Palm's Pre smarthpone vs. Apple's iPhone 3G | Hacker News Reader

Palm's Pre smarthpone vs. Apple's iPhone 3G

technologizer.com

14 pointstechnologizer23 comments

as a consumer, this looks good. As a mobile developer: f@ck, yet another platform to support!!!

I hope supports the android platform (Dalvik and all, on top of their OS), in the future for native apps, in addition to the current web app framework it has. It would be very competitive to iPhone.

Yeah, Android is where it's at for me. Apple might be able to get away with a mostly closed platform, but I am not sure a smaller player like Palm can (even Nokia is opening Symbian). In any case, I'd prefer something open myself, and am not sure about the long term viability of niche closed platforms unless they really conquer some particular area.

I would have to disagree. If this thing supports Flash, which is likely, it is Apple's greatest fear; there are far, far more people who can develop compelling Flash games, than people who can develop stuff for the iPhone. Also, as a Palm device, they are likely to create many different versions, so penetration into other markets / user segments is likely.

This is game-changing. Jobs was betting that nobody would produce another elegant device, but guess what? One of his own (Rubenstein) showed him it can be done. That's another thing, you know - behind all of this is a great ego-war that is likely to fuel a lot of great innovation from both sides. As both a consumer and a developer, you should be excited.

Google's offering will go nowhere. Mark my words. They're already trying to save face by looking at putting the OS into other things, like set-top boxes, but that doesn't replace the fact that it kinda sucks. I bet Google (and Cisco, and Motorola, and a couple other companies) are thinking about buying Palm right now (have fun trying to do that, guys - Rubenstein's not going to want to let you ruin his game with Jobs).

i think android has a much brighter future. Speaking from some inside knowledge, there are two large carriers that will introduce android devices this year.

Plus, all the Asian manufacturers (Samsung, LG, Kyocera, and some smaller Chinese ones ) don't have any good OSs in the plate. So they are already working on android devices.

Here is a rundown of the mobile world:

iPhone -- we all know it. Developing for it is not easy, and the process is not friendly at all. Good for games, but very restrictive APIs, and what you can do. There is so much more this device can do, but Steve Jobs doesn't want you to. So, some good competition is always welcome, as it will force Apple to open up.

Blackberry OS (semi-niche. Popular, but an OS with only one manufacture. Plus J2ME is going to be phased out, the BB Api is not that great (UI wise).

Symbian - Will be open source in a year. It is old, (based on work from Psion two decades ago), and development for it is not great (plus the UI is horrible).

Winmo - Has been around since 2002. Hasn't chagned much in years. Development for it is ok (not that hard), but overall it is Microsoft yucky interface. It was good for coorporates that didn't want to pay the Blackberry extra costs, but right now it is way behind.

Android -- The new kid on the block. Programing for it is easier, (performance is ok, not that great for games), it is open, and it runs on top of Linux, but it can run everything.

Palm -- Used to be hot 5 years ago. And now trying to come back. I really don't know any companies trying to work on anything on palm. They need to get a good app dev environment going, but they are not big enough to create yet another platform to develop for. Android/Dalvik, (or maybe Flash), will be great choices.

Linmo -- DOA. I have seen a couple of Motorola Linmo handsets, and they are crap. Just give up. The OS doesn't really matter anymore, the APP Environment is the one that matters now. Users really don't care if the underpinning of the OS is Linux, OS X/BSD, Symbian, or whatever. They just care for shiny things (flashy and animation), and running apps.

Flash is likely to appear on Android as well. Apparently pretty soon... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghIGj9r3_vc

In my view this is actually good for developers, the more that the technology will be fragmented the more work we will have.

I find it a little unsettling that I agree both with you and with the parent post...

A good point by point comparison.

Other sources indicate that this phone could be very attractive to developers. At the right price it should go down very well with consumers.

Now what is Google going to do with Android to respond to this?

Looking at the sound formats it plays, why does it not include OGG? I mean, aside from "not knowing about it" I can see no reason to not put it in your feature set.

Sorry but 99% of the user don't even know what OGG is.

I realize that. How do you educate people if you never expose them to it? How did people learn what MP3 was?

I guess the short answer is that people only know MP3 as, "it's what my MP3 player plays. sound files."

But the kicker here is that there is a huge tech crowd, with blogs, who influence people to buy products, that would write rave reviews about the product if it played OGG. It'd be absolutely free publicity seen by millions of eyeballs!

I really like the look of this, great comparison...only thing I would like to see is what they are going to make of the battery.

In the past I have always had palms, but now I'm sticking with Apple (its just where I would prefer to settle really). This is bringing some much needed competition into the fold. The UI looks amazing too.

They forgot the most important line item.

Billion Dollar Marketing Budget: No || Yes

I've started to see a lot of iPhones around campus where I'm at and asked a lot of people why they got theirs. It's word of mouth about the easy upgrade from an iPod. At least 50% had their iPod die for some reason or another and decided to spend the $200 on an iPhone instead of a similarly priced Nano. Especially people who always carry both an iPod and their cell phone around all the time. It's not the direct marketing but more of a coattailish the "I have to go to the Apple Store to buy a new Nan... oooohhh! shiny iPhone" factor. It's just my conversations, your mileage may vary. (Also 'daddy' pays the $30/mo, so it's a non-issue.)

All the extra features like games from the App Store, Google Maps, GPS, and other junk this list goes through just sweeten the deal.

Marketing spurs every single American to buy hundreds or thousands of goods per year, and not once has anyone ever realized they bought one due to marketing. When asked, not a single one would ever cite a commercial.

I wish the iPhone plan was $30/month. It's actually $70/month minimum.

I hate it when people quote the $70/mo. Do you not pay for a regular cell service? If you actually look at the numbers, the pricing is exactly the standard AT&T plans + $30/mo unlimited data plan. (If you can get regular AT&T at a discounted rate, even better!)

I currently have T-Mobile prepaid and average about $10/month. I really want the iPhone, and can easily justify spending $200 for the device, but I don't want to be locked into a 2-year contract paying $70/month (totaling $1680) when my needs are met with a much more modest price.

Could you go prepaid if you got an unlocked one? I have no idea how that works.

Unfortunately the only reason that device is $200 is that they upped the plan price to cover the hardware cost.

I'm glad to see the micro USB connector. I know it is a minor complaint but I hate traveling with two charging/Docking connectors Ipod for the phone and USB for everything else.

Very interesting. It just might be my next smartphone.

I also like the idea of a new AppStore to compete with Apple.

How does app development work for PalmOS? Anybody have experience? Is there a windows-based emulator and SDK? Anybody have a link(s)?

In the current and former version of PalmOS, they've always had Windows based hardware (em|sim)ulators and a decent SDK (I used to develop software for old PalmOS 3.5 and 4.0). Natively, the languages they were written in were C and C++, though, there've been some scripting platforms written for PalmOS in the past.

With the new Palm WebOS, supposedly it's supposed to be Javascript, CSS, and HTML (though not sure how that translates into certain things like opening sockets and whatnot).

I've always been pretty impressed with Palm's Developer Network.

Yeah, they have been always been generally responsive with help.

I'm curious to see if their app store model is any more amendable to enterprise applications.

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