Live from Palm's CES press conference
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted Jan 8th 2009 2:01PM
posted Jan 8th 2009 2:01PM
12:09PM And that's that! Keep your eyes peeled -- we will have a lot more on this later.
12:08PM Jon: "We're just getting started."
12:08PM "So if I leave you with one thought: we think that Palm's human-centered philosophy coupled with these technologies really sets us apart. It's not possible without this team, and I want to thank them." Big cheers.
12:07PM "Recap: the always-connected OS, and dev can work on this. The Palm pre, the one phone that will help you navigate through your life. Thirdly, partners -- we think there's going to be 100,000's of devs on this platform. Pandora told them that it took them 3 days to bring their app to the new OS, so we think this platform will explode. One another thing... all those apps were developed in CSS, HTML, or JavaScript."
12:05PM Ed is back... again!
12:05PM I think we're working towards a look at Facebook on the pre... though we're not sure. Oh wait -- maybe not. This was just a Facebook pimp session. Wouldn't want to forget about them.
12:04PM Thanks Chris! This is what it looks like when brains are exploding over new gadgets. Pure control.
12:02PM Now we're getting a little history lesson on Facebook.
12:02PM "Thanks, it's great to be here." Apparently this Facebook service has a lot of users.
12:01PM Facebook is here -- they're going to show off some Facebook integration. Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of FB.
12:01PM Showing off some of their partners. Facebook, Google, Pandora, Yahoo!, AOL...
12:00PM That's vague.
12:00PM Pre will be available in the first half of 2009... "As soon as possible."
12:00PM Ed is back.
11:59AM He's really going on about Sprint. Fair enough. They'll likely get some new subs from this.
11:58AM Wow. He just said "The CES."
11:57AM "We've taken steps in 2008 to make sure we stay a leader... simply everything... we have other great plans..." Look, they have plans, and you can get them on a cellphone -- do you get it?
11:56AM "Our 3G coverage is 4 times the size of AT&T's..." He's talking about how totally awesome Sprint's network is. Sprint's network will crush and destroy other networks.
11:54AM "This feels good in your hand or your pocket... but I really like that this has a touchscreen for navigation, but I'm a power user, and I need that keyboard."
11:54AM He's running through how stoked he is on this phone. We'll bet! Could be the lifeline that Sprint needed right now.
11:53AM "As the first provider, we'll enable customers to integrate the information on the most dependant 3g network..."
11:53AM Dan: "Those pictures of Mexico look great. We're announcing an innovate device."
11:52AM "It wouldn't be possible to do this without partners. We have Sprint as our exclusive launch partner. Joining me is Dan Hesse..."
11:52AM "I love touch -- it's so cool." "You might be wondering, how does pre fit in and compete? We think it's perfectly balanced, it's not just for work or for play -- it's the one phone you can use through your entire life." We don't think he means forever... we hope not.
11:51AM "So let's recap -- breakthrough user experience, Palm Synergy, universal search, notifications, multitasking... we have a couple of more things... here's Ed!"
11:50AM The charger is called the Touchstone.
11:50AM Wow, a wireless charger for the pre -- inductive charging. Don't see that a lot.
11:49AM "Many of you know I'm a big fan of ecosystems -- I'd like to show you some accessories..."
11:49AM "That demo just scratches the surface of what the Palm OS is capable of."
11:49AM This is a huge win for Palm. People are stoked.
11:48AM "I've shown you a lot... with that, I'd like to invite Jon back on stage."
11:47AM Applications resize when urgent messages come through, so that notifications don't interfere with the ongoing activity.
11:46AM The music player also snaps into the dash. When you zoom out you're able to control the music while switching to other apps or working on other stuff. "This is a completely open design -- devs can write anything for it. Any controls and graphics you want. CSS, HTML, and JavaScript."
11:45AM Hmm, music app took a moment to load up.
11:45AM Any developer can use the notifications. You can pop them open into a dashboard at the bottom of the screen with all your waiting messages.
11:44AM Wow -- pop-up notifications while you're in other apps, like the G1.
11:43AM The cards rotate as well, everything moves pretty snappily. The device is clearly quite powerful from a CPU standpoint.
11:42AM You can use the gesture area to flip back and forth between pages. The rotate on the browser is very smooth.
11:42AM Here we go, you can flip the phone sideways for widescreen browsing. Ha! "Joy of Vole Sex" People are cracking up.
11:41AM You can have multiple browser cards -- zooms out to a grid of windows.
11:40AM Fast zoom -- incredibly slick.
11:40AM Showing off the web browser now. Really smooth, multitouch zooming in and out.
11:38AM "This keyboard is useful for more than just typing -- we can use it to navigate." Active search from the keyboard, searches contacts, but also lets you go to web searches. Spotlight-like, it brings up apps, contacts, links out to websearch.
11:37AM "So, that's Synergy... but not everything can be solved by a flick or a gesture."
11:36AM IM: just like the rest of the phone, all of your IM services are consolidated into one list.
11:35AM You can follow a contact through their email to IM status, which lets you click into sending a message on a variety of services.
11:34AM "Typically you're locked into one email at a time -- but cards on Web OS means I don't lose my place. I have all my compose windows open at once." This would be handy for us drafters in the house.
11:33AM "With Synergy, we're searching all contacts across all your address books. The best part, if we don't find the contact, we automatically start searching your corp database."
11:32AM Attachments, inline images... drop down to choose what account you're sending mail from.
11:32AM Email app -- very nice. Icons for Gmail...
11:32AM "So I can tap and type."
11:31AM "One of the thing we've been known for is showing you a lot of calendar information. We compress time in the list, so that the next events are visible. We compress empty time. And as Ed said, Palm has focused on pen and paper."
11:30AM "We apply these same ideas in the calendar -- I have a work meeting, some Gcal events -- it's all together in one list. Sometimes getting this info can be overwhelming, we let you sort what you want to look at." Color coded calendars from multiple sources.
11:29AM "In Synergy, you don't have to import, you just login. But you don't want duplicates in this list. You see this stack of photos in the contact card -- that means there's 3 sources for this contact, from Google, Outlook, and Facebook. But I can look at all her phone numbers with no dupes, and I don't have to worry about managing this."
11:28AM "It's more than just how you flow -- it's about how you connect to the web. We bring info together in one place. We call this Synergy. Here's how it works."
11:28AM "How's that for some newness?" Big applause!
11:27AM If you want to quit an app, you just slide it off the screen by flicking up. The device is automatically saving as you go.
11:27AM This is quite genius -- you can also rearrange the order of open apps.
11:26AM He presses the center button and all the apps zoom out to a scrollable set of smaller windows, like tabs in iPhone safari.
11:26AM "This is good, but it's not good enough... still too modal... we need flow. Instead of a desktop where you pile up windows, we imaged a deck of cards... let me show you."
11:25AM Quick launch from anywhere, it brings up a launcher "wave" across the screen. This is pretty impressive stuff.
11:24AM There's a note app up, like stickies on a corkboard.
11:24AM Flcik through photos -- very iPhone-esque. Launcher comes up over any application without leaving it.
11:23AM You can use either side of that area. Now showing off a swipe up to show a launcher with apps. Smart! Photos slides open, really really tight UI design here.
11:22AM Swipe to open and go back -- very clean, very smooth.
11:22AM "Our touch is special, it goes beyond the screen." He's touching in the gesture area -- to go back to the list you can flick back in that spot.
11:21AM Flick scrolling through contact lists, nice inertia. Tap to open a contact... yeah that make sense. Very slick UI, light and airy.
11:21AM Image uploads are coming, internet is SLOW here.
11:20AM "Let's talk about UI -- Palm is known for simplicity. This becomes almost invisible." Showing off the screen with a dock of app icons along the bottom.
11:20AM "Because this is Vegas -- there's nothing up my sleeves. This is live."
11:20AM Matias Duarte is out to show off the OS!
11:19AM Now showing a comparison against other devices, it's a bit smaller than some familiar shapes...
11:19AM Wow, slick curved design. Very handsome.
11:19AM Portrait slide out keyboard!
11:18AM "When you want to jam out an email... you don't want a cheesy virtual keyboard"
11:18AM The ringer on/off is here. Power button... yeah you want that.
11:18AM MicroUSB connection, USB 2.0 jack -- with mass storage support. 3.5mm headphone jack. Yes!
11:17AM "By popular demand... you can replace the battery."
11:17AM Volume rockers on the side, 3 mp camera with led flash.
11:17AM 3.1-inch display, 320 x 480 -- touchscreen, with multitouch... it also extends down to the center button. "That area is the gesture area."
11:16AM "Laptop like performance."
11:16AM TI's latest OMAP CPU. The first one with this CPU.
11:16AM Stereo A2DP support.
11:15AM EvDO Rev. A, 802.11b/g, GPS, Blutooth, 8GB storage, and a "fast processor"
11:15AM This is definitely handsome -- rounded, black, trackball down below.
11:15AM It's a tiny, somewhat oval device, full touchscreen... looks like there's a slide-out. This looks like some mock-ups we've seen!
11:14AM The new Palm pre!
11:14AM "Imagine what it would look like, the ideal device... I'm going to bring Jon up to show it to you."
11:14AM "We wanted to build the right phone for this -- it has to be really killer. It has to be the right thing for handling the stuff you care about."
11:13AM "We're going to show you this in a second, but I want to talk about this a little first. If you know CMS, HTML, XML, you can design for this platform. If you can do web development, you can design for this -- no new languages to learn."
11:12AM "How are we going to do that? We had to start with a new platform from the ground up. And we've done that."
11:12AM He's building towards something that sounds like what Microsoft was on about last night with Live.
11:11AM "People want to simplify, but they want to keep certain things separate. I like having my work life and my home life. It's all part of what I like to do, but information is everywhere. Wouldn't it be nice if we could take that and bring it to you in a really seamless way? To your pocket, so your cal and contacts seamlessly get integrated in one place."
11:10AM "Today we have a new twist on that problem -- we do all kinds of things on the internet, our lives live in a lot of different places on the net. You have contacts in Outlook, mail somewhere else... those are all in little drawers, and you have to move from one to another. It's modal -- so we thought there's an opportunity here."
11:09AM "That eventually led to too many devices... so we designed the smartphone. We combined all of those devices into a single device... the Treo."
11:08AM He's discussing the 80's and the data people had laying around -- how there were no ways to really keep it organized. Hence the Palm Pilot.
11:07AM "We have some cool stuff to show you, but I want to take you on a little history lesson."
11:07AM "Want the tech to be invisible. But there's another reason we're the right company. Mobile is in our DNA. We don't do computers, STBs... we do mobile."
11:06AM "When we designed the Palm Pilot, we didn't think about competing with the Newton, we thought about competing with pen and paper."
11:05AM Ed Colligan is out!
11:05AM "I can't think of a better company for this than Palm."
11:05AM "We have our data all over the place. We can take all that information and put it all in one place, in your hands, and let that data interact." "You need to have the right phone, and the right platform. Forward looking, flexible, powerful."
11:04AM "For those of you that have been on a beach in Mexico, you're thinking 'why?'" "The next wave is mobile, and Palm's DNA is mobile. Today's market is different than it was a few years ago -- you need to have a great phone. But it needs to be more than a bunch of apps bolted onto that phone."
11:03AM "I was a busy guy in Mexico..." Laughs. "I've been through a lot of transitions."
11:03AM "I'm on the beach one day when the phone rings -- it's Fred Andersen from Elevation Partners. They wanted me to meet someone. So they sent Ed Colligan down. He pitched me on restoring innovation at Palm."
11:02AM "I'm so glad you could be here today. I used to work for this cool company in Cupertino. After a while I wanted to take a break, so we packed up... we moved to Mexico."
11:01AM Jon Rubinstein is out!
11:01AM Ah ha, Vampire Weekend. Music is getting loud! We're off!
10:55AM "Good morning everyone, we're going to begin in a few minutes... silence cellphones."
10:54AM Things should be getting underway any moment, everyone seems to be settling in.
10:52AM Yeah, we're sipping on some St. Juniper's gin and Mad Hatter vodka. Yum.
10:49AM The shot they keep showing of the bar has all Photoshopped alcohol. No real brands.
10:47AM We've spoken to someone close to Palm just now who tells us that this won't be an incremental move. This is "the whole thing." We'll see if that pans out.
10:40AM Hey, they're playing Darkel's 'My Own Sun'! Nice.
10:39AM Scoble's on the floor. Prepare for tweeting.
10:38AM There's a bag with a cloth covering on the podium... kind of looks like a coconut from a distance. Very odd indeed.
10:37AM They're also showing slow pans of a really modern house, and what appears to be the ceiling of stylized train station. The message here seems to be focused on minimal design. Whether that will have any bearing on what products they show off today is another question altogether.
10:29AM The setup is pretty sweet. Chairs are broken up by tables with water and chocolate for people in attendance, and there's a rounded stage with a massive projection behind it. Our question... why are they showing scenes of a bar? Perhaps time will tell.
10:27AM We're in and seated! This is by far the most comfortable and appealing presser we've been to yet.
I'm excited!
Yeah, I'm too. And I really haven't been impressed by anything Palm since 2000 or so...
I am also very excited. Lets hope Nova is everything we want it to be. Otherwise, I may just have to get a Treo Pro.
Can we PLEASE get USB drivers for 64 bit machines PALM???
I'm excited too!
Also:
Can we please have the comments pages working correctly, Engadget?
Wow Palm Pre .... sorry .. but it's 2009 iPhone
So far I am thinking why not android.
Also, tackling the sync issue is old .. from like 1999, there are already solutions, even microsoft has some good ones. It's not that big of an issue.
That first device is HVGA, which is better than QVGA .. but it's 2009 .. I expect WVGA.
I hope the price is low.
Just when I thought I was out, They PULL ME BACK IN!
"Wow. He just said "The CES."" What's wrong with that? Say it and say out the acronym.
those security guards look like crap !
I hope this is a good one. I want something other than the G1, iPhone, and WinMo
I like the touch area below the screen, like the HTC Diamond. That's a real smart move, there's a lot to be said for gestures without having to cover the screen real estate.
Please be everything we hope it to be... I really want, to want a palm handset. Is that so wrong?
no, no its not.
if anything they should be bought by the porn industry...
get it... palm...
ahh nevermind :-P
Its rounded and looks like a toy. I hope HTC make a palm device soon, the os does look promising
Ok well a little disappointing but the OS looks nice and well see what other hardware they develop around it I really prefer a landscape keyboard and sprint is a deal breaker for me. (I really hated it when people said that about ATT with the iPhone but I have this thing about CDMA)
i'm not... its about time palm was bought by someone... apple... or microsoft... just give up, palm... face it... your software is crap, and you hardware is old before it is even developed!
You have no clue how much I pray they didn't fuck this up.
You have no idea how much I'm right there with you. I want angry happiness and fist pumping.
Cmon Palm! Bring it!
I think your prayers have been answered. Everything they've shown so far has been pretty impressive.
If the browser and the media functionality are there, I'm going back to being a Palm fanboy.
The Sprint thing kinda kills the deal, but I guess for many ATT ruined the iPhone and T-mobile ruined the G1.
I loved my Treo before moving to an iPhone. I hope Palm really has a kick ass presentation as they claim to have.
Same here! I'm happy with my iPhone, but I really loved Palm for what it was worth... I had had Palms since the IIIc until my last Treo, a 680.
Can't wait to see a preview of the Nova... hopefully.
i cant wait...common PALM
the new PALM OS is built on Android (fingers crossed).
They really need to announce new products, shipping immediately.
If all we get is "Coming Fourth Quarter 2009," it will be way too little too late.
Though, since they are ditching PDAs, it's too late for me already.
Well it looks like they got the "release product soon" part right, and it looks like it will be an attractive executive toy.
Too bad I'm not in the market for an expensive exectutive toy.
I really hope this is something cool. If the iPhone was on Sprint I'd have bailed a long time ago. My 755P is nice but sometimes it's really a POS. For instance, I just installed the Palm "app store". And guess what? It was just a link to the page that opened in Blazer (and of course the phone crashed the first time I clicked on it). I looked like it was 10 years old and then didn't even work properly. I looked at one program and then couldn't get back to the main menu. Come on Palm, PLEASE get this right and give me a phone that works and looks like it was made sometime within the last couple of years....
It just went from 6 to 12.
a strong Palm means more competition from Microsoft, RIM and Apple. Thus, better devices for all! Go Nova!
Why does a strong Palm mean that exactly? By all accounts, we've had a weak Palm for the past few years, but Microsoft, RIM and Apple (not to mention Android, Symbian, etc.) have provided plenty of strong competition. I don't doubt that a strong Palm would certainly encourage more competition too, but I don't know if I buy that it's a necessity, as the industry is coming up with a lot of competition with the current weak Palm.
honest I haven't seen that strong of a competition in the US in regards to those other companies. It seems that apple with the Iphone has pretty much started to dominate the market. I am super excited at the announcement of this phone maybe apple will do more to for the iphone add copy and paste and fix the other short comings of the iphone.
Man i really hope Palm has something awesome to show, they really need something hype. Hell I need something hype, this years keynotes have been quite boring so far.
please, dont let me down. i mean, i love andriod... but i want something awesome from palm too!
give us variety.
I wonder how much awesome Palm has to deliver today to gain the same attention as they had before, I guess it can't be an iPhone killer but yet it has to at least be better than the Storm to even get somewhere....
Palm has served so many of us so well for so long. However, I can't but help feeling that all of this is too little and far too late. Regardless of how incredible this "whatever" is, the market just would not support them being as dominant as they once were. Whatever happens, I wish them well.
My heart is racing.
I really hope Palm comes out strong. I've been using palm (currently have a Centro on Sprint) since my beloved Handspring Visor used to play drug wars. Oh the days...
Maybe because they're going to set the bar? ohhoho!
lame
WAIT PALM IS STILL AROUND LOL . I REALLY HOPE THAT THEY COME OUT WITH SOMETHING STRONG I REMEMBER THEM BACK IN THE DAY WHEN THEY WERE GOING HEAD TO HEAD WITH HANDSPRING :) LOL
Maybe the competition will want to have a stiff drink after this press conference
Omg Omg Omg Omg Omg......
nerves.
Come on, Nova, and Palm- I really want to see some innovation here --- Slapping Nova onto an old re-used Treo would be a start- if your shipping them tomorrow-
But what I want is NEW HARDWARE- do something like Sony would've done with the Clie line... They were always daring.
Hoping, palm will not disappoint
Is this being streamed live anywhere?
Please, please let the new OS be compatible with the Centro!
Remember that really long, sincere, and demanding letter that Ryan Block sent to Palm about a year or so ago, and they kinda sorta responded and unleashed the Treo Pro? Maybe they'll build back off of that and rock my socks off.
Oh, and does anyone have a link to that post? I don't really feel like digging back through tags, but you might.