Palm Pre Review | Hacker News Reader

Palm Pre Review

boygeniusreport.com

19 pointsmshafrir6 comments

The only problem with this is, Palm’s never been a hardware company that anyone’s really cared about. They have been the furthest thing from innovative since circa-2003 — their hardware has always been second rate at best and it doesn’t seem to be changing now. Couple that with the nation’s underdog carrier at a $299 price-point (before rebate), and we’re not sure how many people are going to be lined up overnight, yet we’re pretty confident once people are able to play a real unit themselves, there will be more than a lot of happy Palm Pre customers.

That's kinda the feeling I'm getting too. As a Sprint customer who is eligible to upgrade, I'm really excited - finally a WebKit based browser in a Sprint phone! However, I wish Palm could have been more competitive - on price, on applications, and on hardware. Not that it's terrible or anything on any of those fronts. It's just that it would be nicer if it were a tad more competitive when compared with the iPhone. Would a glass screen have killed them? Maybe a preliminary SDK for games? Maybe not require the rebate?

Well, I'm excited! New phone!

If you go to Best Buy, you don't need the rebate. You just buy it for $199.

Yep, and don't forget: Sprint themselves are contemplating dropping the mail-in rebate in favor of an instant one (according to Gizmodo).

I am with sprint and eligible for an upgrade as well. I am running out on Saturday and buying one to replace my palm centro. I have and love the everything plan so I don't even need to change plans.

So I am extremely excited to have a webkit based phone that can multitask.

The price doesn't bother me, if I could get it for sure on Saturday I would pay an extra $100.

I was excited that maybe there would be a phone with the PalmOS calendar/todo/notes I still wish I could use (really REALLY don't care about physics engine based UIs) and a 3g data connection. Instead it looks to be another shoddy knockoff of the iPhone. About the only thing it has going for it is the form factor, but even then I wish it wasn't a slider. Android at the very least has hardware independence in mind, where exactly is Palm headed?

I really like the keyboard!

The future of the developer network and app-store is the real question here. How are they going to build that?

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