For the Pre, their marketing materials are all screwy and confusing. The device and UI are just complete ripoffs of the iPhone. With the (R) and (C) and TM icons everywhere, and by selling something called the "Palm(R) Touchstone(TM) PreTM Backplate Adapter," they are making themselves out to be a distant corporation.
MMS? Check. Stereo Bluetooth? Check. Copy/paste? Check. Headphone jack? Check. Physical volume buttons? Check. Camera with flash? Check. Physical keyboard? Check. Exchange support? Check. Multitasking? Check. Wi-Fi? Check. Multitouch? Check. GPS? Check. Removable battery? Check. A decent web browser? Check. Decent looks? Check. Good UI? Check.
No obvious glaring flaws exist - admittedly it's missing video-calling, but I doubt many use it, and battery-life and price are still up in the air, but so far it looks pretty damn good. The fact it's CDMA-only and carrier tied is a bit of a shame, but they say a GSM version is going to appear in the rest of the world. One concern is whether applications will be developed for their platform, but that remains to be seen. I think the UI is above and beyond the iPhone's in many ways - the task switching and general lack of clutter is amazing and the cards analogy is inspired. The whole package just seems fantastic.
The pitch was, literally, "It's got a card reader so you can grab the pictures off your digital camera without having to take your laptop on vacation!"
But the thing is... these people really believed in it. The Palm marketing folks -- at least the ones I met -- were all True Believers. They couldn't quite grasp why they got such bad press. They really REALLY believe in Palm.
Though, that said, I don't think ripping off Apple is necessarily a bad business strategy.
The question now is what do I buy. I want something the size of a Palm V, and has WiFi. I would very much prefer that it runs Palm Apps, and a GPS would be great, music would be nice too. I don't need a phone. Battery should last at least a week with the device off, I don't want something I have to recharge every day. (I understand that if I use WiFi a lot I'd need to, that's fine.)
Are there any PalmOS based devices? (Or maybe linux ones?) I really don't want the Windows based ones, even though I see some that would otherwise be good.
The G1 looks cool - but pricey. And every single device I look at has a phone. Am I the only person on the planet who doesn't need a cell phone?
