The Connected Circuit

The launch of the Palm Pre is just around the corner, but reviews were out in full force tonight. Before you dish out that cash, be sure to check out all the reviews for the Palm Pre to get the real low-down on whether or not it lives up to all the hype (from all indications it does). Here are the reviews, in no particular order. I will add more reviews as I see them, but so far the reviews have been glowingly positive. Some caveats of the Pre are the software is extremely nice and fluid, contacts management is an all or nothing affair, the device feels like a toy at times, and the keyboard is so-so. However, for a first generation device, it performs surprisingly well. Reviewers have also noted that it being on Sprint’s network could hold this device back from selling even more and the device doesn’t seem as sturdy as it could be. Looks like I may switch to Sprint after all.

Engadget

Gizmodo

WSJ/All Things Digital – Walt Mossberg

NYTimes – Dave Pogue

Wired’s Gadget Lab

SlashGear

MyPre

Boy Genius Report (Only Part 1)

GigaOM (Quick Review)

PCWorld

PCMag

Laptop Mag

CNET

Phonescoop

UberGizmo (mini-)review

Reuters

AP

BusinessWeek

USA Today

PreCenral - Epic Review

--written by Peter To--

It’s official, the hot item that is the Palm Pre will launch on June 6th, for an on contract price of $200 (after $100 mail-in-rebate that is). What’s so exciting about the launch of this particular device that’s different, than your ordinary smartphone or even the latest Blackberry? Plenty, both Palm and Sprint have a lot riding on this device. Both companies have had extremely rough times over the past few years, just last quarter Sprint lost 1.3 million subscibers, most jumped ship for the likes of Apple’s iPhone on the god-awful network that is AT&T. Palm has been stuck on a dated OS on their mobile phones for the latter half of this decade and with fledging modern mobile OS’s such as Apple’s mobile OS X or Google’s Android platform taking center stage, Palm’s Garnet OS has been left in the dust. The last time a mobile phone got the Palm Garnet treatment was Palm’s own Centro, which has surprisingly been a smash and has been keeping them afloat. Since then even Palm has jumped shipped and has even agreed to have Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS on some of it’s devices in 2006. We all know Palm can make great hardware, the Treo was a breakthrough in mobile computing with its dual input, full sized qwerty and touchscreen inputs, but each iteration has been too minimal for anyone to care. Everyone that I knew that carried a Treo has moved on to either a Blackberry, an iPhone or one of those HTC devices.

However, early indications that the device is the first true “iPhone-killer” was evident in it’s unveil at this year’s CES, generating a mass amount of buzz amongst, not only the tech community, but in the mainstream media as well.Their stock price jumped from a anemic $1.40 to nearly $11, which is quite an amazing feat, in this economy. Since then, Palm has been coying giving out more demos of the device and bits of details, as well as giving some developers an early preview of the webOS SDK, all building to the impending release of the device that will, hopefully, bring Palm back from the brink of death. So far, Palm has enjoyed some fantastic news and it seems they are actually listening to their end users.

Now with rumors of device shortages on launch day, you can’t help but think, that if Palm and Sprint don’t get this one right, it’ll surely be the last time you’ll hear of either company. I, for one, hope that those rumors are, in fact, rumors and I might be seeing myself switch from my loved/hated Blackberry on the crudiness that is AT&T’s network back to the network that broke my cellphone virginity, Sprint.

*image source from Gizmodo

--written by Peter To--

So CES is over and after looking at what came out there are some pretty strong themes at this year’s CES. For those who don’t realize, but CES is pretty much the precursor of this year’s trends in products and tech. What happens at CES usually, though not all the time, comes to full fruition in the upcoming year.

Let’s start with the what stole the entire show away, Palm. Palm’s press event was by and the large the runaway hit of the show. Weeks ago, Palm queitly invited some of the top tech heads to a conference they were holding at CES with a teaser ad for the “newness” of Palm. Not many people knew what it was going to be, but many people expected that this was going to be the make or break for Palm; if they didn’t do something amazing here, they would never have the chance to do it again EVER. There was much speculation of what they were going to do, but it was for sure that this was going to be their big reveal of their five year in the making redo of their dated Garnet OS. Low and behold, Palm pulled it off. They not only pulled it off by stunning people with a marvelously slick OS, but an equally slick device to complement the very polished, though still in alpha, OS. I am definitely looking forward to the Palm pre come June and may jump away from crappy AT&T and back into the arms of Sprint.

It seems as if companies are finally embracing the cloud with Apple putting their iLife suite into the cloud, Microsoft realizing that having all your information in a common place does matter to people and Palm having their entire platform revolve around premonition and the notion that your information does not only live on your phone. The year 2009 will definitely be the year of the cloud.

What was decidedly absent at the show was the number of android phones. Although CES was never known for great phone releases, I was surprised to not see even one phone from any manufacturer. The lone android phone that was supposed to be roaming the show floor, the Kogan Agora. Apparently Google went to the man behind the effort to push this phone out and asked him to not release the phone as there were features that the phone lacked that would gimp compatibility of applications. We did see one android device, the Giinii Movit, which is essentially the Nokia N800 with android instead of Maemo. From what I saw, it seems like a sweet little MID that I would gladly trade my N800 for. Hopefully, now that Google released the full source code of android to the masses, we’ll start seeing more android devices start to trickle down.

--written by Peter To--