Yesterday, Palm announced its new smartphone, the Pre, at CES.
Now, if I thought Pre was just another iPhone wannabe (like the Samsung Omnia or the BlackBerry Storm), I would have just bashed it on Twitter, but it’s not.
Palm, which was a sinking ship until yesterday, seems to have created the first real iPhone competitor, and even if the device turns out to be not-so-great, I think there’s a lot to be learned from webOS’s (Pre’s new operating system) user interface concepts, even for Apple.
OSNews‘ Thom Holwerda seems to agree with me on this one:
To me, it seems as if Palm is the first smartphone manufacturer to develop an interface from the ground up specifically for a mobile device, without windows, applications, or other desktop-centric ideas. Oh, and it does copy/paste. While it’s dangerous to make any such statements, I do believe that Palm has out-Appled Apple on this one: the iPhone already feels hopelessly kludgey and outdated.
See the Pre in action for yourself in Ars Technica‘s hands-on video:
Ars Technica first hands-on with the Palm pré phone from Ars Technica on Vimeo.
Now, the question of the evening: would I buy a Pre? Unlikely. I’m a sucker for everything Apple makes.
Do I promise not to bash it if it turns out to be a piece of crap? Absolutely no. But I think Palm brings new breath to the smartphone market with the Pre (instead of blindly copying Apple like everyone in the industry has done for the past 33 years), and that’s enough for me to like it.