Sprint Insider Clarifies Many Palm Pre Details

Posted By: Kris Keilhack Monday, April 27, 2009 1:37:40 PM

Pre Release DateIn what appears to be a fairly legitimate-sounding post, a large bit of new Pre info has just appeared on a blog site entitled the Inside Sprint Now blog. The anonymous blogger claims to be a Sprint/Nextel customer care representative and acting in no way on behalf of Sprint or Palm.

While too lengthy to cover in full here, a great deal of interesting information is clarified, confirmed and revealed in this mammoth update. So assuming the blog and the latest post's contents are 100% accurate, a number of interesting details are covered, including:

- As we reported earlier, the "Touchstone" moniker is confirmed to apply to a line of products, not just the induction desktop charger seen at CES.

- A "Palm Profile" is created during the user's initial setup process. This is almost undoubtedly the cloud-based services mention in Palm's past SEC filings and possibly related to last year's quite closure of the MyPalm portal and the beta Palm Backup app for legacy Garnet-based devices.

- A Sprint "Simply Everything" plan IS required. SERO plans are not supported and the phone will apparently not support tethering (aka "Phone as Modem").

- A maximum of eight (EAS, POP, or IMAP) email accounts are supported by the native e-mail application.

- As promised by Palm reps at CES, a one-way "Data Transfer Assistant" will firtunatey be available for importing legacy Palm OS PIM data. The blog author stresses that this is not a 2-way Hotsync as done in the day of yore. After being imported onto the Pre, the user's PIM data can either reside solely on the Pre or can then be synchronized to a cloud-based account such as Google Contacts but cannot be sent back to the old Palm Desktop application.

- The automatic cloud-based Backup only backs up 3rd party applications, preferences and account settings. It does not backup archived e-mails, PIM data other than Contacs or Calendar entries or media files (Mp3s, jpegs, videos etc).

- Videos played back on the Pre's media player app can only be viewed in landscape mode, nor portrait.

- Several codecs are supported out of the box: MPEG-4, H.263, and H.264. DRM-protected videos such as those sold by Amazon, are not supported.

- Users must manually backup their media libraries (both user-loaded and purchased Amazon MP3s) via USB mass storage drag'n drop mode. There appears to be no way to natively synchronize or backup the device's USB drive contents but a 3rd party utility will almost certainly be created to do this.

- Java applets, Adobe Flash and Abobe Shockwave are not supported by the web browser.

- Text on a web page cannot be selected and then copied and pasted.

- Sprint Music, Sprint PictureMail or Sprint Digital Lounge services are not supported, which should be no great loss to anyone but Sprint die-hards. These losses are mitigated by the native MMS support on the Pre's messaging app and the presence of Palm's App Store for the device, in addition to the presence of the Amazon MP3 store.

The post also goes into several interest technical discussions regarding resetting the device. The same basic Palm OS concepts remain but "soft" and "hard" resets are now replaced with "Restart", "Partial Erase" and "Full Erase". The Inside Sprint Now blog post unfortunately does not go into any detail by differentiating between these various types of device resets, other than stating that the Partial Erase deletes all user info and preferences but leaves the media contents of the flash storage area unaffected.

An entire section is dedicated to rather common-sense items such as toggling the wireless radios on & off and lowering screen brightness to conserve battery power. This laundry list of tips could be interpreted by some Palm-pessimistic types that battery life will be the Pre's Achilles heel. The older Palm Centro and Treo 800w are slower-clocked, smaller-screen devices that share the same 1150mAh battery as the Pre. Both of those devices have been severely criticized in the past for reduced battery runtime, especially with Wi-Fi and GPS enabled in the case of the 800w. Seidio does offer a 1350mAh OEM-size battery as an accessory for those devices as well as the Pre, but that remains a $40+ add-on.

Palm Pre Reset Guide How to

Another interesting bit closes out the blog post advising users how to handle a low-memory situation within the OS by resetting the device. Memory leaks are an inevitable trade-off with any computing device but the discussion of sluggish performance under low memory situations does seem to run contrary from the CES and CTIA impressions of lightning-fast Pre performance. Still, it's encouraging to see the process explained in an official capacity and not attributed to the presence of 3rd party apps, as was often the case in the earlier Palm OS days. The actual Pre reset process is thankfully more elegant than the "remove cover, remove battery, reinstall battery" process seen on all Palm devices since the 700p that have been devoid of an actual reset button. Such detailed info is especially appreciated since this info is likely from internal training materials targeted at Sprint customer service and retail staff and the Pre is likely to attract a fair share of first-time smartphone buyers.

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waiting for 2.0

jca666us @ 4/27/2009 3:00:03 PM # M Q
sounds pretty clunky.

I reckon waiting for pre 2.0 - for the bugs to be worked out.

RE: waiting for 2.0
justauser @ 4/27/2009 3:25:46 PM # Q
"Text on a web page cannot be selected and then copied and pasted"

Not cut/paste support was a deal breaker for me me RE the iPhone. Please let THIS be a false rumor. Don't make me hang on to me 680 for another year. I can live with the rest

RE: waiting for 2.0
SeldomVisitor @ 4/28/2009 3:43:31 AM # Q
> ...Please let THIS be a false rumor...

You saw the demos of copy-n-paste. Live with it.


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Bah!

freakout @ 4/27/2009 3:09:23 PM # Q
- Text on a web page cannot be selected and then copied and pasted.

That stinks. Why not? Palm OS can do it.

RE: Bah!
justauser @ 4/27/2009 3:33:47 PM # Q
Yeah - they demo'd the cut and paste. Why would the web app be different?
RE: Bah!
jca666us @ 4/27/2009 4:45:14 PM # Q
Hey freak, even I'm in agreement with you!

Too bad the Pre can't copy text from a web page - heck, even my lowly primitive iphone can do that :)

RE: Bah!
hkklife @ 4/27/2009 4:56:19 PM # Q
Intentional feature neutering is the price you pay for a "next-gen" hardware with a good web browser and a big screen, it seems (iPhone, Pre etc).


The same reasons the Pre doesn't have video recording, voice memos, an onscreen keyboard, selectable portrait or landscape modes, hard app buttons, voice dialing, IR, a decent size battery or a removable memory card slot---greed, laziness, arrogance, complacenency and hardware/software incompetence.

As always, Palm giveth on one hand and they taketh away on the other. This is nothing new.
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->?

RE: Bah!
hkklife @ 4/27/2009 7:12:02 PM # Q
And add DUN/tethering to the above list. Now, Palm's people at CES (and CTIA, presumably) said that the Pre CAN support it. But the devil's in the details so if Sprint doesn't want it to support it, then what can we do?
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->?
RE: Bah!
jca666us @ 4/28/2009 3:49:05 AM # Q
>Intentional feature neutering is the price you pay for a "next-gen"
>hardware with a good web browser and a big screen, it seems (iPhone,
>Pre etc).

hkk, I think when both phones started out, features were stripped - in order to get the devices out on time.

Still, alot of features have been added back to the iphone - presumably the same should happen with the Pre - it's anyone's guess if that will happen and along what kind of timeframe.

>The same reasons the Pre doesn't have video recording, voice memos,
>an onscreen keyboard, selectable portrait or landscape modes, hard app
>buttons, voice dialing, IR, a decent size battery or a removable memory
>card slot---greed, laziness, arrogance, complacenency and
>hardware/software incompetence.

I wouldn't go that far - it just seems like they aren't targeting (solely) legacy Palm OS users. I'm more disappointed with mention in the original article that if the Pre is slow, reboot it. Also, to save power, "lower the screen brightness", "if you're running im's that you aren't using, close them", etc.

These are the sorts of things that don't exactly inspire confidence. If you have to lower the brightness and/or close im's you aren't using, then either the battery is underpowered or the os is in need of performance tuning (or both).

RE: Bah!
freakout @ 4/28/2009 5:05:07 AM # Q
Kris:
And add DUN/tethering to the above list. Now, Palm's people at CES (and CTIA, presumably) said that the Pre CAN support it. But the devil's in the details so if Sprint doesn't want it to support it, then what can we do?

Jailbreak it? I'm still really interested in what's going to happen once webOS is out in the wild and people can hack away at it to get at the Linux goodness underneath. Doubt it'll take long before we see hacks to start fixing the stuff that needs fixing. Happens with every device, it'll happen with Pre too.

RE: Bah!
SeldomVisitor @ 4/28/2009 5:37:12 AM # Q
Yup - all those Pre-resident standard applications will suddenly be open-sourced!

Whee!

RE: Bah!
mikecane @ 4/28/2009 6:03:56 AM # Q
No Copy text from webpages? Do Not Like.

Makes me now wonder if we'll be able to *paste into* textareas and fields.

Something screwy has to be going on here for C/P not to be available with web pages. I Do Not Like that Something either.

RE: Bah!
SeldomVisitor @ 4/28/2009 6:12:42 AM # Q
Some of us got a clue early on:

http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9682/#148646

RE: Bah!
justauser @ 4/29/2009 4:03:06 PM # Q
But then again the iphone did thrive for years without c/p anywhere. iphone fanboys acted as if it wasn't needed. I guess I surf via Operamini ATM (no c/p). Perhaps not as bad as first thought
Reply to this comment

release date

motty @ 4/27/2009 3:38:29 PM # Q
on his post at sprintgurus.com he says the pre is released with pink floyd's wish you were here song and the trailer for the movie up. then he states "You can make your own assumptions from one of those, if you read between the lines". i think he was hinting at the release date. the disney movie Up comes out May 29th. I'm thinking that they would release the phone a little before that date if they're putting the trailer for it on the phone. that's of course if this guy is legit. here's the link to where he says what the video and music sample will be. http://sprintgurus.com/forum/showthread.php?t=315
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Dealbreaker for me

jamesem @ 4/27/2009 7:01:08 PM # Q
I was ready to get my hands on one of these the first day I could, but no tethering (phone as a modem) would be a deal breaker for me. I hope that is not correct. everything else I could live without, but not that.
RE: Dealbreaker for me
Eternal_Visitor @ 4/27/2009 10:30:41 PM # Q
gotta agree with you there (I'm tethering right now, through my Nokia E71 on rogers) while I'd rather not have to, if I'm paying for the data anyway (500mb here) might as well use it.


(with the amount of data traffic allowed on the plans you HAVE to get with phones like this, leaving tethering out is just plain silly)
that's how I see things. you think I'm wrong? well, that's the way you see things.

Reply to this comment

The next phone....?

Se7enthSon @ 4/27/2009 11:07:57 PM # Q
Don't know... I just might keep my Instinct for another year. At least my current phone can swap out cards and take videos.
Reply to this comment

dealbreakers

jptx @ 4/28/2009 8:38:07 AM # Q
Call me when sero will work and thethering (even with limits) is availble. I'll pull out my debit card then....
RE: dealbreakers
QDeath @ 4/28/2009 1:28:24 PM # Q
I can't buy the phone and use the sero???? DOH!

-
Palm Vx -> Palm m515 -> Tungsten T3 -> Verizon Treo 650 -> Sprint Treo Centro

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Sync Tasks/Notes

draash @ 4/28/2009 11:24:01 AM # Q
With all this discussion of syncing, has there been any elaboration on syncing tasks, notes (one of the main reasons I will not purchase the iPhone). If the Pre is to sync exclusively through Facebook or other personal mangers, they do not have a tasks or notes tool on Facebook, Google, so on. This article mentions it is only to sync in one path, PC to Pre, so if I add aa task on my Pre, it will not sync into Outlook? that will be quite disappointing.
Does anyone have any thoughts?
I have seen images of the tasks/memo pad (Notes) on the palm Pre
RE: Sync Tasks/Notes
hkklife @ 4/28/2009 11:35:59 AM # Q
From MY understanding, those items (for the time being, at least) reside exclusively on the Pre. You can back them up to the cloud & restore them to the Pre but to view/edit them, you've gotta do it on the Pre. As far as users of Outlook who do not use an Exchange server, I haven't read anything but I would assume that a 3rd party will come along to resolve the matter (for extra $ of course), Come hell or high water, like it or not, Palm is definitely putting all of their eggs in the cloud basket.
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->?
RE: Sync Tasks/Notes
hkklife @ 4/28/2009 11:37:52 AM # Q
Update:
The latest PR fluff:

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Companionlink-Software-Inc-939116.html

and January's original announcement:
http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/7132/companionlink-to-offer-palm-pre-sync-software/
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->?

RE: Sync Tasks/Notes
tamole @ 4/28/2009 8:00:27 PM # Q
No desktop sync, no deal.

Reply to this comment

No notes and to-do items sync?

scstraus2 @ 4/28/2009 2:44:51 PM # Q
This is a dealbreaker for me. I have been working on my lists of notes and to-do's for 10 years now. No way I'm risking losing them without any backup. Bummer.
Palm Pilot 5000->Palm Pilot Professional->Handspring Visor->Handspring Visor Prism->Handspring Visor Neo->Handspring Treo 180->Handspring Treo 270->Palm Treo 600->Tapwave Zodiac 2->Palm Treo 650->Palm Treo 680->Samsung i780->Palm Pre..!?
Reply to this comment

Holy crap.

AdamaDBrown @ 4/28/2009 7:59:28 PM # Q
Geez. This is worse than I'd expected. No tethering, no automatic backup, no portrait video, no tie in to a video store, no Java, no Flash... what pray tell DOES it do out of the box that others don't?
RE: Holy crap.
hkklife @ 4/28/2009 8:09:30 PM # Q
Ummm....well, for starters, the Pre has an undersized removable battery, an undersized slide-out keyboard, *AND* it hangs with B & C-list celebrities and makes appearances on late night talk shows?

So Adama, were you really expecting a world-beater from Palm after years of complacency and disappointments?
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->?

RE: Holy crap.
nastebu @ 4/28/2009 11:06:25 PM # Q
Missing features of not, maybe the Pre will have the same magic that the iPhone has--usability. It's worth saying that as much as features like tethering might matter to the folks on palminfocenter, they matter very little to the mass of first time smart phone buyers that Palm needs to attract to sell the Pre at a high enough rate to survive. To attract those buyers the Pre needs to be cool, usable, and easy.

Apple seems not to have added copy and paste (until now) because they thought most people didn't care. There's a lesson in that I think.

RE: Holy crap.
AdamaDBrown @ 4/29/2009 10:13:20 AM # Q
So Adama, were you really expecting a world-beater from Palm after years of complacency and disappointments?

Well, no. But I was expecting that it would at least follow some of the logical conclusions of having a primarily web-based device, like including Java and Flash, extending the auto-backup to all areas of the device, and/or providing a hookup to popular online media outlets besides YouTube.

Reply to this comment

good information

redhatd @ 4/30/2009 2:09:08 AM # Q
good article , here I have a good place , that is : http://www.tradestead.com
there are different kinds of beautiful and powerful consumer electronics that you can easilly find what you need!
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