pre Almost Here

I guess a picture is worth a 1000 words. After months of hype, the Palm Pre will finally be released tomorrow and my feelings are mixed. My plan is (was?) to wait six months to a year for an unlocked GSM version. But every time my T-Mobile G1 acts up a bit I wonder if I should make the jump. Even though I love my Android phone, the fact remains that it still hasn't replaced my Palm TX as a PDA—Palm's old PIM software and third party apps are just so easy and familiar that it's hard to find Android apps to truly replace them. The Pre as Palm's latest and greatest could be the device I've been waiting for; it promises to be even more web savvy than my G1 and the Classic emulator would allow me to run my old PalmOS applications, the best of both worlds. And it promises to be compatible with iTunes which would give me a nice, big screen for those movies I carry on my iPod but never watch because its screen is too small....

While I'm eager to hold the Pre in my hands and actually play with it, I'm dreading the prospect of actually going through another upgrade. And then there's the prospect of switching carriers. I'm pretty happy with T-Mobile. They have good coverage and good 3G service here in Chicago. Sprint on the other hand had very bad coverage a few years ago and I have no idea if they've improved. For me Sprint really is the chink in the Palm Pre's armor.

I'll probably stick to my plan for now. I'll go and check the Pre out but I'm not planning to buy it. My G1 is very good for now and I'm still discovering new features since the Cupcake update.

WebOS Developer Webcast

It's been up for about two weeks but I finally got around to viewing Palm's hour-long developer preview webcast on Palm Infocenter. To no one's surprise, it turns out that programming for Palm's upcoming webOS, the operating system which will power the Palm Pre, is a lot like programming for the web. The information was very basic but it looks like webOS will be very easy to program for traditional PIM applications like Calendars and Contacts.

But what about more elaborate applications? People keep asking about games but I'm thinking more in terms of other classes of applications. Suppose I want to write a Usenet client for the Pre? It would have to connect to a Usenet server on the Internet and download articles using the NNTP protocol and install them into a database on the Pre. That should be no problem for a decent programmer (it might be beyond my abilities but that's another story). But what about other tasks that a good Usenet newsreader needs to perform like filtering, sorting, and purging articles? Will it be doable on webOS and will it be fast?

Another question is how easy will it be to add things that Palm leaves out of the Pre. Specifically, I'm thinking about a PalmOS emulator and Graffiti support. While I understand Palm's decision to not support legacy PalmOS applications, that doesn't mean I have to like it. So how long will it take to get a PalmOS emulator to run on webOS? I don't suppose that an application like WINE which is not an emulator in the strictest sense but does allow Linux to run many Windows applications is possible for running PalmOS apps under webOS?

And would it be possible for an enterprising developer to add custom gestures which would allow for character input—in other words a replacement for the PalmOS's old Graffiti character recognition system? A year ago, this probably wouldn't have mattered to me but then I upgraded my phone from my Treo 680 to a T-Mobile G1. Suddenly, I found myself using my Palm TX a lot more for tasks where my G1's Android OS didn't measure up to the PalmOS. And thus I rediscovered Graffiti. It sure would be nice to have a webOS Dashboard that could pop up a Graffiti like input area for times when I only need to enter a few characters and don't want to open the Pre's keyboard. I'd probably never use it after a while but it would be nice to know that it was available.

TealOS Gives PalmOS Users a Pre Preview

TealOS is a new PalmOS launcher from TealPoint Software which mimics the user interface for the upcoming Palm Pre. I've been playing around with this program on my Palm TX and it is a fairly enjoyable program to use. It also gives people who haven't been lucky enough to be able to play around with an actual Pre—in other words just about anybody who doesn't work for Palm or Sprint and who hasn't been to their Pre preview events—an idea of how the Pre's UI is likely to work under more or less real world conditions.

TealOS looks almost exactly like the Palm Pre smartphone UI as demonstrated by Palm, right down to the flower wallpaper. Like the Pre, it has a quick launch toolbar which by default is mapped to the applications which are typically mapped to PalmOS hard buttons. This makes the quick launch toolbar somewhat redundant but these buttons can be remapped, giving you four extra launch buttons. While this is no big deal on a Treo or a Centro which both have a keyboard in addition to their hard buttons, this is very useful on a Palm TX which only has its four hard buttons. As you launch and switch in between applications, TealOS takes screenshots of them and displays them as "cards" which you can move around and which allow you to quickly switch from one application to another. The cards aren't "live" like the webOS cards on the Pre but they do give you a nice way of keeping track of and organizing your recently used applications. These cards can be "thrown away" with an upwards swipe but I found that this doesn't always work well I'd hope because it requires a fairly vigorous swipe.

But the webOS mimickry doesn't end with there. A fifth button on the quick launch bar also pops up a simple launcher with transparency effects just like on the Palm Pre. TealOS also has the Palm Pre's "Wave" launcher with five remappable buttons which you can bring up in any application. The motion which brings up the wave launcher is surprisingly intuitive and easy to learn. It's even a kind of fun.

On the Palm TX, programs can be launched by either the default PalmOS launcher or through a Favorites application which allows you to create shortcuts to applications or to web links. While TealOS can't create short cuts to web links, a simple utility called Shark Links can. (And quite frankly, the Palm TX's web browser is so primitive that I only used it for Google's excellent mobile RSS Reader even before I upgraded to my T-Mobile G1.) So it's fairly easy for TealOS to take the place of both these programs. And it looks good on the TX's large screen.

While TealOS does a fairly good job of mimicking the Pre's webOS UI, it can't replicate the hardware and it is a bit slow. Some of the graphics are also fairly rough-looking due to the limitations of the PalmOS (the cards don't scale well at all) and older Palm hardware. PalmOS also has no multitasking which limits the usability of its cards. The Palm Pre promises that its cards will always show a live preview of the applications they represent, allowing you for example to monitor a download in your web browser while you manage your e-mail. This is simply impossible to do with the PalmOS.

TealOS works very well as an application launcher and as a preview of Palm's UI for its future devices. Still, I find that the simplicity and speed of McPhling which is just a menu which can be mapped to a hard button or to a swipe across the Graffiti area, makes TealOS less necessary to me. But for people with Pre-envy looking for a nice replacement for the default PalmOS launcher, TealOS is a good fit.

T-Mobile G1—Size Comparisons

I've been meaning to post these pictures for a long time, just so I could compare my new T-Mobile G1 to my other gadgets. It's not much of a surprise I suppose. The G1 is a little taller, a little narrower, a little thinner, and a little lighter than the Treo 680 and a little shorter, a lot narrower, a little thicker, and a lot heavier than the Palm TX. Overall, the G1 strikes a nice balance in terms of size which makes it more pocketable than my two Palm devices. But I love the sheer size of my TX's screen.


Bottoms up so to speak. Palm's big "Athena" connector dominates the bottom of the Treo and TX while the G1's tiny micoUSB connector is hidden behind a little plastic door. One of the first things that I told the T-Mobile store sales rep. was, "That [door] is going to break off fast." But a month later, the little door is still attached. Curiously enough, even though both the TX and the Treo can recharge throgh the Athena connector, Palm has also included a second, tiny recharging connector right next to it. This is great for traveling as you can leave the regular Palm USB cable with its tiny, delicate wires at home but it makes the devices bulkier.


The right side of the G1 features a dedicated camera button, something the Treo 680 lacks (of course the 680's buttons are fully customizable so it's easy to assign the camera a dedicated button on the 680). It's actually a pretty nice placement for the button since it allows you to turn the G1 on its side and use it like a point and shoot camera. Sadly, the G1 camera's slow shutter response negates this cool factor somewhat. The 680 has a door for its SD card on its right side which feels pretty flimsy but it does keep the SD card from popping out the way the SD card my old Treo 600 would pop out on occasion (such as when I dropped it). The TX is the thinnest of the three devices here and its stylus is exposed through almost the entire length its right side. It's a nicely weighted metal stylus which allows for good precision use of its touchscreen, allowing you to write comfortably on the screen. The G1's screen is optimized for finger use and it has no stylus; while I rarely miss being able to use a stylus, there are times when I can't quite control the G1's screen and scrolls too fast for my taste.


The left side. Both the G1 and the 680 have their volume buttons here. The 680 also adds a side button which you must press to confirm that yes, you really did mean to raise or lower the volume, the phone didn't just get jostled in your coat pocket. The side pocket can also launch an application when it is held down which makes it perfect for using the Treo's camera or voice recorder. The TX comes with a flip cover which attaches to its left side. This is a fairly unique feature to Palm PDAs as it allows you to protect the device's screen without using a bulky case which helps maintain a nice, thin profile. Unfortunately, the flip cover tends to tear over time which makes the TX look a little shabby.


The top of the G1 is pretty boring compared to that of the G1 and TX. You can just barely make out the release tab for the G1's battery cover but otherwise there is nothing of note atop the G1. The 680 and TX by comparison have headgear that rivals Carmen Miranda's.

The 680 has a switch that shuts off all sound on the device. This feature is so brilliant and so simple, that it should be mandatory on all cell phones. With the G1 by contrast, I must use the Ring Toggle application. While this application which is available for free from the Android market is wonderful; I have to turn on the phone, unlock the screen, and tap on a radio button in order to silence the phone. There is simply no substitute for a physical button for this important function. The 680 also has an infrared (IR) port and a small but usuable stylus. Thanks to Palm's optimizations for one-handed use, the 680's stylus rarely leaves its nicely hidden stylus.

The TX's top is even busier. While the 680's IR port is more for backwards compatibility with older Palm devices, the TX's IR port is much more powerful and when paired with Novii Remote, the TX becomes a universal remote capable of controlling almost any TV, TiVo, and a whole crap load of audio and video equipment. The TX also adds a recessed SD card slot which for the most part does away with the whole card popping out of its slot problem. The on/off switch on the TX is somewhat squishy and unreliable, it's one of the most annoying aspects of this device. The TX's stylus extends to the top of the device. The TX also has 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, something that both the Treo 680 and T-Mobile G1 lack, forcing you to make due with bulky adaptors or non-standard headphones. It has quietly become one of my favorite features on the TX because even though I usually carry an iPod, the TX has a much bigger, prettier screen and is great for viewing movies with CorePlayer. It can also function as an MP3 player in a pinch if your iPod dies. In fact, with the advent of Dmitry Grinberg's PalmSDHC driver, the TX can use newer high capacity SDHC cards and can be a compelling alternative to the iPod and other MP3 and media players. In many ways, the TX was a device ahead of its time.


And finally, just because its keyboard makes it look like a tiny laptop, here's my T-Mobile G1 with a 15.4" HP laptop and an 8.9" Acer netbook.

Can Palm Come Back?

PalmDoc shares his excitement over Palm's upcoming CES presentation and has a rather nice wishlist of what he wants to see from them complete with a pretty snazzy mock-up. I've owned ten PalmOS devices over the past ten years and would love to see Palm get its act together. But it's hard to say if I should be enthusiastic or not given how tight-lipped Palm has been about its new OS. 

And yet, I look at my old Treo 680 and Palm TX and think that they are pretty good devices. I still use my TX as a PDA, PDF and e-book reader, and as a universal remote. For all my T-Mobile G1's powerful hardware and sohpisticated Android OS, its software library lacks the breadth and depth the third party software that is available for the PalmOS. The way I use my TX is a perfect example of this—there are PDF and e-book readers available for Android but they are slow and clunky in comparison to Palm's offerings. 

And that's part of the reason why I worry about Palm's new OS. Will it be backwards compatible with older applications? Palm won't say. Historically Palm has been very good about supporting older apps on its newer operating systems but Nova is expected to be a huge leap from earlier versions of the PalmOS. Without its huge software library, I would see no reason to abandon my shiny new Android phone for a new Palm Nova OS with little or no third party software.

Battery Life -- The Bane of Mobile Entertainiment

Ever since my iPod died, I have been using my Palm TX as an MP3 player and video player. It works well in this capacity, I can easily get through an entire day with my Palm TX playing music, listening to podcasts, and watching videos. The problem is that my Palm TX can do more than play music, podcasts, and videos. It can also go on the Internet using wifi or piggybacking on my cell phone's internet connection through Bluetooth.

When you add internet access to the party, a long commute becomes a lot more enjoyable. But suddenly battery life becomes an issue. Surfing the internet while listening to music in the background pretty much kills my TX's battery towards the end of a long day. This wasn't a problem back when I had an iPod which handled the music/podcast listening chores but now that my TX is doing more work it's small battery is being exposed as it's biggest liability.

Entertainment on the Go, Beauty vs Functionality

My iPod broke the other day. But even though I'm constantly listening to music and watching videos, I haven't really missed it. This is mainly because I already carry around a pretty good media player, really two. My cell phone, a Palm Treo 680 and my PDA, Palm TX, both already have a good built in MP3 player in PocketTunes and it's easy to view video on both devices with an application called CorePlayer. On top of that, the TX also has wifi and can use the Treo as a modem which means I have have Internet access anywhere I go.

It's almost like having an iPhone except that my Treo and TX are two year old devices which could do what they do long before Apple introduced the iPhone. And they can do even more. Both devices have great built-in calendar and note taking software and a multitude of available third-party software for including Documents to Go for editing Word and Excel files, e-book readers, and games. I can even use software to convert my Palm TX into a remote control. The iPhone meanwhile can't even copy and paste yet and has to be "Jailbroken" in order to install third-party applications. Apple promises that it will allow third-party apps onto the iPhone and iPod Touch, it looks like they will be tightly restricted.

So why are Apple's iPod, iPhone, and iPod Touch so popular while Palm's products wallow in obscurity? It seems to be a mixture of marketing, opportunity, and technology. You can take an iPod out of its box, charge it, install iTunes on your computer and you're all set. The iPod is ready to use. The iPod is tightly integrated with iTunes and you can import your music library easily or build one by buying music and movies directly from the iTunes Music Store. And if you buy a new iPod, you just plug it into the same computer and import your music library.

When you take a Palm PDA or Smartphone out of the box, it's the beginning of a long process. You have to install some sort of synching software on your computer and it can vary widely depending your computer, your choice of PDA or Smartphone, the phase of the moon, and whether or not you are upgrading. Treos and Palm PDAs can synch with Microsoft Outlook but they can also synch to Palm's own Palm Desktop which is a fairly simple easy to use application. Unfortunately, Palm Desktop has numerous compatibility issues and sometimes it seems that each new Palm PDA or Smartphone has its own version.

While Palm Operating System's huge library of third-party software is its greatest strength, it's installed software is relatively weak. While most newer Palms and Treos usually come with Documents to Go and PocketTunes, I've yet to see a Palm PDA or Smartphone with a decent video player. There doesn't seem to be a good reason for this—there are at least two good third-party video players available for the PalmOS that I know of: Kinoma and CorePlayer which can be bought and installed on your Palm PDA or Smartphone. And there is even a free version of CorePlayer called "TCPMP" which is widely available. So if Palm can license Documents to Go and PocketTunes, why not do the same with either Kinoma or CorePlayer? Well, in a sense they have done just that—newer Palm smartphones like the Centro and my own Treo 680 do have an embedded video player which appears to have been licenced from the makers of the Kinoma video player. But as far as I can tell, it's not a standalone application. You can't just throw an .avi file onto the Palm's storage card and play it unless you have already purchased and installed a third-party video player.

That brings me to the other big problem with Palms as media players—size. Not the size of the device but the size of the devices' onboard storage. My Palm TX has a 2GB Secure Digital storage card. That's good enough for about two hundred songs, a little less than two hours of video, thousands of pictures, lots of documents, many Palm applications, and leaves plenty of space left over for more stuff. But my iPod had a 30GB hard drive enough for over 2200 songs, over 20 hours of video, and over seventy podcasts and the iPod was still only about three quarters full. There has never been a Palm PDA or Smartphone which can compare to that kind of storage capacity. Also, you have to buy a seperate SD card in order to have any storage capacity at all.

Finally, I mentioned podcasts above. I don't think that I'm the only schmuck with a blog on the Internet who is addicted to podcasts. Apple realizes this and makes it easy to subscribe to podcasts directly from iTunes. In the Palm universe, podcasting might as well not exist. I actually did roll my own solution for downloading podcasts and synching them to my Palm LifeDrive and used it for over a year but that particular PDA had capabilities which Palm never duplicated on its latter models. In a way it's sad, the Lifedrive could have been Palm's version of the iPod Touch two years ago but it had several serious flaws and Palm never created a followup product to address these issues.

But at least they've made their products good enough that I didn't have to automatically run off and buy a new iPod when my old one broke.