Yes, Palm just announced the Pixi, rocking EVDO Rev A on Sprint. We knew Palm would be announcing what’s basically the Centro to the Pre’s Treo — a lower end device based on their new webOS platform. We just didn’t think they’d be gutsy — or crazy, depending on your read — to go head-to head with another Apple event.
Our sibling site, PreCentral.net, has all the details, videos, and first opinions you can shake an incredibly thin budget smartphone at, so head on over and check it out. We’re not sure about the lack of center button, tiny keyboard, why it didn’t go GSM on AT&T, or why they yanked the Wi-Fi out of the platform (Verizon snuck into the design committee?!) The latter may be especially irksome since EVDO Rev A doesn’t allow simultaneous voice and data, and unlike the Pre, the Pixi won’t have Wi-Fi to fall back on in a pinch.
Still, there’s lots to like here, including the mind-bogglingly slim form factor, artistic back panels (iPhone users need to shell out for a Gelaskin to match that splash), and especially the amazing pace Palm is setting by releasing a second form-factor of a brand new OS so rapidly. Available before the holidays at a rumored $99 price point, it could bring some hurt to the BlackBerry Pearls and low-end WinMo’s of the world. How it fares against a $99 iPhone 3G, however, remains to be seen.
As does the Pixi’s position in the news cycle once Apple starts “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it” and makes with the iPod and iTunes announcements while they’re at it…
It’s official — the HTC Hero, currently the most drool-inducing handset the Android platform has to offer, hits Sprint October 11. Sibling site AndroidCentral has all the details, and PreCentral.net has the concern that Spring might be loving the Palm Pre just a tad less when the droid everyone’s looking for hits the Now (and then) Network.
So how competitive will the Sense UI on Sprint at $179.99 be with the iPhone 3GS on AT&T at $199? (We’ll leave the iPhone 3G at $99 off the table for now). As functionality gets closer and closer, Android apps picks up, and ease of use improves, it will likely be the network that’s the deciding factor — who gets more bars in the most places they need to be. [Note: the video above shows the Sense UI, but the form factor above is the original Hero, not Sprint' chinless version]
Oh, oh…
Jokes aside, we’ve seen Nokia N900 upping their UI game, and Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 distressingly still not, should Apple be most worried about the increasingly competitive Google and its increasing army of droideka?
Or is this really — and mostly — just a problem for Palm right? Apple’s enemy’s enemy’s carrier enemy is… what now?
Nokia’s latest latest and greatest, the N900, is being shown off at Nokia World, and it again has our own NokiaExpert, Matt Miller, all shades of excited.
While some have complained about it’s meager 3 rows of keys (3 rows too many for me, but I know many others like physical keyboards…) most are really excited about it’s Maemo (Linux-based) operating system, and it’s new user interface.
In fact, antonioj, who sent the link our way, thinks it might be enough to pressure Apple into refreshing the 2007-era iPhone UI…
Microsoft has officially announced that the next skin point release for their handheld operating system, Windows Mobile 6.5, will launch on Oct. 6 and include App StoreWindows Marketplace for Mobile (catchy!) and MobileMeMyPhone services. WMExperts asks the impertinent question:
Will Windows Mobile 6.5 be available for any phones on that date? Will we see new phones released with WinMo 6.5?
We shrug in sympathy. Typically it takes a while to go from release to manufacturers to release to consumers. What benefits the split platform strategy has in consumer choice, it lacks in speed to consumer market.
When it does arrive, WinMo 6.5 will support both physical and virtual keyboards, no-touch and touch screens (resistive only?!), GPS, accelerometer, high res cameras, and likely spinning, multihued beechball wheels of wait (our Macs sympathize).
That the same company can ship the Zune HD before Windows Mobile 6.5, however, still puzzles us. That they’re arguably shipping both years too late to be competitive… well, that just frustrates us no end.
Throw a couple billion at Windows Mobile 7, would you please, and get her out asap?
Nokia has announced a new, Maemo-powered N900 which our good friend Matt Miller of NokiaExperts.com is beaming about in an iPhone and Palm Pre competitive sort of way:
I have to say I have not been this excited about a Nokia product for quite some time and with the T-Mobile USA 3G support I will definitely be picking one up as soon as I can. The N900 fixes all that is wrong with the N97 and then throws on a slick Maemo UI and feature set that should have most any geek drooling.
32GB, OpenGL 2.0, ARM Cortex A8, 800×600 screen, 5mp camera… Pretty clear that Nokia is doing their usual hardware magic, many specs closely mirroring the iPhone 3GS, in fact (though what’s up with 1GB of application memory?!) And Maemo 5 UI…
Does this mean Nokia is abandoning Symbian on the high end for this hot new Debian Linux-based OS? Will they be able to really come up with a user experience that can take mind share away from the iPhone and Palm Pre? And will this device finally give them some sort of presence in the North American market?
CrackBerry.com is reporting that RIM has acquired Torch Mobile, makers of the WebKit-powered Iris mobile browser.
Apple-backed WebKit is the open-source rendering engine behind Mac Safari and Google Chrome, which isn’t a very large segment, all told. Mobile WebKit, however, powers the portable world with the iPhone (and iPod touch) Safari, Google Android Chrome Lite, the Palm Pre/webOS browser, and some Nokia devices. Add BlackBerry to the mix and it pretty much looks like the mobile world vs. IE6 on Windows Phone — strangely inverse the desktop landscape where IE dominates and Firefox brings up the rear. (FireFox’s mobile Fennec browser is still in development).
Bla1ze over at CrackBerry.com has posted up a video by Salomondrin that shows off and explains the BlackBerry Storm 2’s new “piezo electric” screen technology. In a nutshell, when the Storm 2 is off, the screen is hard just like an iPhone. When the Storm 2 is on, however, it becomes like a sponge beneath a screen coating, so a user can “push” into it to register a click, double-click, or multi-clicks.
Looks nifty, and it will likely make the Storm 2 much more palatable than the Storm 1 to die-hard QUERTY CrackBerrians. iPhone users? Well, I like tapping, swiping, pinching, etc. so I’m not click dependent, and at the end of the day, it’s the OS behind the input method(s) that Apple’s nailed oh-so-elegantly for me.
Only time, hands-on, and perhaps this year’s Round Robin will tell!
Techcrunch has an interesting “rebuttal” up regarding Apple’s response to the FCC over the rejection of Google Voice. I use the quotes because I think the rebuttal part itself is off-target, while the conclusion is fairly spot on. Worst things first:
[Apple's response] strongly suggests that the Google Voice app replaces much of the core Apple iPhone OS function. This certainly isn’t accurate, and we believe the statement is misleading. More details below, but in general the iPhone app is a very light touch and doesn’t interfere with any native iPhone apps at all.
The crux of their argument is that, while Google Voice provides separate voice dialing, voice mail, and SMS functionality outside Apple’s built-in Phone and Messages apps, users are still free to use the built in apps. More specifically, that Google Voice only replaces these things when the Google Voice phone number is used.
Um. Yeah.
Users, at least in part, are going to be replacing the AT&T number with the Google Voice number (likely the reason to get the Google Voice number for a segment of users). Ergo, they’ll be replacing the built in Phone and SMS apps with the Google Voice app.
No big deal, though, right? Why should Apple care if people replace Phone and Messages with Google Voice?
Apple introduced the original iPhone 2G and 1.0 software in 2007. In 2008 that same hardware received the iPhone 2.0 update. This year, that same hardware again received the iPhone 3.0 update. A few quibbles about hardware specific lapses aside (video, MMS, A2DP), Apple has provided an unprecedented level of free updates to previous generation devices.
In a post-iPhone smartphone landscape, we’ve pretty much come to take these free updates for granted, and it’s hard to remember the old days when other manufacturers basically treated their older models as abandonware. We’ve even come to take them for granted on other platforms like Android’s 1.5 Cupcake and Palm’s webOS 1.1 update.
Our sibling sites remind us, however, that maybe we’ll all face a rude awakening one day.
First up, Android Central reports on the ongoing “will they or won’t they” confusion over whether the first Android device, the less than one year old T-Mobile G1, has enough storage to even be able to load future updates like Donut or Eclair (best. codenames. ever.).
Meanwhile, WMExperts takes us down the long and winding path of whether or not yet-to-be-released Windows Mobile 6.5 devices will be upgradable to yetter-to-be-released Windows Mobile 7 at some point (which will be built on a newer version of the WinCE platform).
Again, iPhone 2G owners — we at TiPb included — have enjoyed 2.0 and 3.0 updates over 2 years, maybe 4.0 will work to some degree or another in 2010, but we have to think at some point Apple will break compatibility with the original iPhone and when that happens — how will users react? “Thanks for all the updates” or “you @$$#0!3$!”?
While the iPhone uses the mobile version of the Apple-supported WebKit rendering engine, as does Palm’s Pre, Google’s Android, and some Nokia devices, RIM has thus far been content to roll their own rendered — with JavaScript turned off by default. No word on whether RIM will turn to WebKit or stick with the custom code, but it does look like the analysts are at least saying they’ll address some of the major gripes.
Our take? If RIM is serious about becoming a world-class web experience, Apple better get just as serious about matching them on messaging.
