Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring, Banana Phone!

Those who know will have it stuck in their heads forever now.

Apparently. Even better if it takes memory cards (does it?). Let's see how much it'll cost.

And could they please make one that has no phone, and plays music well? :-)

'The hardware's nice but the OS is nicer' kinda implies that there was a demo or mockup somewhere to be seen... and noone from vulture central has a camera, or a camera phone?!

bad show!

EVDO = CDMA = No phone use on this side of the pond. Seems kinda silly to limit yourself to the american market for something like this.

Damn you Iain Paterson! ;)

Interesting - people in a foreign country are getting a new phone. How is this relevant to me?

Olof P wrote:

"EVDO = CDMA = No phone use on this side of the pond. Seems kinda silly to limit yourself to the american market for something like this."

Palm has done quite a bit with Sprint so it's not surprising. I'm sure once they get things ironed out you'll see other protocols. For example, it's not like the Treo is just CDMA : )

according to Treo Central.

My Treo Pro looks poo now :-(

Not necessarily. Plenty of manufacturers make CDMA and GSM models of their phones, no reason Palm wouldn't do the same.

Way to be cynical el Reg. Even usual Palm haters out there are loving this. And investors seems to be agreeing.

Wasn't Ian Patterson, the bloody headline was all it took for me.

I'm off to shoot myself now...

superb song. I hope the Pre is as good.

/me goes to iTunes Store...

boo. can't get the real version on iTunes Store, the UK Amazon download store doesn't have it and I can't buy it from the US store. then again I read some stuff on Raffi's site and he's a bit of a tree hugger.

... according to Engadget

http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/08/there-will-be-a-umts-palm-pre/

What's with these idiots locking their phones to a particular network? First they choose CDMA, which is laughable in the face of a world market, then they tie it even more to just the American market by locking it down to a sub-standard carrier.

Bloody idiots. I might even have bought one too.

Never thought I'd see another decent Palm phone. Finally something to replace my ageing Treo 680? Fkin hope so.

Any word on a 3.5mm audio jack?

Surely it's pronounced "pray".

Which I guess is what Palm management is doing right now...

It is pronounced Pre, as in or like... before. It rhymes with tree. There is no gruve over the e. And yes it appears to be an awesome device. Go Palm. The world needs you, if only to clam up the idiotphone phanbouys.

Tux as this is a Linux OS Phone. W00t!

They've gone too far in trying to make it look curvy and hip - in making the sides curve outwards as well, it looks a bit tubby in the middle and nowhere near as sleek as its main competitors.

I've still to find something that matches using my old Palm III and Palm Desktop connecting to Mac OS 9. I could install apps and have them sync data back to applications on my laptop. Then Palm stopped updating Palm Desktop so I moved away to other things. Unless Palm are going to provide a nice new, plugin friendly, Palm Desktop application for OS X this is no good to me. If they are, and a 3G version comes out, I'll look at it when I need to change my phone.

Sadly I suspect that by the time Palm deliver Apple will have and their chance will have gone.

Shouldn't it be pronounced 'Pray' with the acute over the letter 'E'??

Maybe a bit Freudian that the pray it will turn their business around?

Add an annoying "sent from my banana" auto signature to outgoing emails?

Odd name, but nice device.

On the EVDO / CDMA thing, the Palm press release DOES also mention UMTS / HSDPA (see http://investor.palm.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=358392). So perhaps the Pre is an exclusive to Sprint at the moment, with a UMTS version coming out later.

There are a couple of things that make the Pre interesting - one if the user interface idea of having application cards running side-by-side. It sounds interesting, it would be interesting to see it in practice. The other thing is that the software seems to be rather good at managing contacts and messages from all sorts of different sources into a unified system.

I really don't know if this can save Palm though - if it came out 12 months ago, then perhaps. At least Palm managed to secure some more funding so that they can give it a try..

Removable/replaceable battery? Yay! Who would possibly be daft enough to sell a phone without that..?

You want "Missing Sync", available for several mobile systems including Palm, syncs using OS X sync services to your OS X data pools. So you can sync your Palm with iCal etc.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=j6l0birqeig&feature=related

The one thing I've not seen in any of the coverage is even a hint of the battery life, which makes me think that it might be the Pre's Achilles heel.

I wouldn't be surprised at a low battery life, what with wireless, GPS, Bluetooth, a fast CPU and a phone in there it must eat power.

Shame, this is the first time for ages I've seen a pda phone like this that I wanted to buy. (I've got a BB Storm through work, it's ok but all the BB's I've ever used have felt sluggish and in need of a more beefy CPU)

Just shows people from Apple don't need supervision by Steve Jobs to make a decent product. But the current iPhone (essentially the same as launched 2 years ago) isn't the one Pre will be up against, and its shortcomings don't mean Apple can't fix them. (Apple simply doesn't play a card until it has to, an elementary lesson its competitors don't seem to have learned, which drives the Apple haters crazy when Apple prevails over "better" products).

I like the way they've put in multi-touch which the rest have been afraid to do. If Apple doesn't sue, they get away with it. If Apple sues and loses, Palm is suddenly worth much more; if they win, Palm can just pull the multitouch feature with little harm done.

There's no justification for the accute accent at all, it's just another attempt to make something sound exotic by adding an accent, cf. the ridiculous adulteration of Moben and Motley Crue.

A 12mm thick version without the keyboard should be offered.

check out http://palmone.r3h.net/downloads.palm.com/ces.mov -- the device appears about 13 minutes into the video, UI demo about 5 minutes later

Simple, buy it SIM-free and engage flight mode and there you have a palm music player.

'cus what the phone market needed was another OS!

WM

Symbian

iPhone OS

Android

Palm OS (I suppose this is called Palm Classic now)

and now Palm WebOS?

Palm sold the most successfull PDA for years with no keyboard, they now seem wedded to nasty tiny qwerty keyboards just when Apple, Balckberry, LG etc are finally ditching them in favour of virtual keyboards on full touch screen. Not only is it nasty to use, but surley it costs more to manufactuer and is less reliable. Lets hoping that the OS goes onto a Propper (as in US Robotics Palm Pilot) Style PDA/Phone. I was waitiing on this, but now I think ill get a Storm. and Hope there is a non keyboard Palm in a year when contracts up etc. Still ove my TX.