The review got it *** backwards. The treo UI is still far and away the easiest and most responsive interface for a smartphone. nokia’s is a mess, I have to wait for windows to catch up to me, and iphone is just not streamlined enough. The iphone is the closest in terms of usability, but loses major points for not having an open development platform.

I’m dyin’ to get new features. I tried the n80 when it came out, n95, several winmo sets and I keep sending them back because they lack easy ways to access most basic functions.

dan

One of these days I’ll find a good picture… got to be [the late] Desmond Llewellyn, though. As much as I’m a fan of John Cleese, it’s just not the same.

That says it doesn’t matter whether the radio is built-in or added… there can [still] be only two!

For now, anyway.

Thank yuh… thank yuh vera much.

In terms of pushing the industry to new levels of web 2.0 support and UI elegance, iPhone is an undeniable force of healthy competitive development. Motorola, Nokia, LG – in fact the whole industry is shaken up. It’s like the arrival of Tivo only much bigger.

I believe that iPhone has a limited target audience. There is a lemming effect in the market right now. I am not criticizing the purchasers (I want one too in a way) but I don’t feel that iPhone is for everyone. If you are a big media person, it’s a great phone. For me though, texting and email are critical. I can’t work with a touchscreen keyboard input. It’s accuracy is poor. I also don’t really need the level of UI polish on the iPhone. I love Mac OS but I often turn off UI animations and some of the zoom effects

Mike, thanks for the article. Finally someone informed me on the reason that palm left out the wifi out of the Treo family…the OS’ inability to support more than 2 radios (I think that’s what you said)

That has always bothered me since palm faithful remember the wifi cardsthat could be added to earlier palms and the TX and LifeDrive which both had integrated wifi..

But the king is not dead, he makes performances in Vegas and in sprint/verizon store near you…lol

Agreed. In the meantime, while I’d describe Garnet as having become “cramped,” I’m not at a point of moving to something else–especially as there isn’t a device I’ve seen that I’d consider a truly viable alternative. Compare it to test-driving a car–while I may not be able to find something that’s the same as my old car, how comfortable are the new ones out there? So far, I can’t find one that’s as good a fit for me. Android or ALP, maybe–when we see hardware running either of them available.

Don’t think so. Look at their perpetual license agreement with ACCESS–they can’t license anything using/emulating Garnet. And if Palm’s goal with the new Linux OS is to standardize their whole product line on it and include a Garnet emulator, that says they’re not going to license their OS to anyone else.

While I’m hoping that Palm can somehow beat their mid-2009 estimates for the new OS, I still want it to be stable. In the meantime, I’ll probably just keep looking around and using multiple devices.

As you stated Palm was once the industry leader but they let that slip, they seemed to rely on PalmOS too much back in the day.. almost as if they got the feeling that nothing was gonna beat it…so why bother working on it…yes it has a TON of apps that are currently available for it, but even those apps are aged now and no longer really fresh or new items..while I think it’s great that Palm is working on their new OS and I am excited to see what exactly they come up with, I also get the feeling that when it does get released, it’s still gonna be far behind all others, the dev team claim it’s being constantly being worked on but this has been a long time coming and yet we still have no answers as to when EXACTLY, and I think with the addition of the iPhone into the mix, that probably set their new OS back even further, they now have one more OS to compete with and with that new OS, they are once again going to have to redefine the PalmOS to meet up to those standards as well…with each new mobile OS released whether it be the iPhones OS or WinMob 6.1, they all set the new PalmOS back to day one cause their are new options within those OS’es that people are gonna want..that maybe Palm didn’t think of at the time, for example….maybe they had completed the Browser for the new OS, then the iPhone dropped..Palm would be then forced to re-evaluate their new browser to put it inline with Safari on the iPhone…The longer it takes Palm to get the new OS out to the public….the further behind they fall..so once again Palm was once the industry leader, but I doubt they will ever return to that position.

I am still using a Treo 650, the longest that I have used one phone for (3 years). At the moment, I cannot see any compelling reason to change it. I don’t want to invest in another Palm device until the new Palm Linux OS is out and none of the alternatives are particularly compelling. However, I think that the smartphone environment is going to change radically over the next 12-18 months in response to the iPhone and I really hope that Palm do not miss the boat. I am not feeling optimistic