Palm + Sprint: Notes from the webcast

Thanks to Dieter with PreCentral.net for live-blogging this juicy stuff as the ‘invite only’ event takes place. Unfortunately, I was not invited. Strange…

Webcast presenters:

• David Owens, Director of Consumer Acquisition for Sprint
• Matt Crowley, Product Line Manager at Palm

Notes:

• Slides from the presentation
• No update was given for the most common questions… “When?” and “How much?”
• Apparently there is a lot of “bla bla bla” about how Sprint and Palm have been loving on eachother since the beginning
• More chatter about how good Sprint’s network is (I have to agree, I rarely have problems with dropped calls or dropped 3G service) and how ‘awesome’ the Simply Everything plan is
• Stereo Bluetooth is supported… I think that’s the only new information I so far
• Apparently 20% of people who buy smartphones end up returning it and getting a ‘tard phone… interesting tidbit
• Run through of hardware, WebOS and Synergy… nothing that hasn’t been posted on youtube before (see my previous posts)
• Run through of messaging, seamless integration of email, SMS, IM, etc…
• Brief mention of Touchstone charger

Q & A:

• Sprint Music will be different on the Pre
• Still on track for release first half of 2009
• Should support Flash near the end of 2009
• There actually is a limit on the number of cards you can have open. It is determined dynamically by the amount of memory each card is using.
• Sprint is making sure that it will have Touchstone available in stores, not just through Palm
• Palm will continue to develop Windows Mobile devices, but will no longer make anything with PalmOS
• There will definitely be a WebOS App Store, more details will be released later
• You will be able to download apps over the air, plugging into computer not required
• Sleek and slim design is the reason they didn’t want to put a memory expansion slot
• There will be games available
• Due to their “focus on the web and bringing the web to the device”, development for the Pre will be pretty much exclusively Javascipt, HTML, and CSS
• “Pandora is a good example of the kind of app you can build”
• No plans to actually license WebOS 1.0
• Why the name “Pre”? … Because the device is anticipatory (i.e. Universal search function for contacts, calendar, web, map, wiki, etc)
• Sprint’s “Ready Now” method could be thought of as a personal trainer…
• “Great phone + Great network + Knowing how to use your phone = Great word of mouth marketing for Sprint and Palm”
• There won’t be a big user guide coming with the Pre… find it all online
• Minimum required plan for the Pre: Unlimited Messaging, Unlimited Data, 450 minutes… “as low as $69″… so you don’t HAVE to pay $99 for the Simply Everything Plan

Overall, it was pretty useless information barring a tidbit here or there. Still no official When, Where, or How Much answers.
My official prediction is middle of May sometime… which was the prediction that Dieter made during the webcast. Anyway, keep following and I’ll keep dropping info on you.

@JimNoth

This entry was posted on March 12th, 2009 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.