Zhephree

There’s a lot of buzz lately about Palm’s future and how some analysts valued Palm’s stock at $0 the other day. People say Palm may get bought out, some say they’re die out.

Me? I say Palm’s sticking around. Palm’s been around for a while, which in-and-of itself is not grounds for success in the future, but it says something. They’ve existed in many forms, and they’ve even revolutionized many industries. Would Sony had made the Clié if Palm’s Pilot hadn’t have existed? Would the BlackBerry exist if Palm hadn’t have pioneered the industry with its cavalcade of devices? Probably not, or, at least not it its current form.

And now with webOS on the Pre and Pixi devices, Palm has done it again. webOS is, by far, the best mobile OS I have ever used. I’ve had several flip phones that were terrible. I’ve had a Windows Mobile 6 phone that crashed constantly, rarely kept a data connection, and I had to use a stylus to accomplish anything. I owned a Sony Clié and I was envious of friends with m500 series Palms. I’ve played around with iPhones and my girlfriend’s iPod Touch, and while easy to use and pretty, it just didn’t seem very functional.

webOS is a near-perfect mobile OS. It’s pretty and has some nice eye candy visual effects. It’s snappy (especially after the 1.4 update). It’s super easy to use (I don’t even know where my instruction manual is!). And best of all: I can listen to Pandora, bounce between my two Twitter accounts with BadKitty, a text message, and then fire up Foursquare to check-in to the coffee shop I just walked into, all without closing any of the apps and with no hiccups from Pandora.

One point of contention I always had with my WinMo phone was wireless connectivity. Wifi was annoying at best and cumbersome to connect to. On webOS, if I have WiFi off, it takes two quick taps from any screen to turn WiFi on. No navigating to a control panel or config application: Tap the upper-right corner of the screen, then tap Turn WiFi On. That’s it. Bluetooth synchronizing is just as awesome and very reliable. With my WinMo phone, it would constantly disconnect from whatever handsfree device I was using. On top of that, it would never load my contacts into another device. But my Pre connects instantly with easy configuration and never drops a connection and will share my contacts with a device if I allow it to.

Does the OS have its faults? Of course it does. It’s software, so by that very nature it has faults. It can get slow sometimes and it needs a reboot, but that could also be because I’m using my phone a development tool and I might have memory leaks in my alpha builds. The hardware is a bit fragile and one drop will likely kill it (on my second Pre as it is). I wouldn’t ever switch OSes though. And now that webOS will be on all three major US carriers — Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T — there’s an option for everyone. If you like a network better than another, there shouldn’t be any reason not to try a webOS device out. I’ve had a couple of friends annoyed with their iPhones play with my webOS phone for 5 minutes can’t get over the simple task switching and running multiple apps at the same time.

But perhaps what’s so great about Palm isn’t even just their OS. It’s behind the scenes. Palm is a mobile (or any, for that matter) developer’s dream. Palm has never ceased to help Chris and I out with the Foursquare app. They helped us get in touch with the right people, they got our app pushed through approval quickly when a recent update to Foursquare’s API broke the app. They’ve been super supportive of us and every developer with whom I’ve interacted. Their SDK is super easy to start developing with, especially for seasoned (and newbie) web developers and from what I hear about the PDK, it’s just as simple. Lots of developers have ported their iPhone apps to webOS in a couple of days, some in just a couple of hours! On top of that, Palm’s app approval process is pretty streamlined and they are not as restrictive as Apple. Is webOS without its share of 400 fart apps? Of course not, but the quality of apps is steadily improving in the App Catalog. I mentioned Bad Kitty earlier. They turned the mobile UI on its head and brought something new to Twitter client UIs. It’s pretty innovative stuff that makes other mobile platforms seems stale and cookie cutter.

So, take it from me: if you’re a developer, definitely give webOS a shot. Their dev tools are great and the emulator gives you more control than others (You can’t simulate accelerometer actions in the iPhone SDK, for example, but can in the webOS emulator).

And if you’re a mobile phone user: Give webOS a shot. I promise you won’t regret it.