An iPhone-like Challenger in the Palm Pre

It seems the iPhone has a very competent challenger in the Palm Pre. It’s Linux-based WebOS platform and user interface looks quite inspired from the iPhone’s sleek look and feel with some nifty innovative marvels of its own. First let’s look why it’s quite close to the iPhone.

iPhone-Like Features

The Palm Pre is a more modern handset than the iPhone and should be sporting a more updated feature set which it does. But many are iPhone inspired, such as the following:

The handset weighs in at 135 grams, about the same as the iPhone 3G and exactly as the newer 3GS. But the pre feels a but lighter when the slider is out due to the fact that weight gets distributed farther out on the longer headset in this mode.

It sports a brilliant 3.1-inch capacitive touchscreen supporting 16 million colors on an HVGA (half-size VGA) resolution. Smaller than that in the iPhone but acts on the same capacitive principle as the iPhone with a multi-touch features that need no stylus pen Palm handsets have been known for.

There are three sensors. You get the usual accelerometer for automatic landscape to portrait viewing as the handset is tilted accordingly. There’s a light sensor to adjust screen brightness according to ambient light. And there’s a proximity sensor that disables the multi-touch feature when the handset touches your face in a call.

Other Remarkable Features for an Award Winning Mobile Phone

A 600 MHz Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 (ARM Cortex A8 + PowerVR SGX) CPU engine powers the handset and runs WebOS with true multitasking capability.

Palm has it as it first smartphone to use wireless battery charging using electromagnetic induction from a charging block called Touchstone Charger. But that gets back-up with the usual microUSB wired charging.

There’s 3G, Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR with A2DP support as well as 3.5mm headphone jack, a 3.2 megapixel camera with LED flash that does an excellent imaging job with very minimal features, a generous 8 GB of internal memory and A-GPS support.

Forgivable Shortcomings

Admittedly, the Palm Pre has a few shortfalls that are nevertheless outweighed by its superlatives. Like having a plasticky body with no microSD expansion slot. But you get a USB support for Flash Drives. The more serious one is that it can’t record video. But studies show this feature is rarely used. And with its iPhone-like user interface and hardware superiority to the iPhone, there’s every reason for this to be another Palm winner in the market. Go get one before Christmas.

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