With all the hype that surrounded the June release of the Palm Pre, the idea of further phones using the webOS system was widely disregarded. Many assumed the the success of the Pre would dictate the release of any further phones, and the Palm’s very existence was reliant on the flagship webOS handset being a smash. The small rumor of another phone name ‘Eos’ or ‘Pixie’ seemed little more than a figment of an over zealous fan wanting to contribute to the growing hysteria that surrounded Palm’s re-boot as a company.

However today’s announcement proves that there has always been a plan to release two webOS phones this year (and that Palm do a pretty good job of keeping things under wraps), independent of the Pre’s success, and that Palm are targeting particular customers with each phone, that webOS will be no one trick pony, and that Palm is planning for the long run.

So the Pixi was announced today, to less hype than the much anticipated Pre, but to seemingly positive reviews that suggest the phone will more than hold it’s own when release on Sprint, sometime before the holiday period. However looking at the phone one might ask whether, while the Pre was meant to be the impact phone, the Centro-like Pixi, might be the phone Palm expects to change people’s perceptions of the company, and move users over to their handsets.

Speaking from a personal point of view, while i own a lovely Palm Pre, that makes me very happy, i have issues with the aesthetics and practicalities of the form factor. I realised the Pre would be first generation hardware and software, and was willing to accept the possibility of better looking and functioning phones in the future. However now that i have seen the fully functioning Pixi, there is a pang of jealousy that will accompany its release into the world.

Yes, i will be happy that i can use my WIFI connection etc, but does that make a huge difference anyway. And the small screen on the Pixi might inhibit me a little but more than the screen on a Blackberry which i find perfectly able. Hells no. What the Pixi offers is sexy, slick, slim form factor, built for use on the move. And with the ever developing webOS, the Pixi offers a phone that will be at the forefront of people’s minds when they are looking for the middle ground between the bidniss styles of the Blackberry, the user-friendliness of the iPhone, and the app development available on Android phones.

This has all been said before for the Palm Pre, however, there is a certain trickiness to using the Pre because of the way it is built which is think has been keeping people away from switching away from their iPhones and Blackberrys. The Pixi offers that middle ground that Palm always spoke of trying to obtain and for this reason i can see the Pixi being the breakaway phone. While it won’t be the phone that everyone is writing about, it will be the phone that, when seen by the average consumer, will be the one they pick.

Up until today it had been a new Palm phone was a mystery only exceeded by the speculation around the company’s ability to survive over the coming harsh winter months. Yet, out of the frying pan of analysts prediuctions that the Palm Pre’s sales were falling off, returns were high, and Palm was likely to release less than promising results for the quarter, comes a bright new future in the Palm Pixi.

Completely altering the form factor availalble with the Palm Pre handset, the Palm Pixi takes on more of a Centro-like look, and turns it into something so desirable that i can feel the grip i have on my Pre slipping slightly.

The new phone will incorporate all of the newest features of Palm webOS while at the same time being the thinnest phone Palm have ever produced.The Pixi will come with a full keyboard and ruberized back for texting and social networking on the move. It is clearly aimed at the Blackberry market, but should appeal to anyone interested in having a phone that can do everything you need while still being almost invisible when on your person.

Interesting timing by the way Palm. Not like there’s another Apple event today or anything. Balls of steal over at Palm HQ apparently.

There will also be an awesome looking artist series featuring talent such as Jeremy Fish designing their own version of the Pixi. Images can be seen over here.

Official Press release below:

Palm’s Thinnest Phone Yet Expands Palm webOS Line with Customizable Style

Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ:PALM) today introduced the Palm(R) Pixi(TM) phone for faster, more intuitive and personal communication in a compact and customizable design.(1) With the instinctively useable Palm webOS(TM) platform, strikingly thin design, a visible full keyboard and fashionable personalization options, Palm Pixi lets you express yourself in amazingly useful ways. It’s scheduled to be available exclusively from Sprint in time for the holidays.

The new update for webOS was accidentally leaked yesterday, and apparently the leak came from Palm itself. A few forum members overs at PreCentral Forums used webOS Doctor (Build Sprint.100.166 08/30/09 08:03 – which is no longer available) to reset their factory settings and the phone automatically installed the new version 1.2 of Palm mobile operating system.

New features include:

- Ability to enter your account details into the app catalog -  which will allow of the monetization of future apps in the store. So we can expect priced apps to be coming fairly soon.

- Possible improved copy & paste action with a ‘Select All’ tab under the edit menu.

- Type to find contacts and subjects within email app. However email search is still not included in Universal Search.

- Ability to save images form browser

Copies of the update are around on the web but apparently installing can cause some serious issues so best to avoid.

Honestly, I can’t complain about my Pre much. Are there little tiny things that could stand to be tweaked or improved? Absolutely, but none of them are deal breakers for me and that seems to be the consensus but there because I’ve yet to hear from fellow Pre owners regretting their purchase. All in all, I’m very satisfied.

I couldn’t have been more satisfied with my buying experience either. I was invited to a Palm Pre Launch even on June 5th so my best friend and I were there at 6pm sharp to get our hands on the Pre. We had to wait for a few minutes for a Sprint sales rep to be available but while we waited, one of the two men from Palm at the party sat down by us and started demoing the Pre to us on his own personal Pre. As if I wasn’t excited enough!

I have to say the entire experience was great. Everyone from Sprint and Palm were incredibly helpful and attentive but perhaps the best bit of news to come from the party and our interaction with them was the Palm seems to be aware of the minor limitations we have all come across, like not being able to change your alert tone for text messages and IMs. The guys from Palm assured me they are aware of all those little things we’d want improved and they are working on it and thanks to the Pre’s over the air update mechanism, it’ll be incredibly easy to implement the changes.

I can’t remember the last time I had a phone that welcomed me with a video… and maybe that’s because I don’t think I have had one do it at all. Well, enter the Pre… the new love of my life. (I’d like to apologize to my significant other but it’s the truth. Love hurts, boo.) My Macs have always welcomed me with a nice multi-lingual video intro and now the Palm re promises to do the same (minus the multi-lingual bit). Leaked today onto the interwebs… or the webernets… is the introduction/activation video you will be greeted with when you grab your new Pre. Enjoy!

Sort of…

CNN reports that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said at All Things Digital:D7 today that he “sees AT&T selling the Pre after the exclusive arrangement with Sprint expires.” That’s not necessarily a definite but going along with the fact that Sprints exclusivity has a expiry date you would expect that some of the other networks would pick the phone up.

When the exclusivity ends isn’t confirmed, and there wasn’t any mention of the Palm Eos during the speech. The rumor mill keeps spinning.

Much like the webOS address book, which displays all the information available from multiple different sources, like Google, FaceBook, and Microsoft Exchange servers, the calendar works the same way. Palm Pre’s webOS can pull calendar information from a variety of sources and display it all together, with entries color-coded by their source (by default, blue for Palm, green for Google, and yellow for FaceBook events). If all of this information at once sounds a bit overwhelming, don’t worry, you can choose to display or hide the data from the individual sources. When there’s an event scheduled from a calendar that’s being hidden, its time slot is  a slightly different shade, so that you know there’s something happening then.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here… let’s start by opening the calendar first;

That’s what month view and week view look like. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s dive into my afternoon today, shall we?

You can select which calendar sources you want to have displayed by tapping on the button that reads “All” at the top right of the screen. For my purposes I’m leaving it at “All” but here’s what it looks like.

Like I mentioned above, the green items by default are from your Google calendar, the yellow is from FaceBook, and blue is from your Palm profile but more on that later. Let’s check on my lunch date with Sam.

All of this information was grabbed from my Google calendar but it is completely editable on the Pre’s calendar and it would sync back and update on Google.

Now say you want to create a new even right in your phone. Well you can do that one of two ways… by tapping on an empty slot or going into the application and selecting “New” and then “Event.”

Begin by filling out the information, like I did below,

The event will default to my default calendar account, which for me is Google but instead of having it listed on my Google, I’d rather have it filed under my Palm profile… and that’s easy. Tap on the “Google” button up towards the top right and change it!

See how easy that was? And now it appears in the empty slot;

Here’s what the Preferences/Settings look like for the Calendar:

As you can see, you can, like with the contacts, sync at any time manually or instead just wait a couple of minutes for the phone to do it for you.

Another app, another day, another reason to love Palm and having waited (not so patiently) for the Pre.

I ran across an interesting article today and as always, I have to share. When we all make our mental (or physical) lists of what we want on the Pre, we have certain must-haves… deal breakers, and unimportant nice-to-haves and we base those lists on what we already know and don’t know about the Palm Pre. Well, here’s a list (not complete by any means as it is missing, in my opinion, one of the big ones, Synergy) based solely on what we know for sure from the guys at ComputerWorld entitled,“5 Palm Pre features that will shake up the smartphone market.”

1) Wireless charger — The Pre is the first phone to work with a wireless charger, where charging takes place via magnetic induction. At just under $70, the charger is both convenient and affordable.

2) Fits like a glove — People who have been shown demo models of the Pre say it has smooth rounded edges and fits comfortably in the hand. This contrasts with the iPhone, which looks cool but has a clunkier feel. In terms of size, the Pre is smaller than an iPhone, but larger when opened.

3) Powerful and primed for multitasking — The Pre’s Web browser is speedy compared to the iPhone and BlackBerry browsers. It can also run multiple applications at once, and users can toggle between applications with the swipe of a finger across the screen.

4) It handles Flash — Palm plans to integrate Adobe Flash 9 into the Pre this year, which will further enhance its Web capabilities. Flash-enabled applications such as video players are not viewable on the iPhone — at least not yet.

5) A real camera! The Palm Pre’s camera captures impressive images, unlike the blurry pictures found on the iPhone and most other mobile phones. “Even in lighting that wasn’t super bright, colors came out rich,” Gizmodo reported.

[via ComputerWorld]

I put a note in the back of my mind two days ago to show this to you guys but you know how life goes… you get busy and then forget what you had sworn you’d remember to do… that is, until someone else reminds you of it and then all of the sudden you say, “Crap, how did I forget to do that?”

While digging around webOS aimlessly like I do most days now, something caught my attention. At the home screen, I started typing away to test out the Universal Search and have it scour through my memos, tasks and emails and the like and besides the familiar Google, Google Maps and Wikipedia search options below my text, I saw Twitter! Yes, Twitter!

And of course, I proceeded to test it. After typing in “palm goon” and tapping the twitter search option, I got this:

Yes, it opened up a card for the web browser and showed me the search results. Also worth noting is that when I tapped on one of those links in the search results, it didn’t just go to that page. No. It opened up another browser card, leaving the one I was on open in the background.

For me this isn’t only interesting but also useful because I find myself using Twitter more and more these days. It’s become almost like a news feed for a lot of us, not to mention a quick and easy way to stay in touch and up to date with family and friends from all over. Nice one, Palm. Nice indeed.

PS.
Anyone else think that large space below Twitter can be used to add more search options? Hm….

It’s been a busy few days in the world of Pre, hasn’t it? Actually, it’s been more like a busy week, but we wouldn’t have it any other way, would we guys? After a long drought, there now seems to be a downpour and we are all ecstatic about it. Over at Engadget, you can have yourself a first look at what Palm likes to call, the “Palm Pre Gesture Guide.” Everything from bringing up the QuickLaunch menu bar to your, by now familiar, multi-touch zooming in and out. Have a look:

[via Engadget]