Palm Pixi » palm

Palm Extends Half-Off webOS Sale Until July 23rd

Matt — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 10:55:30 +0000

There's good news for all your webOS app addicts! Palm is extending the Half-off sale on webOS apps until July 23rd. As per an update on Palm Developer Blog, the company made this decision keeping both customers and developers in mind. An additional two weeks 50% sale will give customers more time to explore the catalog and get great deals on your apps. As a developer, it gives you more time to develop and publish your app on the Palm app store. So, if you are a webOS developer, you can take the extra time in order to polish your app and fix some bugs to generate higher sales and revenue.

With webOS devices hitting rock bottom prices at all carriers in United States & Canada, Palm is under intense pressure to boost its webOS sales. The additional two weeks time will also help developers who plan to port popular iPhone apps to webOS to benefit from the ongoing sale. Another reason to extend the promotion is that Palm has received an overwhelming response to the current scheme ever since it was launched. The half-off sale has a feel good factor associated with it from a developer as well as customer perspective and Palm wants the joyride to continue as long as possible.

Have you purchased any apps under this 50% off scheme as yet?

Amazon Offering Palm Pre Plus (AT&T and Verizon) for One Cent

Matt — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 11:03:53 +0000

The prices of Palm phones continue to plunge. Amazon is now offering the Palm Pre Plus - both for AT&T and Verizon subscribers for one cent. That's just about as close as it gets to getting a Palm webOS phone for free. That's not all, there are other complimentary goodies as well. Amazon is offering free activation and free two-day shipping for users who purchase the Palm Pre Plus between 12:00 midnight PDT on June 14, 2010, through 11:59 p.m. PDT, June 30, 2010. If you are a Verizon subscriber, there's good news for you as well - Verizon has waived off the $40 monthly fee to turn your Palm Pre Plus (and Palm Pixi Plus) phone into a 3G Mobile Hotspot. The mentioned offers are not valid for prepaid and unlocked phones.

The prices of Palm's leading webOS smartphones - Palm Pre and Palm Pixi (Plus versions included) has taken a free fall in the last couple of quarters. It's hard to imagine that the original Palm Pre was priced around $200 almost an year back. All that we can hope is that there's a silver lining amidst these dark clouds and HP will revive Palm's sagging fortunes with a new webOS based device sooner than later. And did I mention that the Palm Pre was once compared alongside the likes of Apple iPhone and Motorola Droid?

Tweet about Hot Palm apps and win a Touchstone Charging Dock

Matt — Mon, 24 May 2010 14:15:42 +0000

Finding apps for your Palm webOS phone has never been so rewarding. If you download any of your favorite apps from the hot apps seen on the leader board found at palmhotapps.com, you are entitled to winning a Touchstone Charging Dock for free. All you need to do is tweet about your favorite Palm app. The Hot Apps competition is also offering prizes to the developers who come up with most popular apps.

Palm has listed the current frontrunners amongst hot apps on its blog. These include

TweetMe: A beautifully designed Twitter client that leverages Palm webOS to keep you updated and keep your own updates flowing.
Flight Predictor: Because what you want to know is whether you're REALLY going to be on time or not.
PodSnatcher: A handy way to take your audio and video podcasts with you.
Mobsters: Big Apple: This free app is definitely an offer you can't refuse.

To be eligible for this contest, make sure your tweet mentions "I'm tweeting about Palm's cool Hot Apps (http://tinyurl.com/2amjk7o) for a chance to win one of 10 Touchstones #fastmovers". The contest ends on May 31, 2010.

If you want a free touchstone charging dock for your Palm Pre Plus or Palm Pixi Plus, make sure that you participate in the Hot Apps Contest from Palm.

Good luck & Happy Tweeting!

Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus Available Soon for O2 Customers in the UK

Matt — Thu, 20 May 2010 09:36:59 +0000

For those waiting to buy the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus in UK, there's some good news. Palm and O2 have confirmed that both these phones will be launched on the latter's network in UK on May 28th. As far as the pricing goes, it's definitely on the higher side. The lowest monthly tariff price is £25 and the highest is £60. If you opt for £35 or above, you get the device (Pre Plus or Pixi Plus) for free on a two year contract. O2 offers an 18 month contract as well.

All O2 tariff plans offer unlimited texts and unlimited public Wi-Fi. IMO, the £40 per month deal (600 minutes, unlimited data and WiFi) is true value for money. Palm has projected the Pre Plus as a full-featured Palm webOS(TM) phone having a slider keyboard, a larger touchscreen and a high-performance processor. As for Pixi, its Palm's thinnest phone to date and perfect for buyers who want an affordable phone with a full QWERTY keyboard instantly accessible for messaging and web content.

It is interesting to note that O2 was the first carrier which launched the erstwhile Palm Pre phone. O2 also plans to launch these devices in Germany. These devices are also expected to be launched by other carriers in France and Spain in the next several weeks.

webOS 1.4.5 To Offer 3D Gaming on Palm Pixi

Matt — Wed, 19 May 2010 08:09:24 +0000

If you are a gaming addict, there's good news for you. 3D gaming is all set to arrive on your Palm Pixi with the release of webOS 1.4.5 in the next several weeks. The new webOS release will support PDK apps and 3D-accelerated games on the entry-level Pixi. Palm launched 3D gaming on the Pre in January this year. Last week, Palm sent out an email to developers encouraging them to test apps that make use of its Plug-in Development Kit (PDK). The Palm PDK extends the original SDK with tools to enable 3D programming – against the newly released webOS 1.4.5 beta.

The webOS PDK includes tools, documentation and APIs enabling developers to more easily integrate C and C++ code into their webOS applications to expand functionality. The PDK is expected to be made available to independent developers besides partners which include EA, Gameloft, Glu and Laminar Research. With a smaller screen, it's tough to predict the future of 3D gaming on the Palm Pixi. It may even require developers to re-code their Pre games in order to support Pixi. The list of 3D games available on Palm Pre is fairly impressive - EA Mobile's Need for Speed Undercover, The Sims 3 and Monopoly, Gameloft's Asphalt 5: Elite Racing and Let's Golf!, Glu Mobile's Glyder 2 and Laminar Research's X-Plane.

Pixi uses a different OpenGL algorithm than the Pre, therefore it is difficult to predict if the 3D gaming experience on the two devices will be similar or not. Anyway, this announcement is fantastic news for all gaming freaks and has set the clock ticking for webOS 1.4.5 release!

Latest AdMob Report: webOS holds fort

Matt — Tue, 04 May 2010 10:31:42 +0000

AdMob, a popular Mobile advertising specialist firm has recently released its March, 2010 report on leading mobile operating systems accounting for its advertising traffic. The latest report suggest that despite the dwindling fortunes of Palm (now a part of HP), webOS has managed to hold its fort as a popular mobile operating system. The report paints a steady picture for Palm webOS and projects Android as the leading mobile operating system for the future.

[Click to image to enlarge...]

Interestingly, Google had made an announcement to acquire AdMob last year but the deal is yet to get a clearance by FTC. Given the Google influence in AdMob, it's hardly surprising that the report is strongly biased towards Android. The report even suggests that Android smartphones have overtaken the iPhone in terms of number of AdMob requests served.

As per the report, the Palm Pre accounted for nearly 2.4% of AdMob's ad requests in United States last month. While Palm's share can hardly be compared against that of iPhone and Android, all's not lost for the struggling phone maker. With Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus prices plunging at Verizon and Sprint, it would be interesting to see if webOS share does increase in the coming months. Further, it is widely believed that the Palm-HP deal would help improve Palm's overall positioning. Let's wait and watch!

Thoughts on HP buying Palm

brian — Mon, 03 May 2010 03:20:15 +0000

I was so shocked buy Hewlett-Packard buying Palm this week that I had to take a few to days to gather my reactions. Here's what we know:

Purchase Price - Hewlett-Packard will be purchasing Palm for $5.70 a share or 1.2 billion dollars.
HP Loves Palm WebOS - HP has said that they intend to invest heavily in to the OS
Palm should stay relatively unchanged - HP has said that it will create it's own business unit for Palm, so the structure may go relatively unchanged.

In my view, this was possibly the best thing that could have happened to Palm. HP's 121.87 billion market capitalization is certainly less than Google's 167 billion, Microsoft's 267 billion, and Apple's 237 billion (as of now), but it's at the same scale where one can see HP playing with the big boys. It's also a good deal ahead of RIM's (Blackberry) 39 billion.

Let's look at the competitors again in comparison to Palm:

Apple vs. HP-Palm

Apple is certainly the leader with it's iPhone, iPod, and iPad group of mobile devices.

iPhone vs. WebOS - I covered many reason why Palm Pixi is better than iPhone previously. It was a bit of stretch and overall there's little doubt that the Apple iPhone is the better phone. However, that gap could narrow quickly. A Palm Pre 2 on Sprint's upcoming 4G network would certainly do a lot to the change the game. Other new hardware would really push the envelope their.
iPad vs. WebOS Tablet - It's hard to see how this may play out until we see what the WebOS tablet is going to be. HP has hinted very strongly that it plans to use WebOS for its upcoming tablets. Because WebOS won't have the same entrenched application store, I would expect it to come with all the bells and whistles that Apple leaves off like a camera for video conferencing. We do know that when the WebOS Tablet comes to market it will have great multitasking and very likely Flash support.
iPod vs. WebOS PDA - Let's face it, the iPod Touch is essentially a PDA, not an MP3 player at this point. It's a great PDA with an app store and music store behind it. A WebOS version of the iPod doesn't look to be in the works. I don't think this is going to hurt WebOS much in the long run... I imagine that most people will move away from PDAs towards smartphones.

Android vs. HP-Palm

I think that Android, long-term, is probably the strongest of the smartphone platforms. It's hard for other smartphone OSes to compete with the price of free. It's even harder when Google can leverage all its applications (Gmail, Maps, Voice, Docs, etc.) for it's advantage. However, there are a couple of chinks in Android's armor. First, HTC is paying Microsoft royalties. Second, Android has to deal with the problem of supporting a lot of different hardware.

Microsoft vs. HP-Palm

Microsoft is coming to the game more than a year late. I realize that they have a lot of money and a lot of influence - but they have no app store (Palm's biggest problem). In general there are far too many questions to ask - until we have answers I think that Microsoft doesn't have the advantage.

Blackberry vs. HP-Palm

RIM's Blackberry has recently "entered to the game" with their OS being where Palm's was 3 years ago. I heard that the new OS is very good, but we'll see how that works. In the meantime they need to show what they can do.

Final Thoughts

In the end, I think we can expect that HP-Palm's WebOS will grow greatly. It now has the finances of HP and the flexibility to run on CDMA as well as GSM networks (GSM should be coming via AT&T in a week). The tight interlinking of hardware and software will allow a complete end-to-end experience for the consumer.

Palm Pre’s Award Winning 2009

brian — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:48:06 +0000

While we like to focus on the Palm Pixi here, it shouldn't go unnoticed that it's big brother the Palm Pre is winning all sorts of awards. Let's review a few of the most notable over the last year.

Best of CES 2009 and People's Voice Award - The year started off with a bang when CNET gave it's two biggest CES awards to the Pre. The money quote of the article, "... it looks like Palm stepped up to the plate and hit one out of the park."
Popular Mechanics' 10 Most Brilliant Products of 2009 - That title kind of says it all, doesn't it? It was one of only three computer tech gadgets to make the top 10.
PCWorld's #14 best product of 2009 - While it's a small step down from the Popular Mechanic's top 10 ranking, #14 of the top 100 is not too shabby. The money quote here also applies to the Pixi, "The Pre wowed us with its engaging (and fun to use) WebOS software and eye-catching hardware."
Popular Science's Best of What's New 2009 - It was one of 13 products here. The interesting thing to me is that each of these awards praise a different aspect of the phone. Some mention the multitasking, but Popular Science is smitten with Synergy.
PC Magazine's Best Cell Phones - It was one of only 4 phones they listed. They have some of the best things to say about it though: "Palm has returned with the coolest handheld device we've seen in a long time... The Pre is the start of something genuinely new..."

It definitely seems like Palm and WebOS are moving in the right direction. There's still some time to win some more awards in 2009, but I'm looking forward to 2010. While on the topic of 2010, Flash should be three weeks or less away.

Palm Answers Your Pixi Questions via Twitter

brian — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:48:05 +0000

Got Pixi questions? Palm has answers. The director of product marketing at Palm, Phil McClendon, is taking your questions via Twitter from Monday, November 2, at 11:30AM PT. Just tweet @palm and use the #pixi hash code. You can following the questions by searching #pixi on Twitter.

This is a good time to mention that you can follow us on Twitter at @pixiorg. It's a low-volume Twitter account, so you won't get a pile of Pixi information clogging up your Twitter feed.