11/16, 4:45pm
Palm releases webOS 1.3.1 for Pre, Pixi
Palm on Friday announced users of the Pre smartphone on both the Sprint network and Bell in Canada will receive an automatic over-the-air software update to webOS 1.3.1. The Palm Pixi, released on Sunday, shipped with the updated operating system as well. A number of new features are made possible with the new OS, and some known issues were resolved. One such new feature is the integration of Yahoo contacts, calendar and messaging into Palm Synergy, along with Outlook EAS, Facebook, Google and LinkedIn accounts. The Yahoo contacts and calendars can also be integrated into the Pre's respective applications, while Yahoo! IM can be used in the webOS Messaging app.
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11/16, 10:45am
Apps sync Mac content with smartphones
Mark/Space has launched two important Mac applications, The Missing Sync for Android and GoGadget for webOS. After a month's delay, the former is now in public beta, and can now sync content such as music, video, contacts, photos, ringtones and miscellaneous files to an Android-based smartphone. Data is pulled from the likes of Address Book, Entourage, iTunes and iPhoto.
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10/29, 11:10pm
Palm sync again stopped by iTunes patch
Palm Pre owners tonight discovered that iTunes 9.0.2 once again breaks sync with iTunes. It's unclear what Apple has done to deny a native presence and, unlike with some past iTunes updates, there are no direct allusions to altering compatibility. Users are known to still have use of gateway apps such as DoubleTwist or Missing Sync.
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10/27, 2:50pm
Study shows iPhone 3GS unseating BBerry
The success of the iPhone 3GS could lead to Apple's device overtaking the BlackBerry, a ChangeWave study has found today. Since unveiling the phone in June, Apple has jumped five percent in its market share among those in the study, to 30 percent, and is within a "striking distance" of just 10 percent of RIM's BlackBerry, which fell a point to 40 percent. Palm is flat at 7 percent but successfully used the Pre to stave off the constant declines it has faced for the past three years.
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10/26, 10:40am
Palm Pixi due in three weeks for Sprint
Sprint today set final launch details for the Palm Pixi on its network. The smartphone will ship to the carrier's stores on November 15th and cost $100 on contract after both a $50 immediate discount and a $100 mail-in rebate. It's also now known to work with the Touchstone inductive charging dock but needs both the $80 add-on as well as a $20 back shell to charge without using wires.
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10/17, 2:50pm
Verizon ad campaign to attack Apple
Verizon today sent signals that it's about to launch an aggressive campaign against Apple through a combination of marketing and devices. A leaked note regarding an upcoming ad series, nicknamed "iDoesn't," specifically targets the "iDevice" and will allegedly focus on all the features the iPhone doesn't have. The details Engadget sees are vague regarding the ads themselves but do mention that Verizon will keep branding to a minimum.
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10/09, 10:45am
MS Pink and Danger team at risk
Microsoft's Pink phone project may be on the verge of falling apart even before its first product ships, according to a controversial set of leaks supposedly confirmed today. Backing a scoop from earlier in the week, a source for AppleInsider says Microsoft has poorly managed the project and squandered the acquisition of Sidekick creator Danger from 2008. Rather than implement Danger's advice, the larger company has watched the majority of the team either fired or leave in frustration as the majority of their advice is ignored.
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10/08, 11:00am
JD Power says iPhone tops, hurts normal phones
The iPhone today claimed an even larger edge in satisfaction versus its rivals in JD Power's second phone satisfaction study of 2009. Apple's smartphone climbed ten points from an earlier score to 811 out of 1,000 while its closest rival, LG, managed just a four-point increase to 776. The two were the only smartphone designers to score above the industry average.
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10/07, 10:30am
Android 2nd place in share in 3 years
Google's Android will be the second-largest smartphone platform in as little as three years, according to Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney estimated on Wednesday. While it trails today, the mobile OS is predicted to climb to 14.5 percent of the market, or about 76 million phones sold per year, by the end of 2012. As a consequence, it would whittle Symbian's market share down to 39 percent (203 million phones) and just slightly overtake the iPhone, which in this view would have 13.7 percent of the market or 71.5 million devices.
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10/05, 11:25pm
Palm spurs open-source apps, web downloads
Palm at a special event tonight staked out its differences with Apple by making key changes to its developer program. The smartphone developer is one of the first after Google to foster open development and said it will dismiss its usual $99 app submission fee for any developer whose webOS apps are open-source. Back end data on app downloads and other sales info will also be available to all developers on request.
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10/05, 7:55am
Adobe unveils Flash 10.1 without iPhone
Adobe at its MAX show launched Flash 10.1, a major update to its plugin that promises video on devices that normally haven't been capable. The release adds hardware graphics acceleration on computers and should make HD Flash video possible on netbooks and ultraportables and standard definition possible on smartphones. NVIDIA already promises that its GeForce, Ion and Tegra chipsets will speed up the Flash update when available.
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10/03, 11:25am
Palm webOS 1.2.1 fixes iTunes, Exchange
Palm today quietly circumvented Apple's protective measures again with webOS 1.2.1. Its second update in a week is the first to restore iTunes syncing for the Pre since iTunes 8.2 and will let the Pre take media from iTunes 9.0.1 as though it were a native device in the jukebox software. It even adds deeper integration and will now sync photo albums as well as lower-resolution versions that save space on the phone.
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10/02, 4:50pm
Palm Pixi still with vague holiday date
A contradictory rumor this afternoon claims that talk of the Palm Pixi arriving on October 20th is inaccurate. Claiming to have an insider who would "definitely have a better perspective" on the release, Engadget says the date is incorrect and that a launch before the holidays is still the only likely target. No price information or other corrections were made available.
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10/01, 8:50pm
Service launches October 2nd
Palm is allegedly ready to launch its paid app service for webOS devices, a source has told PreCentral. Content will linked with the user's Palm Profile, enabling deleted apps to be re-downloaded without requiring a second purchase. After purchasing a new Pre or Pixi, all of the apps can be transferred to the new device.
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10/01, 6:10pm
Palm Pixi may show in three weeks
Palm's Pixi may already be in stores in less than three weeks' time if a leak proves true. A new but seemingly realistic source for BGR claims that the phone will be in stores on October 20th. The release would be complete and include not just Sprint's own stores but Best Buy and other third-party chains as well.
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10/01, 3:35pm
SlingPlayer coming to Palm Pre, as per job post?
A job listing at Sling Media, the maker of the Slingbox streaming TV hub, suggests that both Android and webOS versions of the streaming TV application are in develpoment. The job calls for a Senior Mobile User Interface Designer knowledgeable in these platforms as well as in platforms that already have SlingPlayer apps, such as BlackBerry, iPhone, Symbian and Windows Mobile.
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09/30, 3:35pm
AdMob August 2009 gives iPhone the lead
Apple's iPhone OS has successfully overtaken Symbian for the lead in all mobile web traffic, according to the latest data from AdMob. The combined iPhone and iPod touch share has jumped from 33 percent in February to 40 percent in August. Symbian, meanwhile, has almost exactly traded positions with Apple and fell from 43 percent near the start of the year to 34 percent in August.
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09/30, 1:00pm
iPhone leads CFI phone happiness study
Modern touchscreen phones like the iPhone, Android devices and the Palm Pre are proving to be much more enjoyable to use than conventional smartphones -- at times in spite of their networks, according to a CFI study. About 83 percent of US iPhone owners are satisfied with their phones while the other two touch-first platforms, Google's Android and Palm's webOS, are close with 77 percent each. In comparison, 73 percent of BlackBerry owners can say the same while those using Palm Treos of different varieties claimed 70 percent satisfaction.
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09/28, 11:55pm
Update does not fix Apple's compatibility block
Palm on Monday announced that it is set to launch webOS 1.2, an update to the Pre firmware. The Palm Synergy service has been expanded to support LinkedIn contact syncing, with profiles presented in the Pre contacts. The e-mail function now allows users to filter the results in the current folder by typing in a search term. While navigating the Internet, files can be downloaded directly from within the browser.
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09/25, 1:45pm
RIM stock drops 19 percent
Research in Motion's stock fell a sharp 19 percent on Friday in a reaction to the company's mixed performance in its latest quarter. Investors were upset with both the steep quarter-to-quarter drop in net profit as well as a relatively conservative outlook that saw its own estimates only slightly above what it managed during the summer. Analysts had been expecting much higher numbers with the usual fall sales spike and new BlackBerries known to be in the pipeline.
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09/25, 11:50am
Leak details Palm webOS 1.2 and iTunes
Palm's webOS 1.2 may not show until next week but could come with iTunes syncing back in place, a supposed leak from a source says. Sprint's own need to test the revamped App Catalog is said to have triggered a short delay and forced Palm to move to 1.2.1 instead. However, it's now said by the PreCentral contact that the software will give the Pre native sync for the first time in iTunes 9.
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09/23, 10:55am
Palm faces App Catalog backlog
Palm's decision to open development to everyone has left it facing more webOS app submissions than it can take, the company's Developer Community Manager Chuq Von Rospach admitted this week. After developers complained that they weren't getting responses regarding their own apps, the official told those affected that more have arrived "than we could handle well" and that three extra people have been recruited just to streamline app testing.
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09/17, 5:00pm
Palm summer quarter 2009 results
Palm today reported a turnaround in its results for its just-ended summer quarter. Compared to the spring, the company's smartphone shipments surged 134 percent and topped 823,000 devices, nearly all of which were successfully sold. The number is a 30 percent drop from summer a year earlier but is believed to have stemmed much of the rapid decline in the company's influence.
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09/16, 6:30pm
WebOS 1.2 said to be ready next week
Palm may be ready to launch WebOS 1.2 on the Pre as early as next week, an unnamed source told PreCentral. The company is also expected to debut its new app portal on September 24th, which would fit with the previously announced time-frame.
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09/09, 7:25am
Palm intros Pixi for Sprint
Palm this morning backed rumors by launching the Pixi, its second webOS phone and its direct replacement for the Centro. The handset (once known as the Eos) is aimed at the budget segment and has a smaller 2.6-inch multi-touch screen as well as a fixed QWERTY keyboard, a 2-megapixel camera, and no Wi-Fi. It still keeps 3G, GPS and 8GB of storage; in a new feature for any Palm phone, the Pixi adds LinkedIn and Yahoo contacts and messages as well as Yahoo IM to the Synergy platform that unifies the platform.
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09/08, 6:00pm
Palm Eos may launch at Fashion Week
Palm's heavily rumored Eos smartphone could be made official as early as this week, according to a supposed contact near to the company. The unnamed tipster claims the Centro replacement's appearance will be tied to Fashion Week in New York City but doesn't provide much else to TechCrunch other than the implication that the Eos will release before the end of the year. Such a view contradicts rumors that the handset had been pushed to 2010.
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08/20, 7:55am
Palm Nixed Apple Job Deal
Apple's practice of striking agreements to avoid poaching other companies' workers almost extended to Palm as well, according to a leak of conversations between the two. Just as the US Justice Department has been investigating possible anti-competitive behavior between Apple and Google as well as other technology firms, Bloomberg has reportedly found that since departed Palm chief Ed Colligan rejected a proposal from Apple's Steve Jobs in 2007 that would have prevented either company from hiring each other's employees.
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08/19, 3:10pm
Palm Eos due in October?
The Palm Eos smartphone, built by Taiwanese handset manufacturer Compal Communications, is expected to start shipping in October, says a Wednesday DigiTimes report. The GSM/HSPA device is sad to eventually be produced at numbers between 400,000 and 500,000 per month. A CDMA EVDO version of the device is expected to ship in the first quarter of 2010. This latest news supports an earlier report that the handset will first be available on the AT&T network in North America.
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08/19, 2:30pm
BBerry Gets Flash in 2010
A rumor from a purportedly certain source suggests RIM will have full, near desktop-grade Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight on the BlackBerry's web browser next year. Full details aren't given, but BGR understands that the update is primarily waiting on hardware. As either web plug-in demands both a strong processor and a fast Internet connection, RIM is said to only be launching the more advanced browser in summer 2010, when its phones will be faster and should have faster 3G and potentially 4G connections.
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08/18, 12:15pm
RBC on AAPL PALM RIM
Three American firms are ultimately going to take control of the smartphone business, RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky said today in a research note. He believes that Apple, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion and eventually Palm are all "positioned for leadership" and should command the smartphone market when it reaches 35 percent of all phones, or over 500 million smartphones, by 2012. They represent the few companies that properly integrate the hardware and software from top to bottom, according to the analyst.
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08/18, 11:20am
Palm Takes Paid App Submit
Palm on Tuesday began accepting developer submisssions of paid apps to the Palm App Catalog. The move follows a month after the smartphone creator opened its SDK to all developers and will give developers a similar deal to what Apple has struck for its iPhone App Store or Microsoft for its Windows Marketplace for Mobile. While free apps are still an option, Palm will take only a 30 percent flat cut of the revenue from any paid app regardless of the number of copies sold.
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08/17, 5:20pm
Morgan Joseph on Palm Eos
Palm could not only be facing cooling sales of its most important phone but a delay in a much-needed budget smartphone, Morgan Joseph analyst Ilya Grozovsky said in a note today. He estimates through checks that sales of the Pre halved from 200,000 during its June launch month to 100,000 in July and that they should fall again this month. If this occurs, it's expected that Palm would prop up the smartphone through a price cut.
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08/07, 12:45pm
Moto Android Blur UI
A new leak Friday afternoon suggests that Motorola's Android phones will ship with a radically different user interface. Nicknamed "Blur," it would borrow conceptually from Palm's webOS and merge both personal contacts and social networking into a unified front end. It would also have a unique device ID system that would streamline pushing data by allowing both social network updates and individual Android components to be updated quickly and over the air.
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08/04, 10:55am
Palm Pre for Bell Aug 27
Bell this morning finally committed to a ship date and price for its version of the Palm Pre that make it only the second carrier in the world after Sprint to offer the smartphone. It should ship on August 27th and will sell for $200 when paired with a typical-for-Canada three-year contract that includes at least a 500MB per month data plan. The new carrier's version doesn't vary sharply from the reference version reviewed here but, as a result, should have full HTML web browsing, multi-network instant messaging and deep integration with Facebook and Google services, including Google Maps.
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07/24, 12:05pm
Palm Says Apple USB Abuse
Palm has not only restored iTunes syncing for the Pre but has accused Apple of abusing the USB standard to keep other devices out. Company spokeswoman Lynn Fox told All Things D late yesterday that Palm has filed a complaint with the USB Implementers Forum (USB IF) over Apple's use of the Vendor ID number. The specific issue isn't stated, but it's implied that Apple is misusing the ID check to prevent all non-Apple devices from appearing in iTunes.
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07/23, 8:05pm
Palm webOS Restores iTunes
Palm tonight countered Apple's move to break iTunes syncing by releasing webOS 1.1. The previously promised update restores full syncing with iTunes 8.2.1 and lets both the Pre and future webOS phones once more transfer music, photos and videos directly from the jukebox software. It's not clear what was changed to restore access, though Apple explicitly mentioned that its iTunes patch checked the authenticity of devices, hinting that Palm has found a way to bypass or fool the check.
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07/20, 8:30am
Palm Hiring Game Engineer
Palm has provided a clue as to its long-term plans for native apps through a job listing unearthed today. The smartphone developer is looking for a Game Frameworks Engineer for webOS that would be familiar with hardware 3D acceleration, including modern graphics technology like programmable pixel shaders for advanced effects. Currently, webOS only supports its namesake web code and, while it has certain direct access to the hardware, has been limited to visually simple apps as a result.
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07/16, 11:00am
Palm Opens webOS SDK
Palm this morning acted on vows to expand webOS development and opened the Mojo SDK to any developer with a working e-mail address. The gesture gives anyone free access to writing apps for the Pre or future webOS smartphones and significantly expands the reach of the platform, which was previously limited to a closed beta with at most a few thousand developers.
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07/10, 12:20pm
Palm webOS 1 1 Leak
A tip regarding Palm's future webOS 1.1 update hints that the smartphone OS is about to receive a significant upgrade, particularly for business users. The new firmware described by PreCentral should give the Pre and future Palm phones much requested Microsoft Exchange features such as support for company-initiated remote wipes, requiring a PIN to unlock the phone, forcing a certain complexity of PIN, and automatically locking the phone when it goes unused for a certain amount of time. All of the additions are considered essential for the phone, which has seen unusually high interest from corporate buyers and to compete against the iPhone in the workplace.
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07/09, 2:30pm
Palm Pre Complaints
Palm Pre owners are ironically complaining that their smartphones don't have onscreen keyboards, a study by Strategy Analytics found today. Despite Palm having added the QWERTY keyboard in response to gripes about touch-only devices like the iPhone, many users want a software keyboard like Apple's, as Palm's design gives them no choice but to use the hardware solution. The opinion holds even for those who chose the Pre for the physical input, senior analyst Paul Brown says.
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06/26, 3:45pm
Palm on Licensing webOS
Palm chief Jon Rubinstein during the company's fiscal results call yesterday evening detailed the company's stance on licensing webOS as well as some of the early reaction to the Pre. Addressing a question on whether Palm would ever let other companies make webOS phones, the executive was emphatic that there were no current plans for this but explained that it was "not a religious issue" for the company. Although not directly stated, the implication was that Palm didn't share Apple's opinion that software exclusivity was essential to integrating with its hardware.
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06/24, 4:25pm
iPhone 3GS Web Tests
The web browsing on the just-launched iPhone 3GS is fast enough that it not only beats immediate competitors but even Apple's own claimed testing, mobile ad provider Medialets finds. Using the same SunSpider JavaScript benchmark Apple has used to demonstrate the added speed, the firm says the faster iPhone took about 16.5 seconds to complete the benchmark, or just a third the time of an iPhone 3G with the same iPhone OS 3.0 release. The speed is well above Apple's general claim of having "2X faster" performance across its newer device.
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06/24, 9:30am
RBC on Palm
Sprint's continued shortages of the Palm Pre could lead to a massive spike in Palm's sales for its current quarter, RBC analyst Mark Abramsky reports in a new investment note today. The researcher esimates that 150,000 Pre smartphones have shipped so far and that as many as 550,000 could ship by the end of Palm's current quarter. Both are up significantly from earlier predictions and could offset a drop in Centro and Treo phone numbers to 258,000.
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06/23, 4:10pm
Flash 10 Mobile in October
Adobe during its most recent fiscal results call narrowed the window for its plans to port desktop-grade Flash to mobile devices. Company chief Shantanu Naraye says it now expects a beta version of Flash 10 to arrive at the MAX conference in October and that it should initially be available for Android, Symbian, webOS and Windows Mobile. Web browsers on these devices will support both animations and video without having to leave for a separate app, such as the Flash Lite player on many Symbian or Windows Mobile phones.
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06/19, 3:45pm
Palm Ramps Up webOS Access
Palm on Friday said it hoped to address a dearth of apps for the Pre and webOS by stepping up the pace of its early access program for developers. The smartphone designer now plans to let in developers "as quickly as resources allow" and expects the pool of active developers to swell from "hundreds to thousands" in the near future. Palm also plans to publish more of the content from the program and will let developers talk more freely about what they can do with the webOS SDK.
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06/14, 3:20pm
Palm Pre Review
We’ve spent the last few days playing with the newly released Palm Pre and can’t seem to put it down. It's one of the first phones outside of Apple to offer true multi-touch, and perhaps the only phone to make Internet data the centerpiece. In a word, we would say we are impressed; but the Pre as a first-edition model is certainly not without its faults both in hardware and, to a lesser extent, software. Whether these faults are enough to dissuade customers from considering the device over an iPhone -- or simply to opt for it in place of a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile phone -- is the ultimate question in our complete review.
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06/10, 1:25pm
Palm Eos found in Pre code
The existence of Palm's next webOS phone after the Pre, the Eos, has allegedly been confirmed through investigation into code. Buried in the current version of webOS is a file called miniboot.sh, which contains two device references, Castle and Pixie. The former is known to have been the development codename of the Pre, while leaks have attributed the latter alias to the Eos. No other relevant information has so far been found in the firmware.
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06/10, 12:35am
Palm webOS hacked
Although the Palm Pre is fresh on the market, users have already begun dissecting the webOS Root Doctor which includes 195MB of operating system files and code. Used as intended, the recovery tool restores the functionality of a crashed phone and updates the operating system. Forum posts on PreCentral.net indicate several interesting code comments, access passwords for the developer mode, possible designations for upcoming hardware, and icons for AOL and MSN.
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06/08, 6:00pm
Palm Pre Faces 99 iPhone
With the launch of Apple's $99 iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS now less than two weeks away, owners Palm Pre -- as well as prospective iPhone buyers -- may be asking how the two devices compare. Electronista has taken a close look at the two and can say that both Palm and Sprint should be very concerned; the new iPhone mix is likely to create severe pressure on Sprint to lower the price of the Pre, though it's not quite as much of a discount as it would appear on the surface.
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06/06, 10:45am
Palm Pre On Sale
(Updated with photos) Sprint today officially started sales of the Palm Pre, its first multi-touch phone and what's been regarded as the most direct contender with the iPhone. Initial reports of stock sent to Electronista vary and show that both supply and demand vary heavily depending on the region: Sprint stores, particularly in major cities like New York, have relatively large supply of as much as 100 or more. However, third-party stores like Best Buy and Radio Shack have relatively much smaller supply and little to no queuing.
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