palm prē @ CES ’09 (Part 2)

Part 2 of mobiledivide’s palm prē interview series from CES ’09 is with Peter Skillman.  Peter is the VP of Design at Palm, Inc. and naturally our conversation revolved around the design choices he and his team at Palm made with the palm prē.

Something you won’t see in this interview is just how snappy the palm prē’s 3MP camera is.  One could literally take picture after picture (using the onscreen shutter or the QWERTY’s spacebar key) and be able to (more or less) capture stills fast enough to create a stop motion animation of their subject!  This aspect of webOS can’t be stressed highly enough.  If you’ve ever captured a still with most Nokia Nseries camera phones or even an iPhone (running iPhone OS X 2.2) you’ll know just how long it can take to capture + process the image before your handset is ready for the next shot (up to 5 seconds in between “exposures”.)  A missed shot is gone forever and if Palm is able to keep webOS this lean and snappy once it leaves Beta then Nokia and Apple have a lot of catching up to do in this area.

It’s easy to see just how proud Peter is of what he and his team have been able to achieve thus far with the palm prē and webOS.  He seems confident in Palm’s future and he should.  webOS and the palm prē are two HUGE steps in the right direction for a company that used to lead and may very well lead the mobile industry again one day.  UI is also something that Peter concentrated on and we’ll see how far Apple is willing to go to compromise them in that area.  In the end the consumer is the one who has the most to lose if the palm prē doesn’t make it out the door as originally intended due to “legal reasons“.

Here is his take on what makes the palm prē such a compelling mobile smartphone:

Filed Under: Interviews • Previews

Tags: 3G • 3MP Camera • 5D Mark II • Apple • Canon • CES '09 • Inductive Dock • Industrial Design • iPhone • Mobile • Mobile Platforms • N95 • N95 8GB • Nokia • Nseries • Palm • Palm Pre • Slider • Sprint • Synergy • webOS