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: Featured • Interviews • Previews
Serko is correct — there’s microUSB for charging and data purposes, but not microSD.
Jon Z at Palm
Seriously is this guy kidding? At about 1:58 into the video he says
“They are the first company ever to provide a dialpad as part of the QWERTY keyboard”.
Peter Skillman (VP of design at Palm) must not know his mobile devices.
Go look up the original Moto-Q, I dug one old image up. Go look at the image here http://www.mobilegazette.com/motorola-moto-q.htm
Maybe he will revise his comments to ” first company ever to provide a red dialpad as part of the sliding QWERTY black keyboard”
[...] to feel the urge to have one. The folks at Mobile Divide got to see one with Palm and have published a video of the Pre in action and it’s the best look I have seen of the Pre so far. How can you not [...]
[...] part (also on mobiledivide.com) and he’ll post part two of the video Wednesday. **UPDATE: Part 2 is posted. Previous Post« GBTV #500 | A Celebration in Steel Next PostMulti-touch on the T-Mobile G1 [...]
[...] Friend of the Brief, SERKOART, took his 5D Mark II to the Palm booth at CES and captured video of the Pre in action. He posted the first part on mobiledivide.com and he’ll post part two of the video Wednesday. **UPDATE: Part 2 is posted. [...]
Great video (really, your production skills are kinda sick).
Interesting the comment at 00:53 about the microSD slot, because this has been very much conflicting from various reports from those who were at CES – all of whom said they gotten confirmation from Palm for it not being there.
Love the gestures, and really, the learning curve seems much smaller than I originally thought.
Kinda mad that he compared the industrial design vs the N95 8GB; but makes sense, as the slider rails are not necessarly a great feature, but to not see them is a better thing asthetically. I wonder how that factors into the life of the slider though.
Looking forward to your purchase and review of one when it goes GSM
@ARJW
Thanks for the comment. If you listen closely I believe Peter Skillman stated that the palm pre includes a “microUSB” port for charging (no mention of microSD as far as I’ve heard.)
Mr. Skillman asked if anyone had a slider phone handy so that’s why you see my N95 8GB getting compared to the palm pre.
the pre is really cool. this is the first palm device am impressed with. look out apple and nokia had better make the n97 interface as intuitive or better. wow is all i can say.
Everyone keeps mentioning the “one-handed” operation of the Pre. However, even the VP of design is using two hands right before saying “one-handed operation” (about 3:14). Don’t get me wrong…I think it has great one-hand operation potential… I just don’t like seeing inconsistencies in marketing material that can be used to “flame” a product or its marketing…
Looks like a great device…
Did he say ‘boom’? ^^
A little door for micro-usb???
I thought that one didn’t exist???!!!!
I remember palm representatives even justifying why they didn’t have it….
[...] Bron: MobileDivide [...]
Wow that’s pretty nice. Does it have an accelerometer? Can it act as a MIDI controller in 3 dimensions like the iPhone/iPod Touch? If so then Does it have Bluetooth modem capability like my current Sprint phone does? Will its data plan be affordable? If so, I will buy it.
I’ve been waiting for Sprint to have a good thing for a long freaking time. This looks good… I wonder if the third-party software development will match with the iPhone/iPod Touch? AT&T Wireless is a piece of freaking garbage that is horrible and deserves to die the most painful and horrific death imaginable. Sprint actually has clear-sounding calls that are not garbldey-gook like AT&T calls.
But I still feel I’d rather have a Sprint iPhone, to be quite honest!
It’s hard to tell because it looks like the “deck” bounces (similar to when vertically scrolling a list that hits the end?) right when he drops the app he is moving, but how many apps do you see he has running when he goes to move one over to the right (around 3min 40 sec mark)? It looks like at 7-9 including the Amazon store app that he closed/tossed. Interesting.
hey which canon camera shot this palm preview? Great bokeh DOF when filming the pre keyboard, oh man.
Really excellent work!
[...] long since over, but details of the Palm Pre are still trickling out. Take this latest video from MobileDivide, for example – it’s largely a recap of stuff we’ve known for a while, but it packs in [...]
Serko… Why do you make me want to give Palm money?! I swore that after the single threaded palm os on the Treo i’d never again… but it looks like I may be eating my words… The interface really is a step up from the iphone in so many ways.
Congrats on yet another excellent report!
[...] palm prē @ CES ‘09 (Part 2) ( Mobile Divide ) [...]
great video (man the Canon shoots beautifully) – the Pre is really looking good!!
3:00 is pretty cool! thumb up gesture towards the screen to bring up the cards? Very nice.