New Palm Pre and webOS

So, in the days before smartphones, there were PDAs and in my honest opinion the king of PDAs was Palm. Palm had a great OS (Palm OS), it was simple to use and allowed really good small applications to be installed in addition to the standard PIM capabilities. The king of Palm devices was the Palm V, loads of people had them and they were just great - probably one of the best devices I have owned (iPhone excluded). Unfortunately, Palm kind of lost their way when it came to producing smartphones and then even it got worse when they moved to Windows Mobile as their OS of choice and moved away from Palm OS. Yesterday however, they announced a new device (Palm Pre) for the US market (hopefully they will also produce it for the rest of the World) with a completely new OS (webOS). From the video below, the interface looks really good and it looks like it might put Palm in contention once more.


Palm pre from Juan Diez on Vimeo.

T-Mobile G1 is announced

So, the announcement went out yesterday from Google and T-Mobile re: the G1 device.  If you want to see what it looks like and the user experience and some of the functionality, there is a good flash demo on the T-Mobile site.  

First Android device will be announced today G1

The first device based on the Google android platform will be announced today in New York and should cost around $200 when it goes on sale in a few weeks time.  I just spotted a video on the BBC website which is about the best overview of the new device and platform I have seen.  Will be interesting to see how well this one flies...

The Future of Mobile according to Andy Rubin @ Google

I was just reading this blog entry on Google's blog, it is written by Andy Rubin who is one of the Chief Architects of the Android platform.  It lays out a vision of what the future of mobile devices might look like.... And the timing is interesting, given that it looks like next week will mark the next chapter in mobile devices with the launch of the first Google phone in the US, the first device to be running the Android platform.  I am actually going to be in San Francisco next week, so will try to at least play with one of these new devices (even better if I can find a way to buy one!).  Anyway, will be great to compare v my iPhone, clearly they are going to be quite different devices but both should offer a great internet experience and I can't wait to try them out side by side.

Favorite iPhone applications

Now the iPhone apps store has been open for a week, I thought that I would share a list of my favorite applications (in no particular order):

1. Facebook (especially the latest version)

2. Bloomberg

3. Google + Google Talk web app.

4. PhoneSaber (a bit of fun for Star Wars fans)

5. BA flights (for those that spend too much of their lives at Heathrow)

6. iPint (hilarious!)

7. Shazam (I'll name that tune in one)

8. Currency (simple but useful)

9. Truphone (VOIP app)

10. BBC iPlayer (web app)

I am sure more great apps will be added to the catalogue soon.

Loving the new iPhone!

Hello O2 Broadband, farewell BT!

So, some of you may have read my earlier blog article about my troubles with BT broadband and in particular their homehub. In May, BT sent me a 3rd homehub and for a while it appeared to work better but on my return from 2 weeks holiday overseas, I went to use the internet and it was soooooooo slooooooooow! In fact when I measured the speed, it was less than 100kb/sec - now that isn't Broadband! Anyway, there is good news, O2 have now unbundled my exchange and today my connection went live. Since O2 uses ADSL2+ technology, I was expecting a speed increase and I wasn't disappointed, double what I was getting on a good day with BT 4MB/sec and 3 times the upload speed at 1MB/sec - a major improvement. In addition, I am also going to save £240 on my broadband connection this year which is fantastic. The process of moving was also very painless, having signed up O2 kept in touch with me via text message all the way through the process, they gave me a date for the router to arrive (and it did!), they gave me a date for the connection to be swapped (and it was!) - a great customer experience - in just over a week I have moved from BT. So, I recommend it to you all and if you are an O2 customer you get a discount on the subscription which can't be bad.

Google Android - further insight into the user experience