It came as little surprise that Apple announced their iPhone OS 3.0 event on the exact same day many were eagerly anticipating the Sprint Palm Pre webcast. Even before the Sprint webcast had started, commentators and would-be buyers were asking whether Apple had been given enough lead-time from the Palm’s CES unveiling to generally replicate and potentially better the Pre’s headline functionality. Over at SlashGear we liveblogged the whole iPhone OS 3.0 event, and you can catch the roundup here. Read on for what it means to the Palm Pre.
Perhaps the three areas we expected the biggest movement in are search, synchronization and background applications. On the Pre, Palm have introduced a “Universal Search” which intelligently takes one search query and checks it across first contacts, then local apps, then the internet or Wikipedia. In iPhone OS 3.0, Apple have added Spotlight – better known from their desktop OS X platform – as a dedicated pane a left-swipe away from the homescreen.
Spotlight searches contacts, email headers (though not the message body), calendar and notes items, iPod media, applications and finally the web. There looks to be more scope for Pre users to focus their internet search – choosing one of the three search providers, Google, Google Maps and Wikipedia, to which Palm say more will eventually be added – but without physically making a half-dozen queries on a the Pre it’s hard to say whether the on-device searching will be as thorough as in iPhone OS 3.0.
As for synchronization, iPhone OS 3.0 adds CalDAV and .ics to its Exchange support, the former used by Google Calendar and Yahoo! Calendar, and the latter for calendar sharing. That means you can view information from multiple calendars, together with create appointments in each (including meeting invitations). Apple also threw in Notes sync – through iTunes to your Mac or PC. While impressive, our feeling is that the Palm still stays ahead with its Synergy system: that not only combines Outlook, Exchange, Google and Facebook calendars, but does so intelligently, stripping out duplications. It remains to be seen how well Apple’s approach in OS 3.0 handles appointment clashes and cross-calendar scheduling.
Palm also extend Synergy to contacts, though, something OS 3.0 seemingly doesn’t touch on. The iPhone still has Exchange, Outlook and Apple Address Book sync for contacts – together with getting business card exchange in OS 3.0 – but that pales next to Palm’s ability to combine duplicated records and strip out redundant data. This is still one of the Pre’s standout features: not just funneling various sources of data into one mobile device, but doing so with consideration for how the user will best access it.
Apple remained resolute on the matter of background applications, or what Palm would call “multiple activities”: iPhone OS 3.0 will simply not allow apps to run unchecked in the background. The company claims this is a battery consideration, and that in tests – on rival devices, though presumably not including the Pre – having an AIM client running in the background reduced standby time by 80-percent or more. Instead, Apple offer developers Push Notification, whereby Apple’s own servers offer three forms of update alert that can be triggered to appear on a user’s iPhone. These alerts range from an audio tone, a pop-up dialog box similar to the new SMS dialog, and a marker on the application’s icon, or potentially a mixture of the three.
Apple seem convinced that push notification is the best way to balance multitasking and battery life: their testing apparently showed an AIM client on iPhone OS 3.0, with push enabled, reduced standby time by only 23-percent. In the Palm camp, the Pre resolutely supports background applications: in fact the company has made a point of highlighting how the individual ‘cards’ representing each app are not mere snapshots but live previews. We’ll have to wait to see how battery life on the Pre is impacted, but for the moment we prefer the flexibility Palm offer.
Copy & Paste have become smartphone shorthand for an obvious feature inexplicably missing, and Apple have finally added the functionality to iPhone OS 3.0. It’s taken them a while, but they’ve admittedly come up with a slick implementation: a double-tap highlights a word, giving straightforward selection tools and access to three, big cut/copy/paste buttons. Pasting is similarly easy, and there’s even a playful “shake to undo” feature. Elsewhere, MMS messaging – for sending audio and images – finally makes an appearance in OS 3.0. These are both features the Pre already has.
Apple didn’t announce any new iPhone hardware, but they did unlock some of the long-missed functionality from the iPhone 3G’s existing design. Bluetooth A2DP is an obvious one, bringing the platform in line with what the Pre offers in wireless streaming audio, and there’s a new peer-to-peer streaming system that uses Bonjour to form impromptu IP connections between iPhones and the second-gen iPod touch, assuming all are running OS 3.0. Still, no change to the camera, which means the Pre’s 3.2-megapixel autofocus unit keeps its lead over the iPhone 3G’s 2-megapixel fixed-focus version, and there’s no sign of video recording either.
The Pre has GPS navigation courtesy of Telenav (at least on the Sprint version), complete with turn-by-turn directions. OS 3.0 will open up the iPhone’s GPS functionality to third-parties wanting to develop turn-by-turn apps, but they’ll need to bring their own mapping data; it seems the Google Maps license with Apple doesn’t cover it. Still, expect to see the big names in both software and hardware navigation step up with iPhone clients; we know a few have been waiting in the wings with functional apps, merely waiting for the nod from Apple.
In fact the range of applications for the iPhone could be Apple’s biggest strength against the Pre. Palm webOS is a brand new platform, and while the skills to code for it are basic – Palm say anybody with the ability to create a website could make apps for the Pre – there’s a lot of catching up to do before it matches the many thousands of titles already available through the Apple App Store. At the OS 3.0 event Apple called a number of gaming developers on-stage to show off their latest titles, including 3D graphics and multi-user play; that’s definitely not something the Pre will have, with Palm confirming that first-gen gaming on the webOS platform will be very basic.
Making a choice between the Palm Pre and an iPhone 3G just got a lot harder, now that OS 3.0 is on the cards. Certain aspects of the Pre’s functionality – or the way it implements them – are perhaps slicker than on the iPhone, but My Pre know of many iPhone 3G owners who, having been planning to pick up a Pre, are now looking at OS 3.0 and weighing up their existing investment in accessories, cases and other Apple hardware. Considering iPhone OS 3.0 will be a free upgrade when it lands over the Summer (though iPod touch owners will have to pay $9.95) that’s a small bill for a lot of ability.
We’re also expecting to hear about new iPhone hardware around June or July, likely bringing a higher-resolution camera – among other things – and launching with OS 3.0. The Pre can certainly hold its own against the existing iPhone 3G, but there’s no telling exactly what Apple have in store with the next version. For the platform agnostic it’s an exciting, unending race with two key players driving the rest of the industry on to faster, better innovation. For anybody trying to decide whether to commit to a Palm Pre and a two-year contract, once it launches, it’s a far tougher choice. We’re looking forward to spending more time with the Pre at CTIA Wireless in a few weeks time, to hopefully help all of us get an idea of just how strong a player the smartphone is.
You can see much of the Pre functionality discussed in this article in our demo video below:
