Prelude to Productivity: Cards
This is the iPhone’s home screen:
Busy, isn’t it?
This is the Pre’s home screen:
Not so busy. Ha! Apple just got out-minimalized. You get four quick launch buttons at the bottom of the screen, plus a launcher button. Tap the launcher icon and you bring up the webOS Launcher. Think of it like Windows’ Explorer or Mac OS X’s Finder. This is how you launch applications. You can scroll up/down in the launcher and it has multiple pages like the iPhone’s home screens.
We call them windows, Palm calls them cards. Each application opens in a new card. You can have multiple cards open at once and switch between them (hello multitasking). The Pre will alert you if you have too many cards open and prevent you from opening any more:
To switch between cards simply hit the center button on the Pre, then flip through the cards by flicking left or right on the screen. To start using a card, just tap on it.
To close a card, hit the center button the Pre then flick upwards - effectively throwing the card off the screen. Doing that closes the card and frees its associated memory.
And herein lies the key difference between the Pre’s webOS and the iPhone’s OS: you can have multiple cards open at once. The iPhone forces you to exit one application before starting another in an attempt to preserve the UI’s responsiveness (and maintain battery life), the Pre doesn’t.
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OCedHrt - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
My HTC has predictive text input (based on key locality) in case of a miss so I don't think Apple has a patent on it.macs - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
Speaking of fast web browsing.... i use opera mini on my google Ion phone (android). It delivers full browsing experience and it's blazing fast. Opera mini loads anandtech.com over my 3g network in just 9 seconds. You should try!imaheadcase - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
Thats how apple stays in business right there, everyone thinks throwing money at overpriced products IT will get better eventually.. ZING!I don't know why this review is comparing it to a Iphone, Iphone is outclassed by other smartphones as it is, why not compare it to a real phone like a HTC touch or the like? You know, a phone that is popular with regular people and not hollywood hipsters only..
Downvote if you want, but the FACT of the matter is, the Iphone is a niche market, look at the top phones sold by At&T, the basic flip phone is still the best selling phone in the world, the HTC touch even outsells the iphone 10-1. Like I mentioned before, I know one person who has a iphone and he only got it because parents got it to him as a going away to collage gift.
jmaine - Saturday, June 20, 2009 - link
Where are you coming up with these stats from? Please show me one reliable source that says the HTC Touch outsells the iPhone 10-1. Please leave the bs in your dreams.ltcommanderdata - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
One thing I find funny about arguments that the iPhone lacks basic features found in other phones is that despite this Apple has still sold 21 million iPhones as of March 2009, which is quite a success for a company that wasn't in the cell phone business 2 years ago. The question other phone manufacturers should be thinking about is what happens when the iPhone incorporates many of these lacking hard features in addition to the fluffy pizzaz it already has? How much additional demand will there be for a full featured iPhone?Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
The reviews agree, the HTC Touch isn't in the same class of smartphone as the iPhone. Most phones will outsell things like the iPhone; lower prices and lower monthly fees will determine quantities, but the space the iPhone competes in is the high end smartphone market where the stakes/players are a bit different.Take care,
Anand
rudy - Monday, June 22, 2009 - link
I cant find any provider which sells an HTC touch cheaper then an iPhone.Stas - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
Same. I know 2 ppl that had iPhones. 1 was my techy friend, who took it to the shooting range and unloaded his rifle at it after 5 months of use. The other is my wife's friend who only knows how to call and text on it (not sure WHY she got it... oh, yeah, it's COOL).But I can think of at least 8 ppl that have a Blackberry... :)
anandtech02148 - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
Nokia N97, europe's answer to all american hyped up marketing trash. N97 unlocked, using Fring to escape that other american trash, US cellphone pre-nups.Voip, sip account, sweetness. symbian s60 5th is a bit shaky, but then again there isn't a perfect Os for new cellphone model that comes out every 3months, thanks to Taiwan,Korea and China new handset are out every 24hrs. the only win for Apple here is a lot of laid off engineers creating adobe flash games for the iphone, how else would you get 50,000 apps. my hope is Nokia's answer apple in the next 6month with dual cores Arm.
snarfbot - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
im glad you're happy with your 700 US dollar phone.dumb americans are happy to get a free phone and use the same carrier for a couple of years, probably because almost every network is essentially the same in terms of features/cost.
on a side note, something needs to be done about the word american.
america is a big continent, people commonly refer to those living in the USA as "americans".
it would be more fitting if we were dubbed usa'ians our something so our neighbors dont get insulted by accident.
which brings me to my last point, in response to the actual article!
it is odd indeed how the messaging protocol varies regionally, i think the major reason most people in the US use AIM, is because we were all introduced to the splendor of the internet by aol in the 90's, then when broadband became available people switched over and kept their AIM screen names. Those that used a different isp just used AIM because everyone else was on aol, etc.
Peoples elsewhere probably used icq, until msn/yahoo came along and freed them from oppression.