Having just got my first BlackBerry (I know, I know), I’m swiftly discovering just how addictive its dedicated Facebook application is. Forget push-email, it’s pokes and status updates that have got me firing the little fella up throughout the day.
Anyway, Palm is hoping that people with its Centro and Treo handsets will be able to get in on the action now, with the release of Facebook for Palm. It basically does the same stuff as the BlackBerry version, so you can check your inbox, post status updates and see what your friends have been up to, and post photos and videos taken with your phone. Among other things.
It sounds excellent. Whether it’s enough to tempt people away from their BlackBerry devices is another question, of course.
StyleTap have confirmed the release of their Palm OS emulator for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
We have previously looked at StyleTap on S60 and WinMo, but the iPhone/iPod is such a natural candidate for Palmification that I can’t believe it has taken this long.
StyleTap emulates a virtual PalmOS PDA and is capable of running most of the 20,000 or so Palm shareware and freeware apps that are available.
Here is a quick video clip of StyleTap in action on an iPod Touch.
It’s no secret that we have been less than enthusiastic about the Palm Centro since we first heard about it, but despite a slightly underwhelming spec sheet the device seems to be enjoying some pretty stellar sales.
Not only has the device sold more than one million units worldwide, but according to a survey conducted by Palm, 70 percent of Centro customers are first time smartphone users. Looks like brand power goes a long way and though Palm is certainly not at the cutting edge of smartphone technology (having dominated the PDA market for so long) it certainly isn’t having a hard time shifting its flagship device.
We can only hope that this means the company is in rude financial health which will prompt a new and much more inspiring smartphone somewhere down the line.
(Via SlashPhone)
Is it too soon to be nostalgic about the Palm Pilot?
Anyone still hankering for the glories of PalmOS (and disappointed that Palm have dumped it in favour of Windows Mobile in several recent devices) would do well to grab a Nokia N770, N800 or N810 tablet and a free copy of Garnet VM.
Garnet is essentially PalmOS decoupled from the Palm brand (the result of some rather complex license wrangling) and the Garnet VM is a vitual machine for running Garnet on top of the Nokia tablet’s flavour of Linux.
Running Garnet in this way will give you A) a glowing sense of geeky pride and - more importantly - B) access to tens of thousands of PalmOS applications and games.
Garnet comes bundled with PalmOS standards such as Addressbook and Memopad and claims 80% compatibilty with existing PalmOS apps. PalmOS has a huge shareware and freeware library and this could be a simple way to squeeze a lot more functionality out of your Nokia tablet.
Yeah, its pretty small (107 x 53.5 x 18.5mm), and yeah, the 320 x 320 pixel touch-screen is good for such a pint-sized phone, but aside from that and its EvDO networking (3G in the US), Palm’s latest addition to its US range, the Centro, offers little to get excited about. Such as?
Try a 1.3MP camera, a microSD card slot, Bluetooth 1.3, 64MB of memory… And that’s your lot. The Centro does run Palm OS 5.4.9, which is more appealing than the Windows Mobile that Europe is getting in the Treo 500v. But there’s no sign of even a 3.5mm headphone jack, which is frankly backward.
Check out the Centro on Palm’s US site, and hit the jump for more pics from us.
Continue reading ‘Palm’s new baby, the Centro, unveiled’
‘Palm this week told the Guardian “it will be 12 to 18 months” before a Linux Palm appears.’
Oh, Palm, what are you playing at? If that report from the Guardian is correct, you’re in worse trouble than everyone thought. The new Linux-based Palm OS will form the much-needed foundations for Palm’s renaissance — but even with new backers & talent, can the company compete and survive for another 18 months before be able to release its new platform? That’s got to be approaching two generations of iPhones, BlackBerries and others into the future. Uh oh…
Just ahead of today’s official announcement in Europe, fresh pics of the new Palm Treo 500 have hit the net (also in white with strangely blurry keypad after the jump). Not much more to say about this one, other than that it’s clearly coming to Vodafone — and that we just cannot get excited about this craptacularly boring handset. Palm, this isn’t the answer!
(Alles Windows Mobile via Engadget)
Continue reading ‘Fresh pics of Palm’s new Treo 500′
Digitimes reports that Taiwan’s Inventec Appliances is Palm’s chosen outsourcing partner for its upcoming (and already vaguely underwhelming) Centro device. A leaked image (shown right) of the upcoming handset popped out last month, drawing gasps of amazement from almost no-one at all.
The site goes on to claim that, ‘Palm has also subcontracted new CDMA2000 smartphones to be launched in 2008 to Chi Mei Communication Systems’, which shouldn’t come as much surprise, since it was fairly likely that Palm was going release something next year… Let’s just hope it’s an interesting something.
‘There’s been a lot of buzz about the new device our friends across the “pond” are planning to announce on September 12th…and it’s not the Palm Centro smartphone!’
Those are the words of Palm’s Stephanie Richardson, writing on the Official Palm Blog to unofficially officially confirm that a new device is coming from the company on the 12th. The page on Palm’s European site that Richardson links to has this morsel for us to chew on: ‘The new Palm® smartphone. The word is, it’s great for email, mobile internet, instant messaging, text and - with a full keyboard - saying what you really mean.’
But if it’s not the tiny, awkward-looking Centro, then what cometh o Palmists? Boy Genius Report is voting for a Windows Mobile 6-based ‘Gandolf’, sporting a 2.4″ QVGA screen, 256MB memory, stereo Bluetooth and HSDPA. And also ugly as hell.
‘I have decided to cancel the Foleo mobile companion product in its current configuration and focus all of our energies on delivering our next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market.’
Those are the words of Palm CEO Ed Colligan as written on the Palm blog, following the company’s realisation that the Foleo just wasn’t going to cut it — and that Palm needs to focus on a new generation of handsets. Most pundits, including us, have been saying this for a while; Engadget recently & famously wrote an open letter to Colligan, imploring him to sort things out. Thankfully, he seems to have listened — albeit at a cost of $10m (£5m) to Palm as a result of the Foleo’s termination.
