Seriously, I don’t know much about how Palm operate. I’ve never followed their phones, never owned any of their PDAs and only briefly took much notice when they attempted to launch the Foleo in 2007. The Foleo piqued my interest a little and now ‘Nova’ is doing the same.
Gearlog says that Nova, the almost-confirmed OS from Palm will be pro-sumer and internet focused. Does ‘pro-sumer’ mean the full web experience? Will it scale to 5″ 800×480 screens and devices running hi end ARM cores? How about netbooks? There was certainly some talk about it.
Any readers out there following it closely? I’d be interested to hear your opinion so if you have a moment, let us all know what you think in the comments.
CES 2009: Palm’s New Nova Phone, What We Know Now – Gearlog.
January 6th, 2009 at 6:00 am
Hey Chippy,
I’m a long-time Palm user and would very much like to know more about Nova and Palm’s new Nova-based devices. Can Nova run Palm OS applications? Syncing with PC’s, Nova device specs, pricing and distribution channels – will they be distributed through wireless carriers? or in retail stores?
Thanx for asking!
January 6th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
I’ve been following the smartphone scene for a while now and it seems like Nova will be very consumer oriented with a strong focus on media and internet integration. They’ll continue producing WM-based Treos for the “business” market.
With Ed Colligan at the helm at Palm (who used to work for Apple), I’m sure Nova will have a strong focus on “the consumer experience”, something that the iPhone excels at and is sorely lacking in other smartphone platforms like WM6.1 and S60 3rd/5th edition.
It’ll be interesting to see whether Palm will step away from the front-facing QWERTY phones they’ve been exclusively producing with Nova. Large touchscreen smartphones seem to be all the rage now (iPhone, Touch HD, Omnia, N97, etc)
January 7th, 2009 at 1:34 am
Wow, there’s some misinformation here. First of all, Ed Colligan being at the helm is nothing new. He was the CEO of Handspring and in charge of the financial end mostly, with Jeff Hawkins (inventor of the original Palm Pilot) being on the technology end, designing the breakthrough Treo 600. Palm acquired Handspring to bring that talent back shortly after the Treo 600 was released, and Colligan has been a part of the team since then (though still focusing on financial stuff). Hawkins for the record was the one behind the Foleo, but he mostly treats Palm as a part-time venture these days, mostly being involved with brain research.
Who Will really means is at the helm is Jon Rubenstein, the designer behind the original iPod.
Its unknown at this time whether Nova will support the old Garnet OS (known as Palm OS 5 until Access bought PalmSource) applications. Rumors for the past year and a half or so have been yes, but nobody knows for sure.
Also, the current rumor as of a few days ago is that the new Palm device will be capacitive touch like the iPhone, and a vertical slider QWERTY keyboard. So it’ll be similar to the iPhone, with a keyboard that slides from underneath. (I’d personally prefer the keyboard on the outside sliding open like the Tungsten to reveal more screen but that’s doubtful). Also mentioned is that there is a big focus on transitions and animations to give it a better experience like the iPhone.
http://www.treocentral.com/content/Stories/2300-1.htm
Will Reply:
January 7th, 2009 at 4:26 am
Doh! Sorry I did mean Jon Rubinstein.
When Rubinstein was at Apple, he wanted a physical keyboard on the iPhone but Jobs did not. A vertical slider sounds like a good compromise but it does mean it won’t be a slim phone and a large touch-screen might make it too top-heavy when typing.