PalmNote prēdictions
January 7th, 2009, 4:15pm by JakeSo the big Palm CES reveal is less than 24 hours away. What will Palm reveal? My predictions, ranging from sure thing to doubtful to wishful thinking.
1) Nova revealed.
2) The OS gets a new name.
3) Sprint Treo Pro announced.
4) New Nova devices shown.
5) Official AT&T support for Treo Pro announced.
6) Nova release date set.
7) Palm stock leaps to $5.
January 7th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Among your predictions, I think 1, 2, and 3 are no brainers, although I would not be surprised if they choose to focus on Nova and not talk about Sprint’s Treo Pro.
#5 is unlikely, haven’t heard a peep about an AT&T Treo Pro. Whether or not a prototype device is shown is certainly not clear, but regardless, it’s safe to say that the actual device won’t be made available before May.
The big question to me is how far along the Nova roll-out is. I assume the OS is wrapped up, but is there an SDK yet? Is this the first time developers see it as well? How about carriers?
IMO, the perfect sequence of events would be:
1) get the OS done, completed, gold
2) get it working on emulators and rough prototype devices
3) unveil the OS and it’s points of differentiation to the world
4) get an SDK in the hands of developers
5) work on and refine the hardware
6) shop it to carriers, FCC, etc.
If they have an actual device ready to show, it means that they kept the finished OS in-house longer than necessary, so it wouldn’t bother me it they didn’t have a device to launch just yet.
But assuming they do, here’s my wish list for smartphone hardware.
1) T3-like slider that has a 5-way and QWERTY keypad on the slider part, so the screen can be optionally enlarged if desired, but in all other cases, it can function like a Treo with an always exposed QWERTY and a relatively small square screen.
2) a 12MP camera with a 50 mm f/1.8 lens that can shoot HD video.
January 8th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Links:
TreoCentral on Twitter
TreoCentral via CoverItLive.
Ryan Block at gdgt live
Palm Inc. on Twitter
I saw this morning TreoCentral speculating that the Sprint Treo Pro was “leaked” during the MS keynote. No real proof, though.
I agree, #1 would be nice. Have an always-there keyboard trumps an always-huge screen. On #2, that might be a reach. But I bet you have some alternatives.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Palm is hitting it out-of-the-park on the demo. The device looks first-class, and the screenshots are great. Ryan Block, TreoCentral & Engadget all agree that Palm is Back!
We’ll see soon if it can withstand user trials.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Holey Toledo… a phone than answers when you pick it up. How revolutionary!
January 8th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Sprint already has their Pre pre-launch webpage up
January 8th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Palm Prē’s product site.
January 8th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
How did you get the ē in Prē?
January 8th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Engadget has their first impressions.
January 8th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Ding ding ding— Palm leapt to $5 after hours! Time to celebrate!
January 8th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Seriously. I kinda wish I didn’t get back from lunch before 1PM. But I’m thankful that I caught the gdgt feed and completely misinterpreted Ryan Block’s comment 30 minutes before the PalmNote.
January 8th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
@Jake I got the line over the e by using Windows’ Character Map application.
January 9th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Palminfocenter is showing pictures of what looks like retail packaging for the Pre. What the? Palm stuck with “1st half of 2009” as a release date, but is it closer than we thought?
January 10th, 2009 at 1:51 am
Even through all their troubles, we managed to stick loyally by Palm as they released Treo after Treo.
Treo 600
Treo 650
Treo 700w
Treo 700p
Treo 750v
Treo 680
Treo 755p
The Treo 500v gets a small mention
Centro
Treo 800w and Treo Pro (nee Treo 850)
January 13th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Interesting interview with some guy at Pandora about developing for the Palm’s webOS. Looks like Palm has been ahead of the game all along, hosting a developer boot camp in November.