Palm Pre Features Compared with Apple's New iPhone (Leaked Specs) & iPhone OS 3.0

Couple of weeks ago, I had compared Palm Pre with iPhone 3G. Now it's time for the real deal, yes, a comparison between Palm Pre which goes on sale today and the new iPhone (specs are based on details provided by Daring Fireball's John Gruber and those posted by an Apple fan blog). I enjoyed comparing both the smartphones and I hope that you enjoy reading it too.

When I first posted the comparison between Palm Pre and the existing iPhone, a lot of users called it an unfair comparison and rightly so. Apple is expected to announce their third generation iPhone at WWDC which is expected to up the ante with hardware improvements bundled with iPhone OS 3.0.

et us begin the comparison between the hardware features of both Palm Pre and the new iPhone.

Hardware Specifications:

This comparison is based on the specs that an iPhone fan blog had claimed were of Apple’s new iPhone based on a source close to Apple's hardware team. Most rumors and speculations about Apple’s next generation iPhone have suggested that they aren’t too far fetched.

In case of Palm Pre, the battery is removable which will make many users happy.

But, in my opinion, the new iPhone is a clear winner here thanks to (a) 3.2 megapixel camera with the autofocus as well as bring video recording capabilities, (b) Storage capacity of 32GB, (c) Slightly bigger screen size.

We don't have information on the RAM that will be available in Palm Pre, Apple's new iPhone is expected to have 256MB RAM up from 128MB RAM in current iPhone models.

The digital compass is another feature but I’m not too excited about it.

Winner: New iPhone

There are rumors that the new iPhone could also come with anOLED screen, which will greatly improve the battery life and front facing camera for video calling. If that happens then Apple’s next generation iPhone will be miles ahead of Palm Pre.

Messaging:

Both Palm Pre and Apple’s new iPhone (thanks to iPhone OS 3.0) will support SMS and MMS. Sprint will allow Palm Pre users to do instant messaging on multiple IM networks, and the same will be possible on the new iPhone thanks to instant messaging apps likeBeejiveIM.

We have the unending saga about the battle of physical keyboard vs. the virtual one. Opinions vary and so does users choice. Hence, I will leave this to the consumers to decide. For some it's a real deal maker and for some it’s just a matter of getting-used-to.

For email usage, both will support the IMAP and Microsoft Exchange. Both will support the calendar feature where as Palm Pre will come with a to-do-list.

As covered earlier, Palm Pre's Synergy (Palm's personal information management system) will sync contacts, calendars etc to the cloud.

Reports have indicated that Palm Pre will come with the 'Documents to Go', Adobe Reader which means that Pre will support document editing and viewing of PDF files. In case of the iPhone, its possible to achieve it with iPhone app - QuickOffice app.

Winner: It’s a tie

Processing Power:

Palm Pre's ARM Cortex Processor will be matched by the new iPhone's improved but unspecified processer. The new iPhone'sprocessor is speculated to be running at 600 MHz, matching Palm Pre's.

Winner: The processing power of both smartphones is comparable on paper but how will they fare in the real world remains to be seen. It’s a tie.

Operating System:

The Push notification is Apple's answer to Palm Pre's multi-tasking capability. Users are more than aware of how important it is to have this capability. An instant messaging app would be able to notify the user of an incoming message even when this app is not running. iPhone's limited battery life has kept this necessary feature out of reach but Apple looks to bridge this gap with Push Notification.

Palm Pre's web OS will come with multi-tasking capabilities and it looks quite user friendly. But it will be interesting to see how this affects battery life, initial reviews suggest battery life isn’t very good.

Copy-Paste: Both Palm Pre and iPhone OS 3.0 will support the basic capability of being able to Copy-Paste content.

Universal Search: Both Palm Pre and iPhone OS 3.0 will come with a universal search. Palm Pre's OS will support this feature while in case of the new iPhone, iPhone OS 3.0 will include Spotlight for iPhone, which is Apple's universal search solution for the iPhone.

Winner: There is no clear winner as Apple has cleverly included all the features that Palm Pre is trying to claim as its Unique Selling Points.

However, the ability to run apps in the background is touted by many as one of the killer features of Palm Pre.

App Store Comparison:

There is simply no worthy opponent to Apple in this area. The App Store has an almost unparalleled features and an incomparable range of apps that help us with the day-to-day mundane stuff as well as with the more complicated ones. I haven't heard of any game plan from Palm that aims at tackling this.

iPhone OS 3.0 will bring In-App purchase which will make the App Store even more attractive to iPhone developers.

Apple might not be making a lot of money with the App Store but it adds to the stickiness which is invaluable.

Winner: New iPhone

Price Comparison:

The overall cost to consumer could be a reasonable big factor in this comparison. Sprint will offer Palm Pre at a price tag of $199 (with two year contract and after the $100 mail-in rebate), which is the same price at which AT&T offers iPhone (16 GB iPhone, two year contract).

Sprint’s monthly plans will be priced at $69.99 and $89.99 with a choice of 450 or 900 anytime minutes respectively. Now, AT&T requires a $30-per-month data plan, a further $39.99 for the 450 minutes and an additional $20 per month for unlimited text messaging. Thus AT&T comes $20 dearer compared to Sprint's data plan.

The question remains that will users switch from AT&T to Sprint; Sprint still lags in terms of having a more reliable network and service levels.

Winner: There is no clear winner in this situation but Sprint's 'Everything Data' plan might have an edge.

Other features:

I was very impressed with Palm Pre's wireless charging device. The user will be able to charge Palm Pre by simply placing it on a wireless charging dock, the magnets in the dock will align the phone in the correct position for charging. Unfortunately, this wireless charging kit has to be bought separately and will cost $69.99.

In iPhone OS 3.0, Apple will be allowing accessory manufacturers to create iPhone applications to interface with their hardware accessories over Bluetooth. I think this has huge potential based on the demo given by Johnson and Johnson at Apple’s special even in March, showing off their medical iPhone app which works with a small dock connector over Bluetooth serving as a finger pricking device for glucose testing.

Conclusion:

Apple has developed a habit of staying ahead of the competition. In my opinion, the hardware improvements in the next generation iPhone and iPhone OS 3.0; it continue to remain ahead of its competition.

Palm Pre looks quite impressive (on paper) but its performance can be truly gauged after it enters the real world! Its the first device which has come close to giving Apple iPhone some serious competition (at least on paper and the buzz that it has generation) which is great (and kudos to Palm engineers for that) as it will force Apple to keep innovating aggressively which is ultimately great for end users like us.

I want to also note that this might be an unfair comparison as we are comparing Palm Pre with Apple’s next generations whose features are based on rumors and speculations. I will revisit this comparison when I find out more about Palm Pre and also when Apple’s new iPhone becomes official. You can also check mycomparison of Palm Pre with iPhone 3G.

My money is on Apple’s new iPhone and the iPhone OS 3.0. How about you? I am curious to hear your opinion, so please feel free to drop me a line in the comments section.

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Palm Pre's Big Day

NEW YORK--The much-anticipated Palm Pre may have gotten almost as much hype as the Apple iPhone over the past six months, but its opening day fell short of the attention iPhones grabbed on their first days.

The Sprint store in the Flatiron building on Manhattan's Fifth Ave. received nearly 200 Palm Pres for the launch.

(Credit: Marguerite Reardon/CNET)

Unlike the huge crowds of people that formed long lines and camped out in front of Apple and AT&T stores days in advance of the iPhone's launch, crowds for the Palm Pre were much smaller and tended to arrive in the morning just before stores opened.

Neither Sprint nor Palm have released official figures about how many devices they hoped to sell on the Pre's first day. But Sprint representatives had been trying to downplay expectations for iPhone-like crowds ahead of the launch. Sprint spokesman Mark Elliott told The New York Timesearlier this week that the company not only didn't expect long lines for the Pre at its 1,100 stores, but that it didn't want them.

And it looks like the company got its wish. Salespeople at Sprint stores in New York City said a handful of people gathered outside their locations early Saturday morning. But most lines didn't even come close to the madness experienced on iPhone launch days.

Crowds tended to be bigger at Best Buy stores, which were offering the device for the $199 price without the $100 mail-in rebate. Customers buying a Pre from Sprint, the exclusive carrier of the device, pay $299 at the time of purchase and can get $100 back with a mail-in rebate. According to Rich Pesce, a Sprint spokesman, most new phones offered through the carrier have the mail-in rebate offer.

Many Best Buy locations sold out of the Pre almost immediately. But considering that Best Buy stores received far fewer devices for the launch than Sprint retail locations, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise that they'd run out of inventory earlier than the Sprint stores. For example, the Best Buy store on 23rd Street in New York City got somewhere between 40 and 48 phones for Saturday's launch, while the Sprint store two blocks away on Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron building received nearly 200 phones for the launch.

Even though the crowds and the hoopla may not have matched those of the iPhone, the Pre likely had a good first day. Sprint salespeople in Manhattan said they had a steady stream of customers for most of the day. And the Sprint store on Fifth Avenue only had six phones left as of 2:30 p.m. EDT Saturday.

(Credit: CNET)

Since the Pre's debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, smartphone junkies have been closely tracking the device's progress as it moved toward commercial availability. Many of the people who showed up to Sprint's pre Pre-launch party in New York Friday said they had been following news and hype of the phone since it was announced.

Many of these new customers, including Mark McNulty of Westchester County, New York, are loyal Palm fans who have been long waiting for a new and better Palm smartphone.

"Palm has always had a long history as a smartphone company," he said. "And they've always been the best smartphone for calendars and handling work documents."

Pre's success is considered crucial for Palm, which was a pioneer in the smartphone market. But in the past couple of years, the company has been struggling to compete against other smartphone makers, namely Apple and Research In Motion, which makes the BlackBerry devices.

The Pre's success isn't just important to Palm. Sprint Nextel, which currently has an exclusive deal to carry the Pre, also has a lot riding on the success of the device. Sprint, the third largest wireless operator in the U.S., has been struggling to stem customer defections and repair a badly damaged reputation. At an event here Friday, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse called the Pre Sprint's coming-out party for the company's enhanced wireless network and much improved customer support.

First impressions of the phone have been very positive. Reviewers, such as CNET's Bonnie Cha, have been impressed with Palm's new webOS, which powers the Pre. A key feature highlighted in her review is the Pre's ability to allow users to have multiple applications or Web pages open on the phone at once, something the Apple's iPhone doesn't allow.

A new Palm Pre customer gets a tutorial on her phone in a Sprint store in New York City.

(Credit: Marguerite Reardon/CNET)

Most reviewers agree that the Pre's software makes it a much stronger competitor to the iPhone than other touch-screen devices, such as the BlackBerry Storm. But no one is expecting the Pre to rival the iPhone in terms of sales, at least not initially while it's available on only one carrier's network.

Analysts have been all over the map in terms of sales expectations for the Pre, but Macquarie Securities analyst Philip Cusick thinks Palm and Sprint will likely sell about 1 million device a quarter. And he believes the company will sell about 6 million devices in fiscal 2011.

By comparison, AT&T activated roughly 2.4 million iPhone 3Gs in the first quarter it was available. About 1 million BlackBerry Bold devices were sold through AT&T in its first full quarter. And Verizon Wireless sold roughly 2 million BlackBerry Storms in its first quarter.

Meanwhile, Apple is not sitting still. The company is expected to announce a new iPhone next week at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Most iPhone watchers don't expect any major hardware enhancements, but there has been lots of chatter that Apple may announce a 4GB entry-level iPhone, as well as a 32GB video iPhone. These new phones, along with new enhancements to the iPhone OS, will likely make it even more difficult for the new Pre to compete.________________________________________________________________

$170 In Hardware In Palm Pre

A teardown of the new Palm Pre by Rapid Repair shows $170.02 in hardware components.

Their detailed disassembly guide requires a small phillips screw driver, small flathead, pliers, solder iron, exacto razor & safe open tool.

If anyone feels like taking apart their new phone the instructions are linked here.

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Rumor - More leaked Next Gen iPhone images

These images come from Italian iPhone blogger iSpazio, who posted an image yesterday and a more convincing set today. There appears to be an extra button on the lower-side of the case (camera shutter?) and the headphone jack for the iPhone appears to have moved down to the bottom of the unit. What are your thoughts

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New iPhone In-Call Features?

Apple has spent some time outlining technology that would add a new level of interaction between iPhone users, such as the ability to share and control playback of digital media files like music tracks and video during a telephone call.

The concept is outlined in a 19-page patent filing discovered by AppleInsider this week titled “Methods and systems for mixing media with communications” and credited to Apple software engineer Jeffrey Terlizzi. It begins by noting that while media items are becoming increasingly portable for mobile users these days, they’re still not as easily shared with others located remotely in real time.

“For example, an individual may call his friend to discuss music, but in order for the friend to listen to the music, the individual either may have to send the music to the friend using a device other than his telephone,” according to the filing, “or he may have to end the phone call and use the telephone to send the friend an email with the music attached.”

Cut-and-dried, Apple’s approach to improving upon this limitation is to include an “Add Media” option to the iPhone’s phone application that would allow users to attach and transmit media items to another iPhone user with whom they’re currently engaged in a phone call. Among the listed types of media suitable for transmission during calls are music files, video, images, voicemails, and podcasts.

“For example, the user may initiate a telephone call with his friend in order to ask the friend if she is familiar with a particular song,” Apple said. “Once the phone call has been established between the user and his friend, the user may select the song of interest from his communications device, and he may send the song to his friend over the same communication path used by the communications device to establish the communications operation, so that the two may continue their phone conversation while the song plays simultaneously.”

Alternatively, the filing notes that “the communications device may receive a communications operation in the form of a request for a video conference, and once the conference is established, the user may select a video (e.g., a YouTube.TM. selection) to be sent back to the conference initiator by the communications device over the same communication path.”

iPhone users would also have full control over playback of media items once they’re shared, according to Apple. For example, they could pause and resume playback of a shared digital music track, skip to the next or previous track in the sender’s music library, or switch to transmitting a different media item entirely.

Throughout the filing, the Cupertino-based company makes numerous references to interactive iPhone video conferences where digital media files are shared, something not possible with today’s iPhone models because they don’t include include a forward-facing video camera.

“For example, the user may wish to transmit a video media item to the recipient of a communications operation, where the ongoing communications operation is in the form of a video conference,” Apple said. “Thus, there may be two video data streams to transmit to the recipient, one related to the media item and one related to the communications operation.”

“There may also be two audio data streams to transmit. In order to transmit all of the streams over the same communication path, the control circuitry may employ a multiplexer to combine together any video streams, and to combine together any audio streams,” the filing adds. “The multiplexer may then combine into one fixed stream the two combined streams. The control circuitry may signal the communications circuitry to transmit the fixed stream to the recipient of the communications operation using any suitable approach.”

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Multi-Touch Click-Wheels?

Having pioneered multi-touch for its iPhone and iPod touch handhelds, Apple later extended the technology to trackpads on its Mac notebook line and now appears ripe to introduce the first iPod click-wheels with similar capabilities.

Though sales of the iPod touch have taken off in recent quarters, recent reports suggest that we haven’t seen the last of click-wheel-based iPods, the next of which is expected to turn up this fall in the form of a fifth-generation iPod nano with a built-in digital camera and more compact circular scroll wheel.

This new nano could be the first iPod support multi-touch gestures through its click-wheel, according to recent patent filing discovered by AppleInsider this week that details methods for detecting “input gestures that traverse the center of the scroll wheel and to detect multi-touch input.”

More specifically, the 38-page filing made just this past September describes a “multi-dimensional scroll wheel” that “can sense a moving object, such as a finger, as it is moved not only in a rotational manner but also in a linear manner across the center of the scroll wheel.” This new breed of scroll wheel would also be capable of sensing more than one object at a time, such as multi-finger touch or motion.

“Applications can be enhanced by the improved range of input enabled by the scroll wheel circuitry,” Apple explained. “For example, linear motion, such as a swipe across the scroll wheel, can enable an image browsing application to cause images, such as album cover pictures for example, to be transitioned across a screen.”

Multi-touch input, such as one finger touching an inner region of the scroll and another finger rotating in the outer region, can also enable a zooming application to cause a displayed image to be zoomed-in or out, depending on the direction of the rotation. Similarly, a pinching or expanding of a user’s fingers can enable the zooming application to cause a zooming action.

“The scroll wheel circuitry can also bias the sensor element configuration according to the type of input event expected,” the filing adds. “For example, if a particular application permits only linear motion input along a particular axis (e.g., a horizontal or vertical swipe), the scroll wheel circuitry can utilize only the sensor elements arranged along that path to sense for an input event. By using less than all available sensor elements in this manner, the scroll wheel circuitry can achieve power savings.”

The filing is credited to over half a dozen Apple engineers, including Lakshman Rathnam, Louis Bokma, Fletcher Rothkopf, Andrea Mucignat, Erturk Kocalar, Benjamin Lyon and Joseph Fisher.

(via AppleInsider.com)

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Carphone Warehouse Has iPhones In Their Inventory

Carphone Warehouse, the largest independent European mobile phone retailer and an official iPhone reseller, added four placeholders to their inventory list for new iPhone models earlier today, sources tell AppleInsider.

With new iPhone models expected this summer, in addition to the previously-announced 3.0 firmware, Carphone Warehouse appears to be gearing up for the change. A screenshot of its inventory system provided by a person known to have access to such information shows placeholders for both 16GB and 32GB iPhones in both white and black. They’re mixed in among the existing and previous iPhone models, having reportedly cropped up just hours ago.

Numerous reports and inadvertent leaks from Apple’s partners over the past several weeks have signaled the arrival of third-generation iPhones in capacities of 16GB and 32GB. While the changes to Carphone Warehouse’s systems should not be treated as confirmation of new iPhone specifications, the retailers status as an official iPhone reseller could potentially make it privy to such information.

Coupled with Best Buy’s recently-released internal memorandum notifying employees of expected low inventory of the current iPhone 3G, as well as a similar advisory issued by Brightpoint, an iPhone distributor in Australia, retail signs are aligned in pointing to new iPhone disclosures early next week at Apple’s annual developers conference.

Last year, Apple introduced the iPhone 3G at the start of its 2008 developers conference on June 9th and announced availability would follow on July 11th. During the four weeks in between, supply of original iPhones were close to non-existent. Thursday’s report out of Carphone Warehouse was accompanied by word that the retailer has simultaneously pushed out some of its poster and offer changes until July 7, but AppleInsider has no reason to believe that date is of any broader significance.

(via AppleInsider.com)

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