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As part of the Palm Media Sync, the Pre will sync with iTunes! Yup, it’s completely compatible with the popular Apple music player, in part allowing you to sync your iTunes library (as long as the purchased iTunes music is non-DRM, which applies to all music bought recently off iTunes- read more about it in our previous post) to your Pre as you would an iPod, whether your iTunes is on Windows or Mac.
Wireless charger — The Pre is the first phone to work with a wireless charger, where charging takes place via magnetic induction. At just $69.99, the charger is both convenient and affordable.
Search. The first feature people wondered about was the Pre’s “Universal search” function. This is a single search bar that allows keyword hunts in “web and user’s applications, contacts, and dialing information,” as well as web pages. Current iPhone software has no search functionality other than a search bar within Safari. But iPhone 3.0 brings Spotlight–almost directly from OS X it seems–to the iPhone, with searching within Calendar items, iPod tracks, Notes, contacts, web pages, email headers (but not message bodies) and applications. This last is pretty powerful, since the Spotlight UI is accessed quickly by a gesture from the home page, letting you navigate to an App easily if you had, say, 100 apps installed.
Multiple activities. What some call multitasking, Palm calls “multiple activities,” Apple calls it background-running apps. In the press event to announce the Pre, Palm splashed this feature as a direct snub at Apple–the current iPhone firmware forbids it. Even Apple’s “push notification” feature, a half-way house for background apps, was mentioned months ago, then disappeared totally. But iPhone 3.0 will bring push notifications, and Apple was careful to explain why there’s no background app-running: battery life. Apple’s said it had tested running background apps on BlackBerrys, Windows Mobile devices and so on, and in every case “stand-by time dropped by 80% or more.” That’s a deliberate snub right back at Palm, especially since Apple qualified it by saying an IM app running push only reduced the iPhone’s stand-by time by 23%.
Navigation. Palm’s Pre has full GPS navigation functions, with turn-by-turn directions–but it’s an extra, coming from Sprint Navigation and powered by Telenav. The current iPhone specifically excludes turn-by-turn navigation, effectively shutting off full GPS functions. Firmware 3.0, however, does allow it, with a single condition: “bring your own maps.” That’s pretty much an open door for third party developers (even big names worried about losing market to smartphones) to get in on the iPhone nav goodness.
Calendar syncing. The Pre uses Palm’s Synergy to link up Outlook, Google and even Facebook calendars to one location, whereas iPhone 2.0’s Calendar app is more than a little limited–you can’t even invite meeting requests from the phone. The new firmware adds support for Exchange, CalDAV and .ics formats for subscribing to different calendars, and it’ll let you create meeting invitations. CalDAV is supported by Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar beta and others, making it a now potentially fully-synchronized Calendar app.
Camera. The Pre has a 3-megapixel digital camera with an LED flash light, but strangely the jury’s still out on whether it’ll support video recording at launch–some think that will be added later. The iPhone’s 2-megapixels seem puny, and it can’t record video. We’re pretty certain that Apple omitting info on this today means the next-gen iPhone will have hardware and software to rival or surpass the Pre–plus it’s a relatively easy hardware upgrade in a new device.
Stereo Bluetooth. The Pre has A2DP, the current iPhone doesn’t. Apple said today iPhone 3.0 will support stereo bluetooth, and that the feature can even be “unlocked” on current-gen iPod touches.
Copy and Paste. The Pre has it and iPhone 2.0 doesn’t, but iPhone 3.0 has a fab copy-paste function that lets you copy text almost from anywhere to anywhere, and comes with a neat “shake to undo” trick. Apple’s been holding off on this basic option until it’s absolutely nailed it.
What’s most interesting is that Palm had to pull together a whole new piece of hardware to tackle the iPhone, but most of Apple’s response has been achieved in a firmware upgrade. Of course a new iPhone is due around July, which dovetails with iPhone 3.0’s “Summer” launch schedule. It seems the battle is on.
It runs Linux. SQLlite is the built-in database. Developers will have to use “web technologies” to make most of the apps, but it sounds like there may still be ways to use closer-to-the-metal languages.
The animations and interface are gorgeous. They are in many ways busier than the iPhone’s animations, and clearly largely cribbed from the bouncy, lively way the iPhone OS moves around, but they look really nice when switching from app to app.
It handles Flash — Palm plans to integrate Adobe Flash 9 into the Pre this year, which will further enhance its Web capabilities. Flash-enabled applications such as video players are not viewable on the iPhone — at least not yet.
