Palm Pixi » webOS

Palm Offering 50% Discount For Nearly All Apps in webOS App Catalog

Matt — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 09:49:06 +0000

There's good news for all Palm Pre and Palm Pixi owners - Palm has halved the prices of nearly all the apps in the US Palm App Catalog and Palm web channel. The promotion runs from June 18th through July 9th, 2010. As a Palm customer, you are entitled to a cool subsidy of 50% on your favorite webOS applications. If you were thinking of the buying any of the following bestseller apps from Palm - Need for Speed Undercover, Jump O'Clock, or James Cameron's Avatar, the time is now!

If you are a developer, you need not worry. Palm will subsidize the cost of the discounted price for developers; payments to developers and revenue tracking for the Hot Apps contest will continue to reflect the full price of all eligible applications throughout the promotion. The promotion is a win-win situation for both developers and customers - the former still get their full revenue share from Palm and the latter enjoy a cool savings of 50%. To know more details, check the Palm Developer FAQ.

Palm has often been criticized by the developer community for not doing enough to promote their cause. Apple and Google have developer-friendly programs and leave no stone unturned in order to spread the word so it's hardly surprising that Palm is trying to catch up with the biggies. The move is also aimed at boosting the sagging App Catalog revenues and injecting new life into the carrier's online app store ambitions.

Go ahead and enjoy the 50% discount!

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?

Palm Pixi Plus Comes to AT&T

Matt — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 13:43:19 +0000

The Palm Pixi Plus went on sale for AT&T subscribers last Sunday. You can order your Palm Pixi Plus either online or through AT&T retail stores. The latest webOS phone is available in two colors - Black and Blue. It costs $49.99 with a 2-year contract. If you are not fond of contracts, you can buy the contract-free version for $299. IMO, the Pixi Plus contract is a good deal considering that it's almost one-third of what you'd pay for Palm Pre Plus.

Here's a quick recap of the AT&T Palm Pixi Plus specs

Full QWERTY keyboard
320×480 HVGA display
2 megapixel camera with video
8 GB of internal memory
GSM/GPRS, 3G and EDGE
Bluetooth
Decent Battery with 5 hours talk time and 350 hours of standby time
Wi-Fi

It also offers built-in support for Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, AOL, and Hotmail. The proprietary AT&T Navigator app is present on the Pixi Plus as well. I personally like the Palm Pixi Plus more than the Pre Plus because it's smaller, lighter and it feels much better.

While the specs may not be as attractive as the recently unveiled iPhone 4G, it is good value for money. After all, the Palm Pixi Plus is in a different market segment altogether as compared to the almighty iPhone 4G. If you are an AT&T subscriber looking for an entry level smartphone, the Palm Pixi Plus is perfect for you.

With AT&T scrapping the unlimited data plans, it might be a good time to think about opting for a Palm Pixi Plus instead of the costly new iPhone.

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!

Ping.fm for webOS: Update all your Social Networks from your Palm Phone

Matt — Thu, 06 May 2010 11:45:00 +0000

Fed up of having to update each of your social networks one-by-one? Too many passwords to remember? Ping.fm is a cool application which can update all your social networks in one go. All you need to do is configure your social networks with ping.fm and it takes care of syncing all your social networks. The good news is that Ping.fm is now available as a free webOS app in the Palm App Catalog. The app has been developed by Erik C. Thauvin.

The app allows you to post from anywhere, to anywhere. So, you can update your Facebook account, your twitter feed and your blog all at the same time. From what I've seen of the app so far, it works like a charm on Palm Pre and Palm Pixi. However, if you are not an existing Ping.fm user, I'd strongly advice that you sign-up and configure your social networks through the ping.fm website. Attempting to do so through the app is not exactly a pleasing experience. Once your social networks are configured, the app allows you to use your Palm Pre or Palm Pixi phone as the gateway to all social networks.

What's more, ping.fm also supports email mode so I can send my update as an email to a pre-defined email address and it gets reflected on all my social network profiles. If you are a social media addict (like me), I'll strongly recommend that you try out the Ping.fm webOS app. I simply loved it and I'm sure you'll do so as well.

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!

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.

13 Reasons Why Palm Pixi is Better than the Apple iPhone

brian — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:00:06 +0000

Palm Pixi vs. Apple iPhone

The Palm Pixi is coming out in less than a week. With that in mind we thought we'd highlight some of the advantages that the Pixi has over the iPhone. Keep in mind that Pixi is aimed to be a cheaper, low-end device, so it's intentionally missing some features found in the Palm Pre and the iPhone - more direct competitors. The biggest one is the lack of wifi... or maybe it is the ginormous number of applications. Still there are quite a few things that the Pixi offers that the iPhone doesn't. Let's look at some of them:

WebOS

Multi-tasking - The ability to run multiple applications makes it easy to keep multiple web-browsers open, which is very important to me. On Sundays, I often listen to the New England Patriots home audio broadcast (I live in California, so that's significant), while following the sideline reporting on two separate blogs.
Open Development Platform - Developers are able to create applications without fear that Apple might reject it. As TechCrunch says, Palm has freed up WebOS development:

The first is that they’re allowing developers to fully distribute their apps via the web. What this means is that developers can simply submit their apps to Palm, and Palm will return to them a URL that they can then blog, tweet, do whatever they want to share it. When a person then clicks on that URL they can easily install the app, bypassing any kind of store. And while Palm is providing the URL, it is not going to be reviewing the apps in any way.

This means that developers can get their applications on WebOS even if it's not in the best interest of Palm or the carriers.

On the other end of the spectrum Apple's rejection of Google Voice has the FCC looking into Apple's competitive practices. As that Wall Street Journal article reported, "Apple declined to comment on the matter." If you are a developer and you are going to spend time making a killer application, wouldn't you like the option to at least market it yourself like Palm is letting you?
Easy Development with Open Web Standards and Development in a Web Browser - Building WebOS applications is easy for developers, because they've done it for years. Web technologies such as HTML 5, JavaScript, and CSS are technologies that developers are very, very familiar with. They've been using them for years. Since developers don't need to learning a new programming language, they can get applications out there easily. In fact, in the next couple of months things will get even easier as PC World says that Palm will allow developers to create applications in a web browser. In a demonstration a Palm developer created a Flickr application in just a few minutes.
Flash Integrated into the Browser - When Adobe announced that they'd bring Flash to smart phones, did they choose to demo it on Apple iPhones, RIM Blackberries, Google Android phones, or Windows Mobile devices? Nope, they went with the Palm Pre's WebOS to show off how Flash works in a browser and how it works with multitasking applications. In fact, Adobe says Flash isn't coming to the iPhone:

Flash Player not available for your device. Apple restricts use of technologies required by products like Flash Player. Until Apple eliminates these restrictions, Adobe cannot provide Flash Player for the iPhone or iPod Touch.

Hardware

Thinner and Lighter than an iPhone - The iPhone is 12.3 mm thick while the Palm Pixi is 10.85mm. As Apple showed with it's MacBook Air thin is in... and the Pixi is thinner. The Apple iPhone is 133 grams while the Palm Pixi weighs in at 99.5 grams - a huge difference. As netbook sales have shown, people like light devices... and the Palm Pixi is lighter.
Removable Battery - If you have had a rechargeable battery long enough you know that after a couple of years it gets harder and harder to hold a charge. Some people with laptops that are a few years old can't even unplug them. The second you buy an iPhone, it has an expiration date as the battery will have less and less charge left in it. If you find this happening with your Palm Pixi, you can go to Ebay and pick up a cheap and easy replacement.
Touchstone - Walk in the door and put your Palm Pixi down and it charges. There's no need to plug anything in. The Touchstone's inductive charging ability is unique to any phone (other than the Palm Pre).
Multiple Form Factors - If you like the slider type phone, you can get a Palm Pre. If you like a candy-bar style phone you can get a Palm Pixi. With the iPhone you can get any form factor you want, as long as it's just one big sheet of glass.
Keyboard - Getting the feedback from a keyboard is always better than typing on a glass screen. The Palm Pixi's keyboard in particular has drawn raves from reviewers. However, if you really love typing on a glass screen, you can do that in WebOS as well.

Money and Reliability

Low-Cost Phones - The Palm Pre can be had for $99, $79 with an accessory bundle, or FREE. I don't know if all of those deals are still active, but because these deals existed in the past they will likely continue to exist or get better in the future. The Palm Pixi is only going to be cheaper, so they'll be better for your wallet than iPhones.
Carrier Choice - The Apple iPhone has had a few years to offer itself on other carriers, yet you can only get it on AT&T in the United States. AT&T users reported the worst customer service of any carrier. These two articles explain how difficult it can be to make a call on AT&T's overloaded network. Palm phones have been available on all major US carriers for years and years. Verizon has said that they'll be getting the Palm Pre in January of the new year. Palm has already demoed a Palm Pre on AT&T. There are already GSM Palm Pres available in Europe. If the Pre is on those networks, there's no reason to think that the Palm Pixi won't be.
Low-Cost Plans - PC World shows that Sprint's plans with the Palm Pixi will save you $1200 over two years. That's 33% cheaper than the Apple iPhone. Plus with Sprint you get free GPS driving navigation - AT&T charges you another $10.

No Monopolies

Perhaps the biggest reason why the Palm Pixi will succeed is that Palm isn't a threat. Apple's iPod and iTunes store has changed the music industry. It's scare how Apple is now perhaps more powerful than any music label out there. Google takes over just about every industry that they enter: Internet Search, Internet Advertising, Email, and a pile of other industries ranging from Mapping and GPS navigation to blogging.

So if you are a carrier are you going to partner who do you partner with? Do you risk Apple's monopoly power in music after they've snubbed you by not letting you have access to the iPhone for years? I don't think so. Do you partner with Google who is threatening your business with Google Voice? I don't think so. Why not pick a partner like Palm that is not a threat to you?

Photo Credit: Palm InfoCenter

Palm Pixi – Worth The Wait ?

Matt — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:57:44 +0000

The market buzz and release date rumors about Palm Pixi are shooting up by leaps and bounds every day. Palm has clearly won the first part of the battle by getting mobile enthusiasts and business users lusting to get their hands on this one. So, why so much fuss around a smartphone when there are thousands of them already available in the market?

Is the Palm Pixi just another smartphone amongst the crowd? Or is it worth the wait to buy this phone - touted by many to be the future king of smartphones? Sprint gets the first mover advantage for Palm Pixi and it's leaving no stone unturned to generate a huge fan base for this phone well before it hits the shelves. The Palm website offers a link which allows mobile enthusiasts to be notified as soon the phone is available. There's no shortage of websites spreading rumors about the release date either; some claiming that it will hit the stores as early as 20th October, others claiming a Christmas release while some others even going to ridiculous extent that it won't hit the market before 2011. As to how true these rumours are, your guess is as good as mine

So, let's leave apart the rumors and dive deep into Palm Pixi and it's features. What is it that makes this phone so special? Palm has a great reputation for providing unmatched technology at very competitive pricing. Does this assumption hold true with Palm's latest offering? Let's take a look at the goodies first.

8 GB storage is much better than 4 GB, the more the merrier
Full QWERTY keyboard with typical Palm finishing
Great aesthetic looks (Artistic Series)
Palm Developer Network is gearing up to launch a huge range of interesting applications for Pixi

Like any other phone, the Palm Pixi has it's own pitfalls as well. It's a well known fact that while Palm is hard to beat on technology front, it certainly has a few lessons to learn as far as looks and styling go. Here is the list of things which could have been better.

No WiFi in a smartphone is a bit of shocker. Palm seems to have a habit of throwing in such nasty surprises once in a while
2 Megapixel camera with flash. The Palm Pre has a 3 MP camera.
Smaller screen as compared to Pre

On the whole, it's a complete package. There's no clear indication on the pricing as of now but Palm is considered to be fairly generous on that front so it's expected that the phone will carry as reasonable and affordable price tag. As to what that price will be, let's not spread any more rumors and wait for the official announcement. If you are obsessed with Palm Pre, chances are that you'll like it's younger sibling as well. If you can't spell WiFi, Palm Pixi won't disappoint you.

Just make sure you watch this space as we uncover each and every aspect of Palm Pixi in the build up to it's release.

Roger McNamee on the Palm Pixi

brian — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:35:17 +0000

Roger McNamee was interviewed by Bloomberg recently and a question about the Palm Pixi came up (video at the end of the post). The interviewer was curious if the upcoming Pixi would cannibalize sales of the Palm Pre. After all, if you can get a Pixi for $49, are you going to pay $150 for a Palm Pre? (Many may say yes, just to get the wifi.) McNamee did a good job "sidestepping" the question and turning it into a Palm WebOS story.

The story that McNamee tells is that up until just this past week, Palm's focus was on one product (Palm Pre), in one carrier (Sprint), in one country (United States). Now that they are in other countries (UK and Germany). We have gotten word that Palm Pre will be on Verizon in early 2010 (probably January), opening up a second carrier in the US. Finally as readers of this website know the Palm Pixi will give it another product that should appeal to a demographic different than the Pre due to it's form factor and style.

The only thing that McNamee didn't mention was that with a real application store developers have incentive to create great applications which will only make the WebOS stronger.