Otaku Gadgets

There’s a time for action and there’s a time for selling your company to the highest bidder. For Palm, both those times have come an gone. They have had there chance and they did something nice — WebOS — but they didn’t quite get everything right. They made the fatal mistake of underestimating that market and hence, they got to where they are now – they have recently been acquired by HP. Rumors suggested this for a long time and there was also rumor that Asus and Dell tried to pitch in but didn’t quite make it.

Continue reading “HP Buys Palm” »

The holidays are almost here and so are the holiday lineups for most companies. There’s last minute rush everywhere and the manufacturers are no different. They are trying their best to bring out whatever latest and greatest stuff they possibly can before the holidays hit. So we are currently seeing a deluge of new phones. Click over to the other side to read more.

Continue reading “All Phones Thursday: Worm Your Way To A Job, Multi-Million iPhone And More” »

After Making the smart phone market ecstatic with its much anticipated Pre, Palm has released a scaled down version named Pixi. It is being marketed by Cellular service operator Sprint. As of now, Sprint is offering the Palm Pixi for $100 post a $100 discount for two year agreement. However, the buyers looking for a better deal can search in the sites like Amazon and get it for around $50 less. Compared with the Pre, the Pixi is less feature rich, and that is what that straws the device’s main drawback.

It is evident that both Sprint and Palm has adopted a different marketing strategy for the Pixi, compared to its heavyweight sibling,Pre. Palm has opted for a low key advertising campaign and launch for the Pixi. The Pixi does not have a slider keyboard but offers a conventional QWERTY one. However, it looks quite elegant with its candy bar form factor. The keys are small but easy to use.

It is the second smart phone from Palm to feature the WebOS. It is quite evident that Palm has made this model for the budget conscious buyers who want to own a smart phone. Its 2 MP camera takes decent pictures but the flash is not of much use. The lack of WiFi is likely to offend some users. The Pixi will be loved by the users who like messaging a lot. However, those looking for a fully capable smart phone would have to look somewhere else. The Pixi was earlier said to be launched in September but its debut got delayed.

You know, when in grade school you saw this cool thing the other kid had and you wanted one too? At that age, it is sometimes hard to accept that some kids’ parents can give them expensive things and your parents simply can’t. So you may be do some DIY thing and try to impress everyone with the results. But no one pays much attention to your handy work because what the other kid has is the real deal. I think Samsung has been feeling like the left out kid in terms of smartphones, which is why they have come up with their own mobile OS.

Continue reading “Samsung Releases Bada OS, We Wonder Why” »

Mobile phones are sleek, they are in and they are coming at you in huge numbers every other day. To cut through all the confusion, I take you on this journey through the latest phones every Thursday.

This week, we have the big Droid being launched, previewed and generally liked and talked about. Plus, Google has this killer navigation app that completely owns every other such app and device.

Get to the other side to know more.

Continue reading “All Phones Thursday: General (An)Droid Lands, Google Navigation App Kills, General Destruction Expected And More” »

9.09.09 was more or less dominated by Apple’s Yerba Buena, SF event and hence, predictably, a lot of things that otherwise would’ve been reported properly got buried under the Macavalanche. You have been playing catch-up with all the new releases and you should be because not everything was revealed at event presentations. There are a lot of small things that you should know about (and things that I will cover in my 5-gen iPod Nano review ). So now that the crazy hype has finally worn off, here are six things that you should know about as an avid Otaku Gadgets reader.

Continue reading “6 Things That Slipped Past You During the Apple Event Frenzy and The Aftermath” »

Palm, INC is one of the leading smart phone manufacturers in the world. They have recently introduced a new variety of mobile phones called the Palm Pre mobile phone. The Palm Pre mobile phones use the latest Palm WebOs application as its mobile operating system. No other mobile phone in the world incorporates this technology, so Palm Pre becomes the world’s first mobile phone to use this innovative technology.

Palm Pre comes up with a total package of style and class. It comes up with a firm hardware with intricate designs which provides it a stylish look. It has all the glamour quotients inclusive of user friendly interfaces. It has a HVGA liquid crystal display with a 32×480 resolution featuring a capacitive touch screen. Like other previous Palm phone’s this too comes up with a display device which doesn’t need a stylus to operate, instead it can be operated with fingers. It also has a sliding keyboard which is stylish.

It also houses an accelerometer which helps in changing the mode of display as it slides in the hand of the user. It also has a 3 mega pixel digital camera. It does not have a flash memory card slot, but it has an in-built memory of 8 GB. Depending on the location, Pre can be accessed with a high speed connectivity pairing with either EVDO REV.A or UMTS HSDPA. It also has Bluetooth connectivity, and 802.11b/g WIFI connectivity.

Pre uses an innovative technology called the wireless charging, which uses electromagnetic induction via a wireless charging dock. WebOS is the software used in Pre, it is the first mobile phone in the world to use this indigenous software. Pre keyboard is designed in such a way that one can easily and effortlessly send mails and texts. Users can easily develop many tasks like user defined applications and can implement them in their mobile. A large number of tasks can be carried out by the users such as browsing, gaming, phone calls, videos, photos, music etc.

Recently Palm has made an agreement with Telephonica, and they have joined hands which has lead to the launching of the highly enchanting Smartphone the Palm Pre in Europe. This phone will be introduced in countries like United Kingdom, Germany and in Spain on the very near future.

Palm recently this Smartphone in the Mobile World congress which was held in February. From that day onwards there has been a wide grown anticipation of its arrival in Europe. Recently in an interview, Mr. John Rubenstein, the CEO of Palm has stated that, they are very happy in introducing this successful Smartphone outside North America especially in the European market. He also pointed out that they are looking forward for a large customer base in the European market.

The price of the mobile phone has yet to be decided. Both the companies are aiming at bringing out a more reasonable cost in order to attract the European customers. Definitely by considering all the parameters, Palm Pre has all the possibility of becoming a big hit in Europe.

It has been a while since the Palm Pre has been released and much has already been said about it. One thing that should be highlighted here is that Palm’s existence is was at stake here. (I think it is safe to say that Pre is more or less a hit)

Palm was once known as the company who practically invented the smart phone category. But that is but a distant past now. It has barely kept up with the times and as we all know – the iPhone has been eating in to everybody’s market. Arguably, had the iPhone not existed we would not have seen the likes of HTC Hero, Sony XPERIA or may be even the Palm Pre. But the iPhone has upped the ante for everybody and love it or hate it – you can’t ignore it. Every touch phone will be measured against the iPhone.

So how does the Pre measure up? It measures up quite well actually but mostly in the OS and touch/gestures area. Continue reading “The Palm Pre: A Revolution In The Making?” »