The Palm Pre was recently announced, and is set to combine the best of Waterloo based Research in Motion’s (RIM) Blackberry and the Apple iPhone. The first thing users will notice about the Pre is its user interface and operating system (WebOS). At first glance, it is very similar to the HTC Touch. However, there are tonnes of cool features we have never seen before: like being able to switch between applications with the “Deck of Cards” feature. At a glance, the phone features GPS, WiFi, a full qwerty keyboard, a high reslution half-VGA screen, and more.
Palm has been struggling for many years to keep up with RIM and Apple; although it once dominated the market for PDAs. Palm’s Treo series has so far been unable to compare with the blackberry and iPhone. The Pre is being rolled out in the US by Sprint and we can expect to see it there during the first half of 2009. Look for the phone later in the year in Canada with Bell or Telus as it is currently only a CDMA phone.
It looks like the Pre may be the phone to pull Palm back into being a major player in the PDA market.
Apple has officially begun approving 3rd party web browsers for use on the iPhone. This news may or may not be important to you depending on your feelings toward Safari; which is the iPhone’s current browser. Submissions of web browsers to be approved date back to October. Some of the approved browsers include Edge Browser, Icognito, WebMate and Shaking Web. Each browser offers similar features, some providing special functionality. I would recommend reading detailed reviews of a browser before making a purchase. While some of the browsers are free, others retail for $1.99 and up in the Apple App Store. There is still no word from some of the big players in web browsing like Opera and Firefox; but I would expect to see something from Firefox in the near future.
