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 Remember
Palm? The company that knows phones, like, er, the back of your hand,
was struggling in the face of tough competition from the likes of
Apple’s iPhone 3G and RIM’s Blackberry. Until now, that is.
The authoritative Gadget magazine T3 (UK) has just voted the Palm Pre
smartphone the hottest gadget of the year, pushing the Sony X-Series
Walkman to second place and Nokia’s highly acclaimed N97 to third. The
iPhone, by the way, is at 14th (!) place, while the Blackberry Bold is
at 21st place.
The feature count starts with a 3.1 inch colour touchscreen that
works smoothly. There is a so-called gesture bar to make navigation
easy. The phone runs on a brand new called WebOS, built from scratch.
There is seamless support for Outlook, Google, Yahoo and Facebook
syncing. Reviewers say the Palm Operating System is miles ahead of that
of Apple.
It also sports a 3 Mega Pixel Camera, whose resolution is said to be
much better than Apple’s 2 Meg effort. And it comes with a LED flash,
which only a few other phones have at the moment. (No, the iPhone does
not have a flash)
Perhaps the biggest advantage for workaholics and text addicts is the
inclusion of a full QWERTY keyboard. The keys are a little close
together and you might misspell, but it does leave touchscreen only
phones way behind. The keyboard can in any case be hidden and taken out
when needed, so it does not ruin the overall looks of the phone.
Did I hear you say that the iPhone does not have MMS - Multi Media
Messaging? A crime then. But Pre has not forgotten the MMS crowd and
supports it admirably. Cut and paste functions are available for a
variety of applications.
 Palm
has included all the usual suspects in the communications department -
Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, 3G/HSDPA
and wait for it - Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
with A2DP. Don’t worry about the letters, it means you can use
wireless stereo Bluetooth headphones, plus stream musically wirelessly
to hi-fi set-ups.
The seamless integration with a whole host of services means this
handset operates outside the boundaries of a normal mobile phone. The
Pre can change between Google Talk, MSN Messenger and texting in seconds
and Facebook integration is proving to be a winner. It can run several
programs at once without crashing.
It’s a jungle out there when it comes to handsets, but the Palm is in
a
Pre-eminent position to shine above the others.
- Pramod
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