The new-ness is underway, and Palm just debuted its long(est) awaited all-new handset, the Palm Pre. The curvy touchscreen handset has a 3.1-inch 320 x 480 multitouch display, with a silver center button down below and touch sensitivity all down the face -- the lower part is for "gestures." A full QWERTY keyboard slides out from the phone in a portrait orientation, and you can flip the phone on its side for accelerometer-sensed widescreen browsing. The phone is running Palm's all-new webOS platform, with TI's new OMAP CPU under the hood -- which Palm claims provides laptop-style power, and which juices the phones smooth transitions, scrolling and "deck of cards" app-switching. Other internal specs include EV-DO Rev. A, 802.11b/g WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth with A2DP and 8GB of built-in flash storage. There's a 3 megapixel camera with LED flash, mass storage-friendly microUSB plug and a good ol' 3.5mm headphone jack, but most exciting is the wireless charger -- a first for a mainstream phone. More shots are after the break, including a fancy FCC diagram depicting a removable battery. The phone is exclusive at launch for Sprint in the first half of 2009, no word on price just yet.
This one will definitely be a hit for the Palm/Sprint team. Now all they have to do is increase the bandwidth and footprint for anticipated sales growth
ReplyDeleteI agree. A big hit for Palm especially.
ReplyDeleteI mean, look at their stock increase after their announcement (+33%):
http://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chdet=1231264800000&chddm=1604&q=NASDAQ:PALM&ntsp=0