Walt Mossberg's review of the new Palm Pre, slated for release this weekend, is framed by the overwhelming success of Apple's iPhone. Since the WWDC begins this Monday, a new model of the iPhone should be revealed for the new OS, and it's likely that Walt has one already. He described these as "super-smart touch screen phones," but your could consider these new handheld computing platforms that go beyond what any smartphone could do, and certainly any feature phone. Just like the iPhone, the Pre is $200, but that after you receive your $100 mail-in rebate. The Sprint network is superior to ATT&T in coverage and speed, and for the same $70 per month, Sprint throws in unlimited SMS. For me, the Sprint support would the main advantage.
Now some backstory. If you look at the second embedded video in the review, you'll see Walt and Kara Swisher at their D7 conference last month interviewing Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners and John Rubenstein, formerly Apple but now leading the development team at Palm. Walt called Roger out about the exaggerated predictions that got him in hot water he has made about folks switching in droves from the iPhone to the Pre at the two-year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone when all those two-year contracts with ATT&T will expire.
Rubenstein quoted Palm's CEO Ed Colligan saying that their company's position was "sufficiently dire," and required an immediate re-invention. The focus of this makeover was to be based on the consumer appeal of their new smartphone, by emphasizing industrial design and taste, Rubenstein states. Hey, it worked for the iPhone.
On the hardware side, Walt says that the Pre's physical keyboard might make the difference for some users, but he still likes the virtual keyboard of the iPhone. His only positive seems to be that the Pre fits well in your hand. There also the $70 Pre accessory called the Touchstone, which allows you to charge the Pre just by setting it on top of the charger.
But, it's the software or lack thereof, that makes all the difference for Walt. Palm's new webOS is the selling point for establishing a new computer platform for this device and those that follow, depending upon the success of the Pre. The Pre wins over the iPhone by supporting multi-tasking. It can backup your phone over the air (and you might need this if you use the Palm applications store--see below). It also has a feature called Synergy that can sync contacts for various sources such as Facebook and Gmail, collectively seen as The Cloud, an important buzz term these days.
Walt talks about the immaturity of the implementation of software and Palm's application store. One of his download completely wiped his Pre, and it wasn't able to contact the Sprint network. He was able to correct the problem with his backup, but this doesn't bode well for competing with Apple's App Store. It seems the webOS sdk is still not finished, and only a limited number of developers have been allowed to create apps so far. However, to say that while Palm only has about a dozen apps ready now while Apple has tens of thousands for the iPhone doesn't face the reality that only about a handful of those apps would you want to use on a regular basis.
I guess you could buy the Pre and just be resigned to the fact that the software bugs will be worked out some time in the future. You could pick up the Classic app that will run the old Palm OS programs, but it's strange that Walt didn't mention this at all. In a way I agree, I wouldn't want to run the old Palm OS apps, especially since they can't utilize the contact database of webOS.
But what is really strange is that for syncing media such as photos, videos and music, the Pre uses iTunes. Syncing with a PC or Mac has also been a source of problems for Palm, but by using an Apple app I wonder how easy it would be for Apple to muck with this in their next iTunes update, even if there were some licensing aggreement.
This review is not good news for Palm. It was Walt who helped promote the Treo right from the first model with his glowing review. That was when smartphones were seen as appropriate for a niche market, especially the business world, and top-down marketing seemed to be the way to go.Then, Palm didn't hold much interest in "fan sites," but it was Apple who demonstrated that buzz starts below and works it way up. Now, it's all about pleasing the fanboys and fangirls as well as the road warrior who use their phone for work and play.
