source: http://wonderfulsoftware.blogspot.com/
iPhone or Palm Pre?
Sprint, Palm Pre's exclusive carrier announced that Palm Pre would be launched on June 6. Then this summer that's the question many would-be-smart phone purchasers just might ask themselves. Both have their pros and cons. The iPhone has a huge profile and market presence, but the Pre has the old-school Palm faithful who have been waiting a long time for their Next Big Thing. The iPhone has massive channels and even Sprint admits they won't be advertising the Palm Pre much due to low initial supply. But those most likely to want the Palm Pre already know it's coming, where to get, and may well be reading this while already standing in line. But what about the consumer on the edge? The consumer who has an older iPhone or Palm, or the one who's about to move up from a feature phone for the first time. What about the dreaded "undecided"? This article is for them. Now let's get it on.
Display
[img]http://nidesoft.com/forum/iphonevspalm/iphone-vs-palm.jpg[/img]
IPhone: beautiful, large (3.5 inch diagonal), high-resolution (480x320 screen) multi-touch display.
Palm Pre: Beautiful, large (3.1 inch diagonal), high-resolution (480x320 screen). The screen is not as large as the iPhone (0.4 inch smaller) but this is balanced against other hardware features such as the removable battery and sliding keyboard further below.
Advantage: Tie
Keyboard
Palm Pre has a physical, hardware-based QWERTY keyboard while the iPhone has a virtual, software-based keyboard that can be QWERTY (or anything else). For those who need to feel those keys, the Palm Pre is the obvious choice. However, the Pre's keyboard is reportedly somewhere between a Treo Pro and a Palm Centro: softer, more gummy keys with a narrow width overall. It might not be to everyone's liking. That said, at least the Pre has one, and it's a slider to boot, which means if you don't need it, you can just tuck it away back under the screen where it came from.
The iPhone, can draw any kind of keyboard it wants. So if you need to type occasionally (or often) in Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, or most any language, you can easily switch between those exact keyboards. You can also automatically be presented with web-optimized, or video, audio -- any task at all -- specific keyboards.
The iPhone is an excellent touch screen phone, no doubt. But for heavy texters and e-mail addicts, the lack of a physical keyboard can be annoying. Now Palm Pre combined a touch screen and keyboard, pleasing both touch screen and keyboard fans. So Palm Pre wins.
Advantage: Palm Pre
Network
In the US -- which is the only country with initial availability -- Sprint has exclusive rights to the Palm Pre, much as AT&T has a lock on the iPhone. When you choose mobile phone, also make a choice between the carriers. There are two factors to consider:
1. AT&T is a GSM network, which means you can theoretically pop out your SIM card and put it in another mobile phone. It is great in emergencies, and if you travel and don't want to deal with roaming charges. Sprint is CDMA, so any phone switches involves a call to your carrier at the very least.
2. Sprint doesn't currently allow simultaneous voice and data. This means if you're talking on the Palm Pre, you can't use the web or email, and vice versa. If you're using an iPhone on AT&T's EDGE service, you'll have the same problem, but if you're on 3G, there are no worries at all. For the Palm Pre, you'd have to switch to Wi-Fi to do that.
Again, for me, using voice and data at the same time has become a must. Looking up information while out and about on a call is a frequent occurrence. If you're not accustomed to it, you may not miss it, but once you are, it's hard to go back.
Advantage: iPhone
Applications
Installing new applications on the iPhone is a complete joy. It's ultra simple and quick - an absolutely superb experience than virtually nobody has matched today. With 15,000+ apps now available there is something here for everybody and although there is a lot of rubbish there are also many superb applications.
Palm has already confirmed that it will create a full App Catalog - one that will presumably have the same functionality and ease-of-use as Apple's App Store. Though maybe there will not (initially at least) be as many apps available for the iPhone as for the Palm Pre.
Advantage: Tie
Multimedia
For Palm Pre, it offers a 3-megapixel camera. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to snap any photos, but early reports say that the quality is pretty good. Disappointingly, the camera won't have video recording capabilities at this time, but those could be added in the future. In terms of music and movie, it is reported that the music sounds very beautiful, also the movie looks perfect with the 320*480 pixels screen. However Palm Pre can only play MPEG-4, H.263, H.264 videos and MP3, AAC, AAC+, AMR, QCELP, WAV audio files. What if you have large music or video collections you want to carry around with you on your mobile? I have got third part software to do this admire job: use[url=http://www.nidesoft.com/dvd-to-palm-converter.html]Nidesoft DVD to Palm Converter[/url] to convert DVD collections into Palm Pre and [url=http://www.nidesoft.com/video-converter.html]Nidesoft Video Converter[/url] to convert video or music collections into Palm Pre.
As far as iPhone, there's no doubt that iPhone is wonderful music mobile phone. Listening to music, viewing photos and watching movies/videos is just "something else" on the iPhone. IPhone can play MPEG-4 videos with resolution of 640 *480, up to 160 Kbps. Also it supports audio formats including AAC (16 to 320 kbps), MP3 (16 to 320 kbps), and WAV. With its beautiful 3.5-inch wide screen display and Multi-Touch controls, iPhone is an amazing iPod. Watch movies and TV shows in wide screen, iPhone brings you a video experience unlike any other portable device.
[img]http://nidesoft.com/forum/iphonevspalm/iphone-video-preview.gif[/img]
Advantage: Tie
Conclusion
So there you have it. Two companies that both pride themselves on their high-skill products. One who's Newton spawned an industry that the other is Pilot defined and dominated, went on to converge with the Treo only to fall behind and get eclipsed by the iPhone, and is now poised to come back with the Pre. Apple is going on to the third version of their smart phone line while Palm is introducing the first version of their third act. If it seems like the only real deciding factors are where you live and work, what you want to do, and how you prefer to do it, well -- yeah. That's it.
Bottom line, the competition between iPhone and Pre is good for Apple and Palm -- it keeps them on their toes and on top of their games -- and it's better for us. We're lucky to live in a time and place where we have such increasingly awesome mobile options to choose between.
Come this summer, we'll have a few more choices as well. Which one will be yours?
On the surface, you would think the pricing of the iphone will pretty much sink the pre ... also the iphone's built in magnetic compass (did the newies get that right ??) might be considered a plus, at which point what's left for a garmin 76CS that wouldn't be available in an iphone ? Multitasking !
I think the palms multitasking (ability to run multiple applications simultaneously) will be a much bigger plus to boaters than a magnetic compass. No need to stop that anchor watch application as you go to make an entry in your electronic log, etc. Also moving back and forth between a navigation map and other applications will be much more fluid.
Not sure how this multitasking might otherwise matter to other applications, or how soon it will be available on the iphone anyhow, but I would think the multitasking is the number one differentiator for me.
Agree that multi-tasking is the big deal about the Pre. But will there really be a wide choice of apps for the Pre? That blogger was pretty "optimistic" to give Apple and Palm a tie in terms of apps availability, ease of download, etc.
And if the Pre's keyboard really is like the Centro's, be careful. I may have gnarly hands, but don't find the Centro keyboard friendly, and I've used one a fair bit. But I don't like the iPhone/Touch keyboard either.
As a developer of both platforms (we're a Palm Pre/webOS early release recipient), I can give some additional developer perspective. It's an interesting time...
Developing software for the Pre is quite simple. It's very much like writing a web page using current ajax techniques. It's all based on html5, css, and javascript. For this reason, there are going to be a lot of applications popping up because you don't need wide experience with C++, object oriented design, etc. to create a real app. Look at how many web sites there are out there - the Pre has opened application development up to normal web developers.
The iPhone also has this capability since it is easy to bundle a webkit object (html, css, javascript) into a native app. I would expect that most Pre apps will be easy to convert to iPhone and there will surely be tools and techniques to make this easy.
For these types of applications, the Pre has an advantage because, like Dan pointed out, it has real multitasking. But on the other hand, the iPhone has an advantage out of this too. Developers can choose to write a native application to gain some speed and other capabilities that would be difficult to create with html, etc. Offline navigation (where the charts are kept local on the phone itself) is a good example of this. I don't think there will be an offline navigation product for the Pre anytime soon. Eventually it'll happen...but not yet.
And that shows another major difference between the two platforms. The iPhone allows much better offline action - games are a good example. I believe that the Pre is really going to shine with online applications, especially with the "Synergy" capability that allows sharing of data objects across the web in an application - more will definitely come out about that - it's a major capability that isn't well demonstrated yet except in the developer documentation.
For marine navigation, the questions is, can the average boater accept an online-only system? I struggle with the answer to that. Ten years ago no one would have accepted an email system that required online access. And yet today, millions of people access gmail through online interaction only. Will that happen with navigation on our boats in 10 years? I'm betting that it will. Yes, I know it won't work along much of the Inside Passage and places like that. ...until it will.
It's also very important to remember that the iPhone is just one platform. According to Gartner, Windows Mobile outsold the iPhone in 2008. Blackberry/RIM blew the iPhone away in sales count. There are other platforms besides those too. The iPhone has captured the attention and imagination of many normal consumers. And perhaps it will completely overtake the industry. Certainly, as long as they are AT&T-only, it'll never happen...
Keep in mind that multitasking will come at the expense of battery life.
Agree a real keyboard is a must for those who use phone for composing lots of email.
I think BlackBerry has the best keyboards.
So far iPhone 3GS demand has outstripped production, and this seems to have happened because it is now penatrating the mass market, as opposed to just gadget oriented customers and apple fans. The sales are impressive given the economic climate and poor consumer confidence. iPhone 3GS seems to be the first model of iPhone that is the iPhone for everybody.
Multitasking is not neccessarily a good thing on portable devices - why? Power management. If you give developers a feature, they will use it and before you know it deamon threads will eat into battery capacity.
I think apple have won the UI battle and Apps/iTunes are probably going to give the iPhone combined with Google cloud technologies and future google apps, a lead that the competation will find it hard to live with. It's going mass market and main stream.
For navigation, I'm a bit worried about online access over a mobile phone network, I think the future of one way online navigation is more likely to come from satellite broadcast maps and/or cached updates (ie eBluecharts not on card or cd, but from an antenna which cache like google earth).
As a fun secondary backup tool I like the Navionics on iPhone, but I still want a plotter that's nailed down and waterproof as well. It's too easy to drop a phone in the drink or the floor.
Deamon threads use battery capacity ??
Of all the elements of the phone drawing power (screen, radio(s), audio), not sure why additional application threads amount to anything significiant in the power budget.
Especially ... once you choose to have a capability like GPS (math intensive) running, what's the deal having other applications (say like database apps) also running in an already multitasking operating system ?
One of the biggest design challenges for mobile devices is battery management. As much hardware inc processors need to sleep as much as possible until awoken by a user event or other event such as an alarm or call/text receipt.
A running app thread will keep more hardware awake. Multitasking would allow not only two or more apps to execute at the same time, but also background threads, which would require more cpu power. Apple developers have moaned since the beginning about this, but I can see why apple have done everything to protect unneccessary battery consumption.
From a user perspective many of the phones functionallity will operate at the same time without multitasking apps, such as call receipt, apps, gps, ipod audio, etc. From one perspective the iPhone delivers multiple simultanious functions without actually multitasking apps (eg listen to music at the same time as running an app).
I'm guess one day when even lower power electronics and newer battery technology are developed, that multitasking iphone apps may become the norm.
For marine nav I'd prefer a robust waterproof device with built in charts. Convergance is not always good. :)
PS: Internally aspects of the OS are multitasking
It's all about the applications. The platform with the most applications wins. Is there any reason to use a PC instead of a Mac, other than because the application you want/need is only available on the PC?
The iPhone has the apps and wins.