Greeting from Chile
Alex

BTW I just found an interesting article (http://palmwebosblog.com/exclusive/jailbreak-palm-pre-and-run-android-as-alternative/), didn’t have time to go through it, I just glanced at it but I think you might be interested.
I’m thinking not just dual-booting but triple-booting Android, OpenMoko and webOS!

Heya Dom! =:)

Good points! The Bluetooth tethering/DUN bit… Sprint already supports that now (well, at least I’ve been getting away with it for the last year with my Nokia N810 using my Treo 700p as a bluetooth modem), but that’s a good question I’ll need to remember to ask next Saturday when I get to the Sprint store at the crack of dawn. And I’ll have to look into the preDevCamps a bit more–I had no idea they were even going on! I’m more concerned about more hard-core application developers being able to function on the Pre, though. Like, let’s take mplayer as an example… if I want to be able to run mplayer on my Pre to watch movies, will I be able to?

Anyway, yes, I’ll definitely put another blog post up if/when I get a Pre. =:) Thanks for the info and for commenting!

* Can Palm pull in a huge number of app developers to breathe life into the Pre and its new WebOS?
- If you’re concerned about “the community/developer longevity for yet another new platform/app store/etc” regarding the webOS, look at the preDevCamps being organized all over the world. I don’t know if that can be any good indication but it’s also great that pretty much anybody with JavaScript/CSS/HTML knowledge will be able to have a try on this platform (like I plan to do – and I’d never even think about developing for PalmOS). Some of the big names have already made their apps, for example Pandora has high praise for it: http://www.precentral.net/pandora-ceo-has-high-praise-pre
Also, Palm will have an app store, called App Catalog, at launch. I believe it will be still in beta (only few apps will be available only from the companies/individuals who got into the SDK early access program I guess) but we still have no date of the public SDK release (can’t wait for that ).

One other point for the Pre is the fact that you use Google’s services and from what I understand it’s much more integrated with those services than iPhone at least. Really don’t know about Android but I don’t think it sports Synergy like technology.

BTW, take a look really at predevcamp.org to see if there’s an event planned in your town or near you. Come to think of it, certainly I think iPhone devs (can’t say how many of course) are very interested in webOS since preDevCamp was partly postponed because of the Apple’s WWDC…

P.S. I’m sort of a “die hard” Palm fan. Really like the simplicity and the philosophy behind Palm’s old OS and still use my Treo 680 daily (no, hourly! ), so natural choice for me will be Palm Pre. In comparison with other mentioned phones from you and commentators, only the Android would seem a viable option but I have yet to see an Android phone that I like or really know much about the Android platform (and I really like Palm’s approach to PIM, so you should know I’m into) so I probably will get a Pre as soon as possible.

P.P.S. If you do get a Pre in a week as you said you probably will, please share the impressions here – I’ll have to wait for a GSM one given that I live in Europe… *sigh*

Pre pre-review (from a bunch of Apple fanbois)

I don’t think I’m going to want to actually be doing any 3rd party app development on either device–at least not right up front–so I’m not horribly concerned with the openness of the platform personally, but I am concerned about the openness or lack thereof attracting or turning away other developers, since that’s going to limit the long-term viability of the device, I feel. Anyway, I’m thinking that I’m probably going to get the Pre in a week and stick with Sprint for a while. They do seem to still have a pretty good deal going as far as data plans, and it seems like they’re likely to be getting an Android model sometime in the next decade. =:/

The Pre wins in the sexiness category, hands down. I am not sure about the idea of using Javascript/HTML as the development language, though. I am a web developer (although mostly PHP-side, not Javascript side), and the idea of doing app development in HTML for a mobile device scares the heck out of me. That said, I haven’t actually looked at their API or devkit yet.

Android wins in the openness category. The dev environment is Java, bu more importantly my understanding is that they let you do more stuff with the hardware than Palm does. Palm using Linux under the hood doesn’t really get them any brownie points in my book unless they’re making a fully open system, and they’re not. Android is also Linux under the hood, but they’re apparently being more open with the system.

My biggest problem with both is, as you note, that they love “the cloud”. If you don’t run your life through Google, then the device loses half its functionality. Well, I don’t run my life through Google. I run my own IMAP server (I’m one of those people) so that I don’t have to deal with a 3rd party mega-corp controlling all of my PIM and other data. I actively avoid using “the cloud” whenever possible, because I fundamentally distrust it with my personal data. (CPU cycles, sure, but not my data.) Open formats and data access are even more important than Open Source, and at this point all of the current generation of smartphones fail miserably.

Because of the more open developer kit my gut feeling is that Android fails the least in that regard, but that remains to be seen depending on what 3rd party developers do. I’d love to see solid KDE syncing for it.

On a related note, here’s the G1 review from infoSync World:

http://www.infosyncworld.com/reviews/cell-phones/t-mobile-g1/9844.html

Disclaimer: In a former life I was infoSync’s Palm OS editor and US cell phone correspondent so they have a special place in my Akregator, even though I’ve not worked for them in years.