Palm Pre: everything you ever wanted to know
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted January 13th 2009 11:59PM
posted January 13th 2009 11:59PM
Note: This post originally went up just a few days after the Pre had been announced. We've gotten answers to some lingering questions we had, and have updated parts of the article with additional information.
What's the hardware like?
While we didn't see the final, final version of the hardware, Palm has gone to great lengths to bring its industrial design up to date, and they've landed a winner. The casing of the phone is made from sleek, glossy plastic, and the 3.1-inch touchscreen is flush with the face of the device, just like the iPhone or Touch Diamond. The phone has a bit of a curve to its body both in the back and around the sides, but would easily slip into a pocket. When you slide out the QWERTY keyboard, it has an almost banana-like shape to it, curving slightly to meet the contours of your hand and face. As you might expect, it feels great in the hand -- it's slightly smaller than an iPhone when closed, slightly larger when open, and roughly the same width.
On the bottom half of the phone below the screen is a black "gesture area" used for finger and thumb swipes. In the center of that space is a small metallic ball, which looks like a movable trackball, but is actually just a button. It's used to call up one of the most important parts of the UI, the "cards," but not much else. The black space is dotted with soft LED lights that glow when you swipe your finger across it -- a nice touch.
The screen itself is a sensitive capacitive touchscreen, which seems as responsive (if not more) than the iPhone's display. The resolution is the same as Apple's device (480 x 320), though due to its smaller size, it has slightly higher pixel density. Colors looked bright and clear, and overall the screen was sharp and easy to read. The high gloss may cause issues in the sun, but most modern touchscreen phones seem to deal with the problem, and we expect no less from this one.
The QWERTY keyboard slides out from underneath the screen in a portrait arrangement, so users of the Centro and older Treos will feel right at home (while Tilt, Fuze, Mogul, Touch Pro, and other HTC users might have a harder time making the switch). The action of the slider didn't seem to snap into place the way we were hoping -- it had to be nudged -- but Palm assured us that this wasn't the final hardware, and that would change. Like the Centro, the keypad uses Palm's "jelly" keys, which aren't nearly as clicky as something like the Bold, but protrude more than those on the G1's keyboard and felt decent enough to tap out emails on.
Along the left side of the phone are volume buttons, and up top there's (thankfully) a 3.5mm headphone jack and ringer on / off switch. On the backside of the device is a large speaker -- not a huge difference from previous Palm phones.
A MicroUSB port lets your charge the phone or work with files for the device, though Palm is also somewhat psyched on its Touchstone, a inductive charger that lets you just place the phone atop it for power (it even snaps into place thanks to a few well-placed magnets). The Touchstone seems like it will be sold separately, but it's the first time we've seen a major phone-maker offer something like this... and it's pretty damn cool.
Around back there's a 3 megapixel camera with an LED flash which reps say can snap continuously without saving (a nice touch), and the back (as well as the battery) is removable -- a point Palm made sure to note in its presser.
While we were told at a meeting with the company that the Pre would sport a microSD slot, apparently someone got their wires seriously crossed. The device won't have expandable storage -- which is kind of a disappointment.
The phone has an AGPS chip, and looks like it will come with dedicated navigation software on-board (if Palm's official UI pics are any indication).
The phone will be released in at least two versions to start. The first, a Sprint exclusive, sports EV-DO Rev. A and 802.11b/g, as well as Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR and A2DP; the second model will get 3G GSM in place of EV-DO for sale in other parts of the world. Like the iPhone, it also touts a light sensor, proximity sensor, and accelerometer. One critical thing to note for business users and frequent flyers: the Sprint version of the phone -- the first to be released -- will not be a global phone, meaning it can't be used on GSM networks overseas.
What's the software like?
This is a harder question to answer, because there are so many new ideas that Palm is implementing in its webOS, the operating system it's developed based on Linux.
There are a few main ideas at play in the UI, and we'll try to cover them as extensively as we can. Given that we only had a brief time to really give it a workout (and the fact that the software isn't finished), we expect to see and hear a lot more than we know now.
The UI itself is absurdly slick -- certainly on par with the iPhone's interface and HTC's TouchFlo 3D. There are smooth zooms, transitions, and fades in and out of content, and there's little noticeable lag or stutter when moving through actions. Fonts are tastefully chosen, and the icons are akin to OS X's or Vista, with soft shadows underneath and lots of dimension.
Using the interface is mainly accomplished with swipes along the screen and by pushing the center button. A quick swipe up with your thumb slides a launcher (essentially a prettied up traditional Palm app screen) over your current state. What's notable is that you never leave the application you're in to do this. It goes up, then it goes away. Unlike the iPhone (which is really its nearest competitor), webOS provides true multitasking, allowing you to switch between active apps. You don't have to close and reopen, just shuffle through your programs. If you switch to another app, the UI scales back the program you're in down to that deck of "cards," then zooms up the new selection. By pressing the center button on the phone, you zoom out all of your cards, and can swipe through them to find what you're looking for. The content inside of the cards isn't just a snapshot like tabs in Mobile Safari -- they're live applications that can be flipped and manipulated. You can also rearrange the cards in any order by touching and holding, then sliding them around. Gestures can also be used to move back and forward in a document or webpage (swipe left or right), and there's a gesture used to bring up a quick launcher "wave" over top of whatever application you're in.
The gestures are useful, but not immediately natural. There will be a learning curve with this device, but Palm is clearly looking for what makes sense to them -- they've tried to implement components of the old OS in the new one (like having quick access to your most used apps and not bogging things down with lots of dropdown menus), and at a glance seem to have succeeded.
Besides the input and design, there are core ideas that are new to mobile OSs at play here. The first is something that Palm calls Synergy, which allows you to pull together contacts and calendars from lots of different sources, but without altering or merging that data. Synergy will grab the same contact from Facebook, Gmail, and Outlook, then combine those into a "stack" of info for that person on your phone. It looks for duped data, so you don't get doubles of phone numbers or names. It's essentially a contact aggregator, and if they can pull this off, it will end a lot of headaches for a lot of people. It looks like it will do the same for calendars, and it's also pooling IM services together, allowing for modes where you can keep a threaded conversation going with someone over SMS, AIM, GTalk, and other services. It's heady stuff, and only time (and use) will tell if this does what they say it will -- but right now it looks like a terrifically unique and innovative way to handle a myriad of data.
Notifications on the device are handled similarly to the G1, so when you get an SMS or have a calendar event, webOS scales back your app a little bit and brings up a dialog at the bottom of the screen (whereas Android adds them in a "curtain" up top). Palm insisted that this lets you have control over how and when you respond to alerts, rather than having to "dismiss" pop-ups. We like how Android implements this -- we'll see if Palm's variation is as effective.
The OS also has a rich search function which pulls up a dialog when you begin typing something on the keyboard. Like Mac OS's Spotlight, it uses a universal search to pull applications and content, but switches to a web search if you can't find what you're looking for. Right now the phone defaults to Google, Google Maps, and Wikipedia.
While we can't run through every app, we can say that the browser is Webkit based, seems snappier than other Webkit browsers we've used on mobile devices, and a Flash plugin is supposed to be available for the phone by the end of the year.
What may be most astounding at the core of the OS, however, is the way apps are to be crafted. All of the applications for the phone will be coded in standard CSS, XML, and JavaScript, meaning the learning curve for creating content and programs on the phone will be almost nonexistent for developers who know their way around coding for sites. Additionally, Palm says developers will have access to all the software layers, allow system calls and custom content to be loaded into things like notifications. Of course, the nature of the SDK (which will be available to anyone) means that things like 3D games will be hard (if not impossible) to pull off, which could be a big blow to a burgeoning developer community, considering how well games have done in the App Store. We wouldn't be surprised if Palm ultimately relented and gave developers deeper access.
There's way, way more to talk about in the UI and OS design, but we'll save that for when we can take a longer look at the device and its interface. The long and short of it is this: the Palm Pre and webOS are the first real challengers to the iPhone's innovative approach to a mobile UI and data management. Oh, and yes, it has copy and paste functions (triggered by holding down your thumb on the gesture area and selecting your text with another finger).
Cloud services, syncing (added May 25th, 2009)
Palm seems to be striking a bit of a balance between the iPhone and Android when it comes to services, offering a centralized Apple-style push notifications system for developers, Synergy for pulling / merging contacts, email and calendar data from services like Google, Facebook and Microsoft Exchange, and a "Palm Profile" for backing up phone settings and apps. The Palm Profile, which is tied to a user-provided email address and can be setup on the phone on first boot also helps with OTA updates and App Catalog downloads.
Thanks to phone's reliance on the cloud, users can also send a "kill pill" to wipe the phone by logging into their Palm Profile online. Palm won't be offering a desktop syncing app, but there will be a PC-based "Data Transfer Assistant" for getting data off of an old Palm OS device and onto the Pre. There's been no word on how multimedia syncing is supposed to work, but hopefully the Pre will operate in some sort of mass storage mode when plugged into the computer -- both for loading on music and movies, but also for pulling off purchased media like Amazon MP3s.
Cost, release date (added May 25th, 2009)
After almost half a year of speculation, Palm finally confirmed the release date and price for the handset: June 6th, for $200. That's the price with a 2-year contract, and is after a $100 mail-in rebate, though some retailers like Best Buy will offer the phone at rebate-free for $200. Out of contract the price has been pegged at $549 by sales reps, though that hasn't been "officially" confirmed by Palm.
Unfortunately, word of expected Pre shortages mean that folks looking to get one within the first week or so might want to look into that age-old rite of gadget lust: lining up for it. Retailers at launch include Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack and select Wal-Mart stores.
Developer support, third-party apps (added May 25th, 2009)
As far as developer support is concerned, Palm has effusively stated that it wants to engage the community and stoke the fires of app development. Given that webOS is based around really simple tenets of web coding, it shouldn't be hard to get in the game and start experimenting for most people, and seasoned devs will probably sink their teeth into it wholeheartedly.
So far we've seen good things from the small group of third-party developers that Palm has let at its SDK early, and the company is adding new developers to the SDK on an ongoing basis. Until the device launches and we get a look at Palm's App Store-like App Catalog flush with webOS apps, it'll be hard to tell how much developers can squeeze out of the device beyond simple XML and JavaScript coding -- but we're really optimistic that the phone will be able to handle virtually anything devs throw at it, especially considering that DataViz is prepping a full-on Office document editor and a SlingPlayer client is said to be in the works. The good news is that Palm claims that it won't be issuing any mysterious takedowns or requests a la Apple -- we'll see how that holds up.
In even better news -- especially for longtime Palm users with extensive app collections -- the company is also allowing legacy Palm OS apps run via emulation in the Palm Pre Classic emulator, which can even handle 3D gaming and should provide a nice stopgap for any still-lacking functionality in webOS at launch.
Wrap up
There's still a lot we don't know about the Pre, and with a device this new, you can never truly understand what the experience will be like until you put it through the test of an average day's work. That said, Palm has made enormous strides with webOS and the Pre, both putting the brand back on the map, and offering a lust-worthy device that delivers on a big stack of promises. If they can keep the quality as high or higher than what we've already seen we think the smartphone game just got a whole lot more interesting.
Further reading
There are plenty more tidbits we aren't able to touch on here, so you can track our ongoing, comprehensive Palm Pre coverage here, or check out some particular morsels below:
Leaked Palm Pre Gesture Guide lets you get some finger-flicking practice in early
Plethora of Palm Pre interface videos emerge from leaked emulator
Palm Pre tasks, memos, browser on display, automatic backup confirmed
Palm Pre to run $549 off-contract
Palm Pre on June 6th for $200: It's official!
New Pre Classic emulator video shows off 3D gaming prowess
Pre Sprint Navigation app demoed on video
Palm Pre Classic emulator demoed on video
Pandora, Amazon, other third-party apps demoed on Palm Pre
Palm announces webOS SDK availability, Palm OS emulation for Pre, new cloud services
In case you missed 'Late Night with Jimmy Fallon' last night
Palm confirms games are in development for Pre, drops a few other tidbits
Palm Pre's Touchstone charger requires matte, soft-touch battery cover
Palm joins Adobe's Open Screen Project, Pre to support Flash
GSM Palm Pre spotted with Vodafone SIM card
Apple vs. Palm: the in-depth analysis
Kudos to Palm for the sexy design.
The software looks dazzling and very intuitive, but I wonder how it responsive it is.
Judging by these videos, it looks very snappy. But yeah, I'm eagerly awaiting review based on real long term tests. In terms of straight up wow-factor, this definitely outclasses every single mobile OS on the market.
look at the video. Looks easily as responsive as the iPhone, but with multiple applications running, using a much more feature-laden and eye-candy-rich UI, and on a pre-release model, no less.
Palm's really surprised me here. I thought they were as dead as Moto.
Kudos to Palm, indeed.
The Pre makes the iPhone look like the iPhone Classic.
If the videos we've seen so far are any indication, it's going to be pretty snappy. Snappy enough for me.
Kudos to palm. I'm going to try one out after being a die-hard HTC (WM yes, hate to admit it) fan. I switched from Palm to WM, now it's time to switch from WM back to (superior) Palm.
@ joe
You are making my iPod "Classic" cry, stop it.
Yeah I got pretty amazed too when I first saw this thing , and still the CPU and the touch screen are probably the best on the market BUT: the more I know about it the less excited I become.
The kboard in portrait mode is plainly wrong for a device you want to surf the web with, I thought there would also be a touch screen landscape k-board, but no: it's not gonna be there.
No expansion memory. This sucks in any case, but I thought there would be plenty of GB on the phone itself. But no, 8 or 16 GB tops. While I'm used to the 32GB on my Omnia or the 24GB on my touch HD.
Moreover the news that its OS is a linux/java opened platform worries me more than everything.
In a device capable of receiving malicious e-mails, with BT and WIFI connection, I think that even I could write some lines of code to hijack this phone and do damage to it or/and its owner.
Yea, I know that win mobile could be just as vulnerable but the fact that it's so widespread makes it likely that you would hear of possible hacks before you get hit and give you the time to adopt some countermeasures, while the latest versions of WM have some defense already inbuilt.
But this new palm OS? It's new, and like all new softwares full of holes and open doors; and it's wide open sourced: brrr...
I dunno.
Surely I will not be one of the early adopters.
Beside I would be hard pressed to think of how a device could possibly be better than my Touch HD or my Samsung Omnia(i910).
Sure it's gonna be much better than the iPhone 3G, but nearly every new phone is nowadays.
I don't know, I'm not too stoked about the design. I prefer the iPhone's more reserved look - the Pre is small and round, and just seems to cute and cuddly (which could be a good thing, just isn't my thing).
It also looks like the screen is covered in plastic, whereas the iPhone is covered with glass. Glass is harder to scratch, and more sturdy, and the iPhone's screen is coated with a layer that lowers the friction coefficient for smoother finger gestures. Glass is a better choice than plastic IMO.
That said, I am intrigued by webOS, and love the induction charger. Some nice ideas.
@KilgoreTrout
Uhh, what? Your meaningless ramble about security has no content whatsoever. . .
The phone looks extremely ugly ugly in my opinion, but that's probably just me. And no, I've never owned a single apple product in my life. I have a Dell and an LG Dare. I would rather have this phone than the Dare, but I like the Dare's looks a whole lot better.
Good for Palm, but it's time for the dumb "slider" fad to die. What a waste of space: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3390/3184021446_2fd787842c_o.png
Also, this screen isn't glass, which means it's going to get scratched to hell. Going with a glass screen is one of the smartest things Apple did. Plastic screens are only suitable for clamshells, which is what this phone should have been (even if it were a sideways-opening one).
If it stays snappy with Flash successfully ported to it, I'd nearly sell a body part to get one.
I have a Treo 680 which I love for Contacts, Schedule, Texting, AIM, and Memos but it's never been very good at phone calls, games, or surfing. I'm glad to see them not officially supporting OS5 apps. For the most part, OS5 apps are awful. With the exception of healthcare and aviation there's no reason to use a Palm for it's 3rd party apps. The beauty of this device is that those apps will still be possible since they weren't traditionally apps that needed to do 3d or anything too intense. Simply put: Dropping the OS5 apps is dropping the instability that the treo's have become known for.
@Information Central
I don't understand. You want it to open longer or not at all. This "waste of space" may make the sliding connection stronger to avoid flexing and twisting. Take away the slide and you would need to make the phone longer to add a physical k-board. To me, personally, I would think a clamshell with a k-board would have been a pain to use.... Receiving a message, quicking answering only to pull it out of my pocket again after getting another text message, I think I would find opening with one hand difficult.
Does anybody know the clock speed of the CPU? That still hasn't been posted anywhere...
Its a very fast OMAP processor i believe clocked between 800mhz and 1ghz.
No. The fastest OMAP processor is 800 MHz, and that's not going into a phone smaller than an iPhone.
They've cited the chip already a few times. It's the new Texas Instruments OMAP3430, ARM-based processor. Clock speed can be targeted from 600MHz - 1000MHz. That sounds nice alone, but check out some of the other embedded features of the chip:
http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbuproductcontent.tsp?templateId=6123&navigationId=12643&contentId=14649
Hopefully it truly has "the same power footprint as other mobile chips" as they say. Otherwise we'll be grateful for that swappable battery fast!
Actually its the OMAP3430 chipset with a CortexA8 processor which does support clock speeds of 1GHz. That being said, 500-600mHz is probably more likely. That, or dynamically changing clockspeed to conserve battery life.
I believe Palm stated in their conference that it uses the latest OMAP Chip.
as quoted from the "Life From Palm's CES Press Conference"
"11:16AM TI's latest OMAP CPU. The first one with this CPU"
And if you have any concerns about speed, remember that this is the same CPU, the Cortex A8, which is in the Pandora gaming handheld which is emulating the Playstation 1 all in CPU still.
bodacious; the 3430 uses the PowerVR SGX530. right now the only thing that does scare me is the Pre's inability to be a platform for innovative 3d games; this at least makes it a future potential. without a doubt, this 3d chip is how the Pandora manages to do fullspeed PS1 emulation. i'd be astounded if we DIDNT see OpenGL at some point, although it'll be an interesting battle to see how Palm integrates it with webOS. the opportunity cost of sealing off the emerging 3d market is unbearable.
Actually the Pandora is using the 3530 with I think a bit beefier video DSP read here and 256mb ram which i highly doubt the Palm Pre has
that said the 3430 still has the PVR SGX 530 which is a pretty nice little 2d/3d chip
Pandora Specs (kept uptodate by the pandora community) http://pandorawiki.org/Pandora
Omap wikipage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_OMAP
The pandora has been clocked upto 900mhz and this is still within design specs and not considered overclocking also by design the OMAP 3xxx uses practically no power when idle since it halts and only processes as needed
No, as I stated in my first post, there aren't any drivers released for the 3D chip in the Pandora. The fullspeed PSX emulation I referred to is still done all in CPU, which is why its a perfect comparison. Both the 3530 and the 3430 use the same Cortex A8 CPU.
try googling it, and wiki is always helpful 2.
Am I the only one to have bed experience with the Palm phones? I have a Treo 680 that constantly freezes, reboots by itself, can't switch between calls on call waiting, doesn't ring when a call is coming thru even and the ringer is on, constantly asking to check SIM card etc...
That was by far the worst phone I've ever had. I don't see how anyone can convince me to spend a penny on another Palm product.
@Joe right ... BUT they do exist and have been demoed on the 3530 HW and should be available at or near lauch time if all goes well
I wasn't in anyway saying what you said was inaccurate but afaik no one has clocked theirs up to a Ghz yet although it might be possible and of course the marvel chip is stated to go that fast
Also I was refering to the Video accelerator DSP being beefier (not the SGX since it is the same) although it is just a guess on my part since they are different chips and the 3430 is a lower part #
seems I over looked rektide's post ... you can be sure the PSX emu will run fast on the pandora as zodttd has repeatedly stated that his current version is using VERY inefficient scaling and rotation code ALL in software since he doesn't have the SGX 3D drivers or even accelerated 2D drivers
I think it's 60 seconds per minute, and 60 minutes per hour, ha-ha!
@Adjae - Right, the older Palm phones have had their issues, which is why they haven't been doing well. But they got their act together and have produced this Pre that will likely be their redemption. I understand why you would be skeptical, but if you've read any of Engadget's Pre coverage I think you'd understand that the Pre is definitely a different beast. Did you see Engadget (or anyone else) freak out this much when the Palm Treo was released? Do some reading and try it out before you decide to dismiss it as trash.
does it come in black?
The palm is a sweet phone. But it takes a while to get used to. I googled for help on learning how to use it, and i found this site: http://palmpreforum.org which has really helped me get over the learning curve.
Does it come in black? Does it come in black? It comes in Shiny Black or Matte Black. Look http://palmprefix.com/2009/02/19/palm-pre-touchstone-requires-matte-pre-case/ The number of choices blew my mind too. :)
>>> ...There's still a lot we don't know about the Pre, ...
Like how it works as a phone?
I hope they get the details right and don't rush this beauty. Would hate for it to be labeled Pre-mature.
That's actually not one of my major concerns; I'm sure it will be sufficient, and I hardly use my phone as a phone anymore.
Erg, yes! I'm kind of bothered that it doesn't have hard call/end keys. That UI better be bullet-proof where the phone is concerned. My WinMo phone gives me the feeling sometime that if not for very special, fixed treatment of the hard phone buttons that the phone might take a dump at times.
@Jim
*rimshot
Thats funny you should mention 'how it works as a phone'
For me to switch from an iPhone to any other phone device I would need that new device to not only replicate all the hardware and phone functions but ALL of the productivity and leisure apps I currently enjoy. I don't see any phone getting anywhere near the funtionality of the iPhone+apps any time soon.
From the sound of it the Pre apps will be pretty limited at start since the apps are web based, similar to the web apps that showed up on the iPhone at launch. It wasn't until developers had full access to the iPhone OS that apps like audio recorders, file storage over wifi, Shazam, iTV, Joost video streaming, Pandora/Slacker music not to mention games started to come out.
I think a lot of people get hung up on how pretty the OS is and the hardware and fail to recognize the importance of apps! After all wasnt it app support (or lack there of) that doomed Amiga, MacOS7-9, BeOS and OS/2?
"I don't see any phone getting anywhere near the funtionality of the iPhone+apps any time soon."
Oh really? Because the iPhone still can't do the basic PDA functions that an 8MB Palm device handled with aplomb more than a decade ago. Memos with categories? To-do lists (at all, let alone with categories)? Nope.
How about third-party apps that sync with the computer? NOT ALLOWED BY APPLE, which has resulted in a bunch of klugey workarounds.
There is plenty of opportunity for just about ANY phone to kick the iPhone's ass in terms of REAL productivity apps.
Dude stop this non-sense, App support on the iPhone is non-existent, it only supports java based crap.
90% of the apps on the app store are games.
The rest is facebook/IM/anyCRAPiCANgetONanyOTHERphoneBECAUSEjavaIScrossPLATFORM.
Where are the real apps ?
Does this sounds like productivity to you ?
Name me something I can't do on my Bold you can on your iPhone. I'd be glad to hear...
Back to the subject : Amazing UI with a very innovative way of dealing multitasking (oups that's 2 things iPhone is lacking : innovative and multitasking)
@ananimus3
I think the missing hard buttons for call/hang up would have been nice, but I think I read that you can answer a call by opening the slider and closing it to hang up.
Last year it was "the amazing Meizu M8 and the amazing Google Android G1" and this year it's "the amazing Palm Pre". I just gotta get me one of those (fill in the blank) handsets. This is a prototype of a phone from a company that can barely afford to keep it's doors open and hyped by a CEO named Colligan who thought the iPhone would flop in a day. They can fine-tune the balls out of this prototype to make it scroll faster than greased lighting. That being said, it's a fine-looking handset with a lot of potential if Palm can deliver (which it hasn't been doing for years). Let's hope the Pre can save Palm from going bankrupt for another year. Let's hope the production Palm Pre lives up to half it's hype or it's Chapter 11 time for Palm.
@ Information Central
There over 10 different to do apps in the app store. I am currently using ToDo along with Toodeldo 'cloud' service to keep my iPhone, cloud, and home computer synced. It works flawlessly and yes it has as many todo categories as I want.
Some other productivity apps I use
AirSharing - lets me store files on my iPhone from any computer over WiFi
iTalk - record audio to my iPhone then sync! with my computer
Evernote - lets me take notes, record audio note or take a picture. Syncs with the cloud and with my computer back home
Then some leisure apps
Shazam - figure out what song is playing just by holding your phone up
SimCity - need I say more
iSports - live in gave sports scores and info
Dynolicious - for my car, I can measure 0-60, skidpad etc and its more accurate than a $300 dedicated device I use to have
iFart - to make farting sounds when I read comments like yours on Engadget
I think that the Palm Pre will also include Visual Voicemail:
http://www.palm.com/us/assets/images/products/phones/detail/pre/gallery/Phone.jpg
Look at the icon on the bottom left.
What do you think guys?
i think that may be a call log.
but that's just my thinking.
Yeah that looks the same as the icon for visual voicemail on my Instinct. And on my instinct the voicemail icon is practically in the same spot on the dial menu.
Recent Calls list.
Sorry, completely read "left" to mean "right". Oops!
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Sprint did a nice job with VVM on the Instinct (and I think one or two other phones now?). Since Sprint's got the tech, I think they'd be totally remiss not to add that finishing touch to this beautious device.
im pretty sure they've already confirmed that publicly.