Palm's Pre smartphone has received generally positive reviews since its June 6 launch, but one complaint is that its application store lags behind the competition. It's unclear how quickly developers will embrace the webOS platform, and the VoIP-calling company Skype said it will be taking a wait-and-see approach.
Skype has been trying to expand its presence beyond the desktop for years and has developed applications for Windows Mobile-, Android-, and Java-powered phones. The recently released version for the iPhone and iPod Touch rocketed up the most-downloaded list of the App Store as well.
"If someone has a cell phone, we want them to be able to use Skype on it," a Skype spokesperson told GigaOM. "As things are evolving quickly in this space, we will continue to keep our eye on Palm's Pre and webOS platform, which seems to be getting good traction in its first weekend. But we have nothing to announce at this time."
Palm's App Catalog is hoping to replicate the success Apple has had with its App Store, which has seen more than a billion downloads in less than a year. Palm may be facing a chicken-and-egg situation, though, as developers will flock to platforms with large audiences, but audiences like platforms with lots of applications.
To alleviate some of these problems, Palm has made it easy for content creators to make software for webOS using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other standard Web technologies. Palm said this means Web developers can quickly make programs for the Pre, even if they don't have experience in the mobile app space.
[Originally Posted at informationweek.com]
Sunday, June 14, 2009
ARM A9 Dual Core Arm Chipset Coming to Palm Soon
ARM the makers of smart phone chips said they will deliver the new chipset which contains more than one core, will be delivered in the next generation devices very soon. We are speculating that this could be in the next version of Palm's webOS handset and may soon also contain the same design for iPhone. Who will see the chipset in the first handset remains to be seen. But from Palm's aggressive strategy with Palm Pre and working with app developers which I met Friday night in San Francisco, Palm is certainly moving in the right direction, as their stock price had indicated.
"The A8 is just a single core while the A9 will be dual-core, all the way up to quad-core to give smartphones an even bigger performance boost," Bruce said.
He said the move to dual-core phones should happen relatively quickly. "It's very aggressive. It's only going to be in a year's time that you're going to get these phones," he said.
"You'll definitely see handsets shipping with a dual-core A9 in 2010," James Bruce, wireless segment manager for ARM, said in a phone interview earlier this week, referring to the next-generation Cortex-A9 processor from ARM.
"You're getting a 2X increase (over the previous ARM design). "And actually the A9 takes that even further, It's a superscalar design but it's also an out-of-order design as well. There is some out-of-order aspects with the A8 but the A9 is a very aggressive out-of-order processor," he said. The ability to process instructions using an advanced out-of-order architecture typically results in better performance.
And graphics will follow suit. The upcoming multi-core OMAP 4 processor from Texas Instruments (the OMAP 3 is used in the Palm Pre) is based on the ARM Cortex-9 and will boast graphics that support 1080p video and high-definition record and playback, larger screen resolutions, and "digital SLR-like performance with 20 MP (megapixel) imaging," according to TI documentation.
[Originally Posted at prethinking.com]
"The A8 is just a single core while the A9 will be dual-core, all the way up to quad-core to give smartphones an even bigger performance boost," Bruce said.
He said the move to dual-core phones should happen relatively quickly. "It's very aggressive. It's only going to be in a year's time that you're going to get these phones," he said.
"You'll definitely see handsets shipping with a dual-core A9 in 2010," James Bruce, wireless segment manager for ARM, said in a phone interview earlier this week, referring to the next-generation Cortex-A9 processor from ARM.
"You're getting a 2X increase (over the previous ARM design). "And actually the A9 takes that even further, It's a superscalar design but it's also an out-of-order design as well. There is some out-of-order aspects with the A8 but the A9 is a very aggressive out-of-order processor," he said. The ability to process instructions using an advanced out-of-order architecture typically results in better performance.
And graphics will follow suit. The upcoming multi-core OMAP 4 processor from Texas Instruments (the OMAP 3 is used in the Palm Pre) is based on the ARM Cortex-9 and will boast graphics that support 1080p video and high-definition record and playback, larger screen resolutions, and "digital SLR-like performance with 20 MP (megapixel) imaging," according to TI documentation.
[Originally Posted at prethinking.com]
Indications of Pre coming to Telstra and Optus in Australia
Crikey mate, that ROM is chock full of interesting stuff! Edoan on our forums uncovered something quite interesting for our Australian friends: evidence that the Pre will be landing not just on Telstra as we reported last month, but that it may very well also be coming to Optus (via Singapore-based parent Singtel):
wap.cingular?ISP@CINGULARGPRS.COM
10.1.1.180http://mmsc.telstra.com:8002
http://mms.singtel.com:10021/mmsc#
wap.voicestream.comyhs_nullhs_null
10.128.1.69http://mms.gprs.rogers.com
At this rate, it looks like everybody’s going to be getting the Pre at some point, which can only be a good thing for you and me (more users equal more apps) and for Palm. It is worth noting that the iPhone is also available on Telstra and Optus (and Vodafone and Virgin Mobile) in Australia.
[Originally Posted at precentral.net]
wap.cingular?ISP@CINGULARGPRS.COM
10.1.1.180http://mmsc.telstra.com:8002
http://mms.singtel.com:10021/mmsc#
wap.voicestream.comyhs_nullhs_null
10.128.1.69http://mms.gprs.rogers.com
At this rate, it looks like everybody’s going to be getting the Pre at some point, which can only be a good thing for you and me (more users equal more apps) and for Palm. It is worth noting that the iPhone is also available on Telstra and Optus (and Vodafone and Virgin Mobile) in Australia.
[Originally Posted at precentral.net]
How to: Rearrange and Delete Apps in your Launcher, Plus Shortcuts
The Palm Pre’s launcher is good, and it’s also okay. The best description is a melding of the iPhone and Palm launchers, giving you a scrolling application list like Palm, but with no categories or auto-arranging - just like the iPhone. Granted, with Universal Search you probably won’t be visiting the launcher often, but for those of us engrained in the ways of Palm OS and the iPhone, it’s going to be a hard habit to break. So that leaves us with how to manage your launcher.
First up we’re going to cover rearranging the icons in your launcher. If like me you’re obsessive about the organization of your digital information, or like others simply want this app and that app at the top of the list, you’ll want to switch up the order of your launcher icons. To move an app, all you have to do is tap and hold on it until glowing rings appear around it, and then drag it to where you want and release. Thankfully due to the scrolling nature of the launcher it won’t be nearly as frustrating as the iPhone (where apps seem to randomly switch pages when you try and move something). If you want to move the app to a different one of the three pages (Three? Come on Palm!), all you’ve got do is move it to the edge of the screen and wait a second for the page to slide over. You can quickly gauge which page you’re on by the little white bars at the bottom of the launcher - they indicate how many pages are to your right and to the left.
One of my favorite applications from the Palm OS days was SharkLinks; it let me add websites to my launcher as if they were applications. You can do the same in your browser, just open the menu, click on Page, and then select Add To Launcher. Just like in Bookmarks you can rename the site, change the URL, and reposition/resize the icon snapshot. Once you click the Add To Launcher button it will throw a link onto your launcher at the bottom of the first page (and then you can rearrange it to wherever you like).
You can do the same in Contacts. Just open the contact you want to add to the launcher, open the menu, and then click Add To Launcher. They’ll appear just like an application, and clicking on the icon will open that contact. Using Universal search any links or contacts you’ve added to the launcher will appear as applications (at the top of the list) and as the original contact (or not at all, in the case of web bookmarks). To remove a contact shortcut from your launcher, just open the contact and in the menu select Remove From Launcher (which will have replaced Add To Launcher).
But what about removing a web page? Since they aren’t technically applications, nor are they bookmarks, you can’t delete a web page link through the List Apps option in the Launcher menu, nor can you get rid of it through the Bookmarks menu in Web. To delete a launcher web link, or any third party application for that matter, all you have to do is hold down the Orange/Option key and tap on the icon. This will bring up a dialog with the app name and version, plus the option to Delete or just hit Done and get out of there. Tapping Delete will give you a Delete or Cancel confirmation and then you’re done. Easy as pie, and if there’s anything that we at PreCentral like, it’s pie. And webOS.
[Originally Posted at precentral.net]
First up we’re going to cover rearranging the icons in your launcher. If like me you’re obsessive about the organization of your digital information, or like others simply want this app and that app at the top of the list, you’ll want to switch up the order of your launcher icons. To move an app, all you have to do is tap and hold on it until glowing rings appear around it, and then drag it to where you want and release. Thankfully due to the scrolling nature of the launcher it won’t be nearly as frustrating as the iPhone (where apps seem to randomly switch pages when you try and move something). If you want to move the app to a different one of the three pages (Three? Come on Palm!), all you’ve got do is move it to the edge of the screen and wait a second for the page to slide over. You can quickly gauge which page you’re on by the little white bars at the bottom of the launcher - they indicate how many pages are to your right and to the left.
One of my favorite applications from the Palm OS days was SharkLinks; it let me add websites to my launcher as if they were applications. You can do the same in your browser, just open the menu, click on Page, and then select Add To Launcher. Just like in Bookmarks you can rename the site, change the URL, and reposition/resize the icon snapshot. Once you click the Add To Launcher button it will throw a link onto your launcher at the bottom of the first page (and then you can rearrange it to wherever you like).
You can do the same in Contacts. Just open the contact you want to add to the launcher, open the menu, and then click Add To Launcher. They’ll appear just like an application, and clicking on the icon will open that contact. Using Universal search any links or contacts you’ve added to the launcher will appear as applications (at the top of the list) and as the original contact (or not at all, in the case of web bookmarks). To remove a contact shortcut from your launcher, just open the contact and in the menu select Remove From Launcher (which will have replaced Add To Launcher).
But what about removing a web page? Since they aren’t technically applications, nor are they bookmarks, you can’t delete a web page link through the List Apps option in the Launcher menu, nor can you get rid of it through the Bookmarks menu in Web. To delete a launcher web link, or any third party application for that matter, all you have to do is hold down the Orange/Option key and tap on the icon. This will bring up a dialog with the app name and version, plus the option to Delete or just hit Done and get out of there. Tapping Delete will give you a Delete or Cancel confirmation and then you’re done. Easy as pie, and if there’s anything that we at PreCentral like, it’s pie. And webOS.
[Originally Posted at precentral.net]
Homebrew Pre firmware just a button, cable away?
If you were to put the Pre on a scale of hacker friendliness from 1 to 10, where 1 is the iPhone (remember how long it took for the first jailbreaks back in the day?) and 10 is, say, OpenMoko, we're starting to get the impression that Palm's latest effort falls somewhere way past the 5 mark. We got out first hint that they're being good sports about letting developers play with the Konami code access to developer mode, and now we've got news that it's easy -- nay, trivial -- to run whatever firmware you'd like on the phone.
It seems all you've got to do is hold down the volume up key when connecting the Pre to your computer via USB, then you can flash the phone 'til you're blue in the face; even better, the enterprising dev who found the trick says that it's mega simple to modify the stock build and he'd wiped out the activation check with minimal effort. This can only be good news for tweakers and anyone wanting to walk off the App Catalog's beaten path, and if this ultimately means we're a few solid steps closer to a Pre running WinMo 6.1, sign us up. Way up.
[Originally Posted at engadget.com]
It seems all you've got to do is hold down the volume up key when connecting the Pre to your computer via USB, then you can flash the phone 'til you're blue in the face; even better, the enterprising dev who found the trick says that it's mega simple to modify the stock build and he'd wiped out the activation check with minimal effort. This can only be good news for tweakers and anyone wanting to walk off the App Catalog's beaten path, and if this ultimately means we're a few solid steps closer to a Pre running WinMo 6.1, sign us up. Way up.
[Originally Posted at engadget.com]
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