Palm Pre

Got to read and see pictures of new Palm Pre, this one is really different and promising.

I have been a long time Windows mobile, iPhone, Android, Blackberry user, but this one is designed really well, may be even better than the iPhone, I have to really hold one in my hand before making this call.

What I like about this phone:

1. Design: A nice combination of touch screen and keyboard.
2. Integration: WebOs integrates all the applications into a single system e.g. when you start typing in, it automatically starts searching your contacts, music, web etc. Google are you listening, this is what I expected in G1.
3. Charger: It is unique and innovative.


I strongly believe that this phone will revive Palm back to its glory days.

--Rajesh

T-mobile G1 Review, casual programmer's perspective

I own both iPhone and G1 and so far I am using my G1 as regular phone wihtout any major problems, using extended features are different story.

Here are few of my issues with my G1 that I have not heard any hint from Google if and when they plan to fix:

1. Un-reliable email support. Specially if you have comcast as your ISP your email may not work with G1. It constantly gives connection error.

2. You tube, no way for you to press "done" equivilant button similar to iPhone and go to related videos, you must painfully forward the video if you want to see related videos.

3. Crappy apps on Market (see programming note below), when would decent apps start coming in? SlingPlayer, Facebook (not the mobile web version) etc.

4. When can we install applications on SD card? Applications are installed on internal memory and it limits how many applications you can install.

Now about programming:

It is not all developers fault to generate crappy apps, crappy APIs produce crappy apps.

I was excited about open source nature of this phone and hoping open source would result into innovations etc. but so far I have been very disappointed when I tried writing the first app.

I decided to write app that would play internet radio and record video as those two apps were not available at that time. That's when I realized how limiting so called open APIs were i.e. there was no way for a programmer to write a program that would record vide or play native mp3 stream radio (all it supported was rtsp).

Now how good is open source if no one  can extend it?

I am also concerned about slow updates and no new native features added from Google. This is not a good sign.

--Rajesh