Apple iPhone or Palm Pre?

Apple iPhone or Palm Pre?
Palm Pre review - better than the iPhone?


The analysts said they expect Palm to have a stockpile of around 375,000 units at the device's debut (the figure is the median number of units the six analysts surveyed predicted).

A smartphone pioneer with its Treo, Palm has fallen on tough times against rivals such as Research In Motion's BlackBerry and Apple's iPhone. When Pre launches with exclusive U.S. carrier Sprint in the first half of 2009, it will be the first phone to run Palm's new operating system, called WebOS, under development for well over a year. No pricing for the hardware has been set. "We're extremely enthusiastic about this device," Sprint CEO Dan Hesse says.

Pre is a handsome, curved, 4.8-ounce device that's more compact than the iPhone. Like the iPhone, it uses sensors and touch gestures to enlarge photos and Web pages. It also has a hidden, slide-down qwerty keyboard to complement the vibrant 3.1-inch touch-screen. There are other features that the iPhone doesn't have, including support for Bluetooth wireless stereo devices and a removable battery.

You can also run several applications at once. For example, you'll be able to listen to music in the Pandora Internet radio application while surfing the Web. You cannot do that on the iPhone.




Facebook was one of the partners to join Palm on stage at CES. Other partners include Google, Yahoo and Amazon. But Palm was not specific about the number of applications that will be available for the phone at launch.

Pandora chief technology officer Tom Conrad says it took days rather than months to develop the Pandora app for the new Palm. The operating system "is really solid," he says.

Palm Chairman Jon Rubinstein, a former Apple executive instrumental in producing the iPod, says, "We're just getting started." A big early goal: "It had to be mostly usable with a single hand and minimize the number of button-presses."

Palm CEO Ed Colligan scoffs at critics who think the Pre arrives too late to compete against BlackBerry, iPhone and other competitors. "I don't even remotely feel like it's too little too late. It's a big, big space."