Best Twitter apps for Palm Pre and Pixi smartphones

Two Palm webOS users have recently posted their reviews of the current crop of Twitter apps, both free and paid, for the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi smartphones. Their summary: There's plenty available, from the barest of bare bones to powerful, full-function tweet machines.

Dan Ramirez is a "self-confessed iPhone-turned-Palm-Pre fan boy" according to his Twitter profile (@vara411). On his blog, Totally Palmed, he reviews a half dozen webOS Twitter applications for Palm's Pre and Pixi smartphones, all available on the Palm App Catalog.

Mobile developer, and recent webOS convert, Roy Sutton, founder of Pre101.com, offers his thoughts on the same apps, but dives in a bit deeper.

NW's Keith Shaw on Palm Pre: The official Cool Tools review

Palm has been enduring a drumbeat of criticism because its online App Catalog has only a fraction of the applications found on Apple's App Store for the iPhone. Developers haven't flocked to the innovative webOS yet, though those that have rate it highly for its capabilities and ease of development.

That might be about to change. Palm just made generally available the Ares toolkit, which lets you build webOS applications with a Web browser. And, at January's Consumer Electronics Show, the company will unveil a key OS update, which will boost battery life, software performance, Wi-Fi speeds and handset responsiveness.

But today, you have a half dozen applications from which to choose for working with Twitter.

Ramirez's top choice seems to be Tweed, from Pivotal Labs, $1.99, followed closely by Twee, from Digital Morsel, $2.99. He likes the wide range of features and functions in the first, though he considers the UI itself pretty plain; the second has a richer UI, lacking some of the features in the first but adding some others (such as thumbnails of pictures).

Sutton echoes those judgments. Tweed's UI is minimalist, he says, but not its functionality. "In Tweed's design, all of the functionality is hidden behind a bright blue button on the top right. When you click on it you find everything you could want in Twitter app. More importantly, all the functionality works very well."

On Twee, Sutton confesses "I love the look of Twee." But he discovered an odd memory utilization issue: Twee spawns a second process that keeps running even when the app is shut down. It's not related to the notifications service, but it doesn't seem to take up much memory and Sutton didn't identify any specific problems resulting from this oddity.

There's also a free version, Twee Free, which drops notifications, nearby tweet search, Twitturly, and StockTwits.

The other four Twitter apps for webOS are:

* Spaz, from Funkatron Productions -- the only open-source webOS Twitter app that's also free. Sutton: "The look and feel of Spaz is solid, but there isn't anything that you haven't seen before." He says a paid version is rumored to be in the works.

* TinyTwitter from Tiny Byte Productions -- $1.99. Ramirez: Very fast, in part because it's stripped down to the most basic Twitter features (doesn't include "search", for example).Sutton: It doesn't match up to its paid rivals.

* Yak from JM Productions -- $2.99. Ramirez: Fast like TinyTwitter, with more features; Ramirez experienced some connection issues while using it. Sutton: "Does everything you need a twitter app to do?but it doesn't do anything else." (The only link for JM Productions has nothing more than a second link for "Palm webOS app support". When you click on that, it bring you to a third page with a single link, for "e-mail support."

* FleetTweet from 8bit development -- free. This app does one thing -- lets you post tweets. It's "free" but is supported by ads. Sutton: "I am all about simple apps with a laser focus, but this one strikes me as toooo simple."

Original story - www.networkworld.com/nwlookup.jsp?rid=195695

Source: John Cox, Network World (Tuesday, December 22, 2009)

Palm Smartphone Sales Slip as It Struggles to Turn Around

Palm’s reboot is under way, but it has yet to prove that it can turn around its fortunes.

Palm, which makes smartphones like the Pre and Pixi, said Thursday that its sales declined slightly from the previous quarter, although they were still up sharply from a year ago.

The company trimmed its net loss and said it had shipped a total of 783,000 smartphones to retailers in its fiscal second quarter, which ended Nov. 27. That was up 41 percent compared with the second quarter last year, but down 5 percent compared with the first quarter.

Over all, the company’s revenue and profit fell below Wall Street’s expectations. Furthermore, an important measure of customer interest in its phones, the sell-through rate, suggested that its new devices were not flying off retailers’ shelves. Palm said customers bought 573,000 units, down 29 percent from the first quarter and down 4 percent year over year.

“We’re still in the early stages of a long race,” Jonathan J. Rubinstein, chief executive of the company, said in a statement. For the second quarter, the company reported a net loss of $85.4 million, or 54 cents a share, compared with a loss of $508.6 million or $4.64 a share, in the same period a year earlier, which included a charge for a tax provision.

Because of a change in the way the company recorded revenue for its newest phones — during the fourth quarter, it began spreading revenue and expenses over a two-year period — it reported two sets of quarterly results Thursday. Adjusting for the deferrals, revenue was $302 million, compared with Wall Street expectations of $266.2 million, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters, and the loss was 37 cents a share, compared with a consensus forecast of a loss of 32 cents a share.

Using the same type of accounting adjustments, the company would have reported revenue of $191.6 million and a loss of 73 cents a share in the same quarter last year.

Investors appeared to react negatively to the news, with shares declining more than 8 percent in after-hours trading.

Shaw Wu, an analyst with Kaufman Brothers, said that Palm’s biggest challenge will be getting consumers and carriers to choose its product over many rival smartphones.

“The issue is not the product. The big concern for investors is Palm’s current lack of profitability,” Mr. Wu said. “Palm needs to focus on their operations and introduce more carriers to have broader distribution.”

Mr. Wu estimates that Palm could ship as many as 3.86 million smartphones in the fiscal year ending in May 2010.

The company has high hopes that a sleek stable of smartphones running on its speedy new operating system, WebOS, would help revive its finances and reputation. Mr. Rubinstein acknowledged that Palm had faced competition from rival handsets, including the Apple iPhone, the BlackBerry devices from Research In Motion, and the Motorola Droid.

“We are investing heavily in marketing to drive better awareness of our products,” he said during a call with investors.

In June, the company introduced the Pre as the cornerstone its new lineup, to largely positive reviews. Recently, it began selling a slimmed-down version of the Pre called the Pixi. In the United States, both phones are available only for Sprint Nextel’s network.

Michael Gartenberg, vice president for strategy and analysis at Interpret, a market research firm based in Los Angeles and New York said that Palm had done better than expected, considering that the new WebOS phones have been on the market only a short while and with a single carrier. “They can definitely still carve out a space in the mobile game,” he said.

But he cautioned that the company would have to do more to capture market share in a crowded landscape. “Palm is going to have to sustain the velocity they started in 2009,” he said.

Contributing to Palm’s sluggish sales, analysts say, has been a dearth of applications, the quirky bite-size programs that can perform various functions like mapping or social networking, for Palm’s smartphones.

To help establish a thriving system for software developers, the company announced the public release of a tool called Project Ares that allows developers to create and release applications for the Palm Pre and Pixi through a Web browser. Palm hopes Project Ares will significantly lower the barrier to entry for mobile developers looking to write programs for WebOS, Mr. Rubinstein said.

“There is a big opportunity in front of us as a company,” Mr. Rubinstein said. “Ultimately, our success is around our execution.”

Source: nytimes | JENNA WORTHAM (Published: December 17, 2009)

Palm Releases WebOS Update for Pre, Pixi

Palm releases updates for the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi OS. WebOS 1.3.5 offers fixes, conveniences and a smoother user experience for both Palm smartphones.

Palm has introduced an update to its WebOS, the platform run by the Palm Pre and the Palm Pixi, both of which, in the United States, are exclusive to the Sprint Nextel network.

With WebOS 1.3.5, available as of Dec. 28, Palm offers updates, improvements and a housecleaning of what were likely irritating, early snafus. For example, files with a .3g2 extension now correctly play as audio files, not video files; the Web browser now supports animated GIF files; and a user’s default e-mail signature now displays the Pre product name correctly.

Palm has also improved the application download experience for its App Catalog, and users can now download multiple applications at once, as well as pause, resume and cancel downloads. They can also enable downloads to continue in the background while other screens are navigated and use the full storage capacity of the phone for downloading apps.

A full erase of the device can be performed more easily with 1.3.5, and users can edit forwarded text for all e-mail account types and launch Sprint Navigation from an address in an open contact entry. Apps can now also be purchased from U.S. territories.

There are additionally small conveniences—when the screen is locked, the time is displayed in a different font—and bits of streamlining: When the user has “network time zone” enabled, the city and country are no longer displayed.

In September, Palm announced it would stop launching devices running Microsoft’s mobile operating system, in favor of focusing on WebOS, which is gradually gaining market share. According to AdMob, which measures ad requests, Palm garnered 4 percent of U.S. Web market share within two months of the Pre’s debut. In September, Palm smartphone traffic accounted for 13 percent U.S. smartphone traffic, which put it in fourth place, just behind RIM and HTC. The clear leader, with 48 percent of smartphone ad requests, was Apple.

On Dec. 17, Palm announced greater-than-expected quarterly losses, but said it had shipped 783,000 smartphones during the quarter, which was a 41 percent improvement over the last year and exceeded analysts’ expectations.

Source: Eweek | Michelle Maisto (2009-12-29)

Palm Pixi Officially Launched

Sprint has officially launched the Palm Pixi today, the entry-level webOS smartphone, and Palm's second smartphone release this year.

The phone is available from Sprint for $100 with two-year contract and after $100 rebate. However, new customers can get the phone for $50 or less from online retailers such as Amazon of WireFly.

The Pixi includes a 2.63-inch multitouch screen, 2MP camera, QWERTY keypad, GPS and "Synergy," contacts integration. The phone is also smaller than the popular Pre.

Additionally, the device has 8GB of storage, GPS, a standard headset jack, and EV-DO. The phone does not have Wi-Fi, however.

Source: Andre "DVDBack23" Yoskowitz | 15 November 2009 21:00)

Palm Pixi News: Underdog Palm Takes on Giants in Smartphones

Underdog Palm Takes on Giants in Smartphones

In a land of cellphone giants, Palm is a mouse.

Palm is tiny compared with Apple, Research in Motion, Samsung, Google, Microsoft and Nokia, which are battling to control the future of smartphones.

Palm invented the category of a Web-surfing pocket-computer phone with its Treo line in 2002. But more recently it lost its way in the market as some of its rivals developed more innovative phones. Its new management team, heavily laden with talent from Apple, introduced a new generation of smartphones in June with the $199 Palm Pre on Sprint’s network. The second phone in the line, the $99 Pixi, went on sale Sunday.

Both phones got good reviews for being easy to use and great for Web browsing. But in recent weeks, Google’s Android operating system for smartphones has grabbed the attention of the public, as Verizon heavily promotes the Motorola Droid phone.

While no one expected Palm’s sales would rival the sales of iPhones or BlackBerrys — and they have not — developers have not rushed to write applications for the phone as they have for the iPhone and Android phones.

A lack of traction could prove important. If the market will have room only for a few smartphone standards, Palm, as the smallest company, could well find itself struggling as the perpetual also-ran.

Jon Rubinstein, Palm’s chief executive who was the top Apple engineer and the first head of its iPod division, said in an interview that Palm does not need to be as big as its rivals to thrive. His former employer, after all, was long able to carve out a lucrative niche in the computer business.

“One of the key things we need to do as a company is to get to scale,” he said. “We need to bring on more carriers and more regions.”

Analysts expect that Palm will sell an upgraded version of the Pre with Verizon early next year and add AT&T later in the year. It sells phones in six countries and is steadily expanding to others in Europe and North America.

Investors trying to read the mood of the consumer are unsure whether Palm will prevail. The volatility in Palm’s stock is a sign of the uncertainty over its ability to challenge the iPhone and BlackBerry. (Palm’s shares bounced up to $12.40 on Friday on speculation it would be acquired by Nokia, a prospect many analysts find unlikely.)

“These emotional extremes reflect a handset market in profound turmoil,” said Tero Kuittinen, an analyst with MKM Partners. “Palm soared to $18 when people were expecting Pre to be a blockbuster. American tech bloggers went crazy over Pre and pronounced it to be the St. Paul following the iPhone Jesus,” he said. “Then Verizon started pushing Droid and the bloggers reversed. Now Pre was doomed and Android was going to take over the global handset market.”

Palm looks particularly small if smartphone applications are tallied. Apple’s App Store now has more than 100,000 apps. No other phone operating system comes close, though there are about 10,000 apps for Android. Palm has about 300.

“You develop for the iPhone first and for Android second, then for Palm or not,” said Philip Cusick, an analyst with Macquarie Securities. Mr. Cusick suggested that a large portion of phone buyers do not care about applications even though Apple has based the marketing campaign for its iPhone on selling the apps. “If applications become important, then Palm is going to have trouble,” he said.

Mr. Rubinstein said Palm would never need as many applications as the iPhone. “We are focused on quality over quantity,” he said.

Palm is still testing its app store, called the App Catalog, with a small group of developers. It will open to anyone who wants to write an app next month — six months after the Pre was introduced.

Mr. Rubinstein says he expects developers will write for Palm devices, in part because Palm’s operating system, called webOS, is based largely on the same languages used to design Web sites. Android, by contrast, is based on Sun’s Java language, and Apple uses a variation of the C computer programming language.

He discounts Android’s chances because, he says, it does not yet have mass appeal. “Android, and the Droid in particular, are designed for the techie audience,” Mr. Rubinstein said. “We are doing a more general product that helps people live their lives seamlessly.”

While Android is getting a lot of attention because it has attracted so many phone makers, those companies, Mr. Rubinstein, argues “have to depend on the kindness of strangers” — meaning Google — for their software.

“The companies that will deliver the best products are the ones that integrate the whole experience — the hardware, the software and the services — and aren’t getting one piece from here and one piece from there and trying to bolt it all together,” he said.

This year, Palm is hoping for a tactical advantage with the Pixi, which will sell for a lower price than most Android phones — $99 directly from Sprint and as low as $30 at Wal-Mart. That puts it in direct competition with other phones with keyboards like R.I.M.’s popular BlackBerry Curve. Verizon’s second Droid phone, the Eris made by HTC, also sells for $99, but it lacks a physical keyboard.

“We think the Pixi is in the sweet spot of the market now,” he said. “It was designed for people who are transitioning from feature phones and getting their first smartphone.”

Palm is trying to copy the success it had with the Palm Centro, a small, inexpensive smartphone that sold three million units.

Analysts think he is right.

“The Palm Pixi is the only low-end smartphone with a new operating system,” said Mr. Kuittinen. “That is fairly impressive.”

He estimates Palm may be able to sell 10 million handsets next year, about 5 percent of the smartphone market. That assumes the company can get more carriers in the United States and Europe to sell Palm phones.

Mr. Rubinstein said Palm is positioned to grow now that it has completed a revamping after an investment from Elevation Partners, a private equity firm.

“We did what we said we were going to do,” Mr. Rubinstein said. “We have done a really good job of laying a foundation for the company moving forward. Now we need to move quickly.”

Source: nytimes.com | SAUL HANSELL| Published: November 15, 2009

TELUS to launch Palm Pre and Pixi in January

The second coming of Palm is in full force as they have just launched the Pre in the U.K, Germany and Spain. Here in Canada, even though Bell just dropped the price of the Pre down another $50 we understand that sales are strong. Could there be reasoning behind the price drop though, other than their HSPA network? We think so…

Back in July we wrote a story about how the Palm Pre was only exclusively available to Bell for 6 months. We had a document called Bell Strategy that said: “The Palm Pre will expand and strengthen Bell’s smartphone category and will break new ground in the fiercely competitive smartphone market. Bell will be the second carrier worldwide (after Sprint) to sell the Palm Pre, with exclusivity for 6 months. Bell anticipates the Canadian market will strongly embrace this product with strong interest, which will boost overall smartphone sales.”

The Canadian market did embrace the Pre and the 6 months is coming to an end. Although we’ve said it before, we are now hearing that TELUS, the only carrier to have 3 networks (CDMA, MiKE, HSPA) will officially be bringing on both the Palm Pre (HSPA) and the new Palm Pixi in January. No word on pricing or exact January launch dates yet, we’ll find out more when we get closer to the date.

Source: mobilesyrup.com (Rob Avison | November 10, 2009)

Christmas 2009: BlackBerry Storm 2, iPhone, Droid, Palm Pixi

With the release of so many promising handsets this holiday season, its no surprise to hear continued speculation that the Apple iPhone could of finally met its match.

As reported by Von, a new survey has been compiled by Advertising Age, who have given 6 month predictions for handsets such as the iPhone, HTC Hero, Motorola Droid, CLIQ, BlackBerry Storm 2 and Palm Pixi.

According to the survey, Advertising Age have stated that one-third of potential buyers this holiday season will still opt for the iPhone, while the Motorola Droid on Verizon is the handset most likely to rival the iPhone.

Surprisingly, they also mention that the new BlackBerry Storm 9550 won’t turn too many heads this holiday season, with consumers prefering to go with the Droid, CLIQ or HTC Hero.

More details through the link. Let us know what phone you’ll be picking up this month.

Source: product-reviews.net (November 10, 2009 by Alan Ng)