Palm making a comeback with webOS?
And it’s bringing games with it
I miss my Palm Tungsten T3 every day, though I don’t miss the fact that there was nothing new to do with it for about two years before I finally gave in and went WinMo. Then App Store.
So it’s with a thoroughly Vulcan eyebrow that we take a look at the brand new Palm handset complete with its fascinating (Captain) new webOS.
The Palm Pre is the first Palm for, like, ages, and is set for launch in the US in early 2009. The smartphone handset comes with a slide out QWERTY, wi-fi, touchscreen, accelerometer, HSDPA, GPS and a ‘gesture-based touch interface’ - presumably some kind of contemporary update on the old graffiti system.
The new webOS is another cloud-based system, allowing you to store all your stuff in one convenient web locker and access it from multiple devices anywhere you can hack into the Matrix.
This new operating system is pegged as being very web-oriented, with its App Store competitor, the Palm Software Store, fully embedded.
This means developers will have easy access to customers and revenue, exactly as the App Store provides, which will hopefully be a foot up for the new device.
After such a long absence and several duff products, it’s going to take something pretty spectacular to get Palm back on top, but this first glance at the Palm Pre might well suggest a step in the direction. Watch this space.