Pre gets NES emulation in Linux; our thumbs are in for a world of hurt
By Paul Miller 
posted June 14th 2009 7:04AM
posted June 14th 2009 7:04AM
posted June 14th 2009 7:04AM
HP Pre 3
HP webOS 3.0
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The hardware is shit but the software is where it shines.
In a few months if sales start to drop all Palm need to do is release a new phone with the WebOS on it and everyone will get all excited again.
It's hardly a new strategy...
the hardware isn't SHIT, it's just not absolutely fantastic.
The hardware is shit. Not even that it's plastic, not even that the screen is cracking for people who sit with it in their front pocket.
I cannot get around the phone being so wiggly due to the sldier. It's solid as a rock when slid up, when slid down its wiggly and pushy and absolutely horrible feeling.
I read every piece of Pre news for 6 months, and arrived 2 hours early to get the Pre. I wanted to love it but Palm cheaped out so hard on the build quality. The ****ing LG Rumor doesn't wiggly and push in but the Pre, some AAA smartphone revival of Palm, wiggles whenever I do the back gesture or touch the top half of the screen.
It really is that bad. And if yours isn't yet, it will be, there are threads about it everywhere.
I was referring to what I assumed he was referring too: The hardware specs rather build quality. I wouldn't know about build quality, since Palm haven't seen fit to release it in my country.
the shittiness of the hardware is exceeded by the shittiness of palm's 30 day warranty. i'm very disappointed that the quality of either has not improved over the past 5 years. you might not even know your phone is defective within 30 days.
Oh, snap.
I love WebOS and I'm greatly pleased with how moddable it is. However, the Pre form factor is terrible (tiny keys, sketchy case design) and some specs are lacking (8 gb in this time and age is not nearly enough). I'm really looking forward Palm releasing a more refined device in the future, though.
I agree that there should be higher capacity versions but don't generalize 8gb as "is not nearly enough [in this time and age]". Since I rarely need to listen to music on a portable device (I usually listen either at work, or at home, or in the car) I find 8GB more than enough. I have an ipod touch with 8GB and after a few months and a bunch of apps, and even a bit of music and trailers, it's using up barely more than a Gig (not counting the OS).
Sure, but microsd would have been nice. There are currently 16GB microSDHC cards out, with 32GB in the future, and the 16GB cards arent really that expensive. Could have had alot more storage for not that much money.
If future devices support SDXC, just imagine how much more storage you could have. I assume that a micro-SDXC card will start at 8gb when they first hit store shelves because the regular SDXC cards will be 16gb to start, but eventually they could reach terabyte capacities.
Buying oodles of physical storage is pointless when you have a device attached via high speed network to, for all intents and purposes, infinite cloud storage. Having 8GB physically located on the device is enough to store important apps and docs for when you aren't within network reach, but beyond that, what's the point?
Of course, WebOS at version 1 has yet to fully exploit this. There already is cloud backup. I'm waiting for cloud storage extension, but that'll have to wait till the entire network is 4G (expand out of Maryland already). Still, it's there. And it's planned. So no, I really don't think Palm needs to add a memory card slot on future devices. It just needs to expand on its cloud.
8GB is enough for some people, but definitely not all people
@paultakeda
Cloud storage is great for light things, but until we get 4G networks and/or wimax, its not my favorite solution. There's no way I'm going to wait to upload download music, photos, and movies from a cloud. Furthermore, cloud storage is not very traveller friendly. When I go away to other countries, or am on an airplane, or driving in a remote location, or on a cruise ship, I don't want to have to encounter huge roaming data fees just to access my most basic data.
*_*
Any news on TG16 support for Josh?
Looks like we have a fellow iphone butt-buddy here on the defensive!
And how was my question pointless when it PERTAINS TO THE PHONE IN THE ARTICLE? Are you stupid, or do you just put on a show for people?
I don't sit on my computer all day long, nor do I read *every single* article on Engadget. I do pay enough attention to this website, however, to know about the blatant irrelevant nonsense that Apple fanboys post in almost every competing device's story. I figure, "hey, ask a question about the Pre in a Pre article, and maybe I'll get an answer". Instead (judging from you posts here thus far), I get more of the same bullshit that I was referring to.
Obviously the Pre has Flash support, but that wasn't my question. My question was, does it have NATIVE imbedded support that the latest version of Flash offers? I'm not going to repeat myself any more, because if you manage to comprehend my post, you'd see that's what I was talking about.
You really should read all the comments. Your question has been answered at least 3 times already. No flash support. Especially not native. Adobe has some stuff in the works though.
Aaron,
Don't use the 'I don't sit on the internet all day' excuse to hide your ignorance.
Your question has been asked 1000 times before. Try Yahoo Answers or something, kid
Don't you mean "bag of hurt"?
I am waiting for some one to port the full LAMP stack onto the PRE , a powerful web server in your PRE .
ScummVM would be nice and it looks like it should be doable.
scummVM would be totally doable. It doesnt have very harsh requirements for any platform. It runs great on older Palms, and the Pre is easier to develop for than PalmOS, so I see no reason they couldnt have a version out the door in the next month.
ScummVM would TOTALY ROCK
I would also like to see Z-Machine on it as well. Portable Zork anyone?
1) I would love to see someone make the emulator run in landscape mode. Bonuses for also supporting the accelerometer to switch between portrait/landscape or supporting an external gamepad. It may not be very useful with the Pre form factor and no peripherals, but it would be a great head start for use on future WebOS devices with a better form factor for gaming.
2) It would be interesting to see a Linux-based Windows emulator on the Pre. It might be powerful enough to run Windows XP or at least Windows 98. Hopefully, the mini-usb port could support a mouse. Making it recognize the touch screen would be quite a feat.
3) I don't think it is a viable solution to play emulated games from a remote server because the bandwidth is not actually unlimited; it is capped at 5gb.
4) As the Pre's QWERTY keypad is less than ideal for playing games, making use of the gesture area instead of the keypad for gaming controls might be a nice alternative.
Thoughts?
Gesture area + onscreen keys on the other side. You have full touch controls with only a little bit on the actual screen.
I was thinking more about portrait mode and using one side of the gesture area for d-pad and the other for A/B/X/Y buttons. Your idea would be good for landscape mode, though. I have no idea how my idea would work or if the gesture area even has enough room for it. I was also thinking some combination of the gesture area and QWERTY keypad could work.
"3) I don't think it is a viable solution to play emulated games from a remote server because the bandwidth is not actually unlimited; it is capped at 5gb."
I don't know but how much bandwidth do you need to play games online? I used to play World of Warcraft at home and the only time that seemed to make a dent in my monthly 10GB bandwidth worth knowing about was when they released a major update. Given that the Pre seems to be all about "the cloud", playing games hosted in it sounds like a pretty reasonable idea to me.
I'm not a WoW player myself, but doesn't it require installing software on your PC? If I understand correctly, the actual game engine resides on the local machine and there is no streaming of video or anything from the server. The low bandwidth usage is because it only need to send/receive simple commands and text to/from the server and your local machine does the heavy lifting.
Playing emulated games in a similar fashion that would not use bandwidth would mean something like storing the ROMs on the Pre's internal memory and running them from a remote emulator. Something like that. I don't think it works that way.
I don't know how much bandwidth is used for online flash-based games, but I imagine it's more than playing WoW. Probably closer to streaming video from youtube.
lol and if you're one of the 12 people that bought a pre..Im sure you're excited.
Actually to this guy... 12 phones? Try 100,000 in its first weekend.
http://www.precentral.net/100000-pre-phones-sold-so-far#comments
Well... I been using the pre since release and I will say this keyboard is much better than the iphone keyboard. I am 6'1 and have big hands and it took getting used to but I am faster on my pre than I was on the iphone I had for 2 years.... Also the controls for this emulator could be touch screen controls can't they?
PRE FTW
android already has nes/snes/genesis emulators on the market running at pretty much full speed.
And it's been out for... how much longer?
Well thank you very much Mr. Snarky McSnarkinson >_>
It's obvious that you're over analyzing the success of this application on the Pre. It's about FINALLY getting an NES Emulator, it's about the fact that developers can do something like this to make more applications on the device.
Again with the NES. Where's the f*ing SNES?
Super sweet for Pre owners!
Enjoy!
Now all they need to figure out is how to run rooted apps in the webOS environment so it can make use of the cards workspace.
So does this mean basically that the Pre is an NES? Just kidding.
Well well well i show you how to run nes, snes, gba and playstation games on your palm pre
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXKY-xQ9jqU
skip the first half of to video to see playstation emulator in action.
Dont miss this, you definetly want to see it. btw: the controller is just AWESOME
I saw that video and not thuroughly convinced. He just happen to get the controller to work with the game?
Plus when he was playing the super mario game, his finger actions on the keypad was totally out of sync with the game video. To me it was just a video with him poorly executing the commands
Dude, I would be a pre just for this! Actually, all phones should have an nes emulator. It should be a standard feature. I'm getting that warm and tingly feeling just looking at that picture! Oh wait no, I just peed my pants. Sorry, got too excited!
I remember before launch people were complaining about how the Pre wouldn't be able to handle the gaming "capabilities" that the iPhone had or would have. Not to start a huge argument here, but I think this, in tandem with the recent DOOM port, only goes to show that the Pre has a pretty damn good shot at becoming a viable gaming device. If not the next PSP Go, then at least on par with the iPhone. My thoughts here: http://preinsiders.com/home/2009/06/14/nes-emulator-gets-ported-to-palm-pre/
Good, I was hoping I wasn't gonna have to figure out how to use LJP in the Garnet emulator. Running an emulator inside another emulator seems kind of inefficient to me.
Here's a video proving it's controllable, too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYxAEEHsmeE
if this device plays SNES, and Genesis games, then I'll go buy one right NOW !!!!!!!!
Who cares....Wow, we can now play 20 year old games on a cell phone. Whoopdeedoo.
is that contra?? did he try up up down down left right left right B A start??
I'm just waiting for the LJP crew to get in the root of this baby and get the Wiimote integration up and running.
a nice bluetooth joystick would be awesome.
this might sound stupid but i have no idea on how to get the nes emulator installed on the pre can anyone help?