By Satish |

Monday, March 1, 2010

• Palm CEO talks about disappointing sales
• Review: Motorola Devour
• Adobe Flash 10.1 holds out for Windows Phone 7, 6.5 devices can haz upgrade to WP7?
• Official list of webOS 1.4 changes and bug fixes leaked?
• LG hopes to launch their first Windows Phone 7 handset around September or November
• iControlPad iPhone game controllers in production, one features extended battery
• Quake 3, Android style
• Palm Says Revenue Will Be Lower Than Expected, Cites Slow Sales

Palm CEO talks about disappointing sales Posted: 26 Feb 2010 05:27 AM PST Poor Jon Rubinstein. After a strong, early push, Palm's sales have slowed and revenue has dried up with $300-$320 million in Q3. Their "guidance" to Wall Street AKA how much they expected to make? $1.6-1.8 billion. Bloops. The letter is over at WSJ but here's an excerpt. This morning we announced preliminary results for our 2010 third quarter. Since the quarter has not yet closed, it is too soon to offer exact numbers, but we stated that we expect to report revenues for Q3 between $300 and $320 million. We also announced that we expect our revenue for this fiscal year to fall below the guidance we gave to Wall Street, which ranged from $1.6 to $1.8 billion. As we mentioned in our press release, our softer than expected performance is due to slower than expected customer adoption of our products, which in turn has prompted our U.S. carrier partners to put additional orders on hold for the time being. On a positive note, we expect to exit the quarter with over $500 million in cash on our balance sheet. We're scheduled to announce our full financial results in March. I realize this news is difficult to swallow. We made this announcement today to prevent a surprise for Wall Street when we announce quarterly earnings in March. In the meantime, the entire executive team has been working extremely hard to improve product performance, and have implemented a number of initiatives to increase awareness and drive sales. Dave Whalen and I just returned from a very successful meeting with Verizon Wireless, where they acknowledged that their execution of our launch was below expectations and recommitted to working with us to improve sales. To accelerate sales, we initiated Project JumpStart nearly three weeks ago. Since then, nearly two hundred Palm Brand Ambassadors, supplemented by Palm employees from Sunnyvale, have been training Verizon sales reps across the U.S. on our products. Early results from the stores have already shown improvement on product knowledge and sales week over week. You may have also seen a growing number of Palm ads on billboards, bus shelters, buses, and subway stations—all getting the word out about Palm. What's holding things up? Three things: Android, Android, and Android. Palm used to be the alternative to monolithic mobile phone manufacturers like RIM and Microsoft. With the iPhone grabbing the hipster market and Android grabbing the nerds – and RIM still runs the business roost – Palm has no home in this world anymore. My prediction? The next company to face these problems is, in fact, RIM. If Windows Mobile 7 figures things out, they'll have both the casual and business markets buttoned up. Smartphones can now do everything RIM does and better.

Review: Motorola Devour Posted: 25 Feb 2010 12:40 PM PST Short Version: Hey ladies! Your Droid is here. The Motorola Devour (it's actually DEVOUR but I refuse to shout at you) is a social media Android phone with enough style to beat down a million Droids. But is it just one more brick in the Android wall? Features: Amazing extruded aluminum case MotoBLUR UI Full keyboard Removable battery 3.5mm headphone jack Pros: Removable storage Good interface performance MotoBLUR adds lots of social networking features Cons: A true toss-up between Droid and Devour Cramped keyboard Heavy Review: As if there were any doubt as to whether the Droid was from Mars and the Devour was from Venus, just think about last Devour commercial featuring an unclothed Megan Fox taking pictures of herself in a tub. Here, let me show you it: The Droid, if you recall, is a man's phone. It is everything the Devour isn't: thin, lithe, ready to cut, and mean like a snake. The Devour is the MacBook of the Motorola line, clad in soft, soothing aluminum and graced with an elegance that haven't seen out of Motorola since the RAZR. The Phone The phone has a full 3.5mm jack and slide down keyboard. It has a small, hidden slot for a MicroSD card – it includes 8GB out of the box – and is fairly featureless except for three buttons on the right edge and a main optical trackpad/button below the message indicator. The 3.1-inch, 320×480 pixel display is quite handsome but it does not support multi-touch. There are three soft buttons, menu, home, and back, along the bottom edge. The keyboard is extremely usable but very cramped. I had some initial trouble hitting the right keys because the space bar is crammed in between the V and the B, thereby putting off my sense of key balance when typing. The case is the real draw, here. The extruded aluminum is extremely rugged and the screen slides up like a tank shell getting ready to lock and load. While it's elegant, it also means business. MotoBLUR I was pleased to note that MotoBLUR, Motorola's special UI, ran very well on the 600MHz processor. I had used Blur before on the Cliq and it was bogged down and slow. Here I found a strong and quick window into messages and social networks. The best thing? If you already have a MotoBLUR phone, you can log into your BLUR account and bring over all of your previous Facebook, GMail, Twitter, Tooter, and Pooter accounts. Calling and network Ooof. What happened, Verizon? I live in Brooklyn. You guys are supposed to be the pasta fazool out here. Calls were tinny and soft and you dropped a few times. 3G load times are strong but just on par with the iPhone 3GS. These were obviously anecdotal tests and a quick DSLReports speed test gave me 1495 kbit/sec, which is speedier than AT&T's 3G at my location. Price The Devour ranges from $100 at Best Buy to $150 elsewhere, both with two year contract. You also obviously need a data plan. This is the same price as the Droid. Which should you buy? Bottom Line John at Giz asks whether the Droid will always win in a Droid/Devour shoot-out. They are, after all, the same price on the same carrier. I think, however, the two phones are different in intent. The Devour is a fashion-forward social media phone. The Droid is a "geek" phone or, if you like, an app phone. Granted, these phones are essentially the same. However, the Devour is clearly aimed at a less geeky consumer. Android can be all things to all people, and that's what's happening here. The Devour is, in the aggregate, a phone for those less interested in high tech and more in high art. However, with the Droid and this launch, it's clear that Moto has got its groove back. Product Page: Motorola Devour

Adobe Flash 10.1 holds out for Windows Phone 7, 6.5 devices can haz upgrade to WP7? Posted: 25 Feb 2010 11:29 AM PST Just the other day, hearts were broken all over the world when Microsoft said that current Windows Mobile 6.5 devices won't be able to upgrade to Windows Phone 7. The good news is that might not entirely be true as Microsoft said on Twitter that it's entirely up to hardware manufacturers. Way to confuse us! Another area where WinMo 6.5 gets no love? Adobe Flash 10.1. So far, it seems that Adobe is content to have Flash 10.1 sit around for a while for Windows devices until WinPho 7 hits. However, the HTC HD2, which will eventually be upgradeable to WinPho 7, will be getting Flash 10.1. It makes sense since the HD2 is high up on the spec range and part of the reason why most current WinMo 6.5 handsets won't be getting WinPho 7 is because of hardware incompatibilities. Late 2010 is looking good for Microsoft's mobile efforts. Windows Phone 7 will come out in one of three different chassis, LG may beat it to the punch, and now, Flash (love it or hate it) will definitely be coming to WinPho 7.

Official list of webOS 1.4 changes and bug fixes leaked? Posted: 25 Feb 2010 10:59 AM PST If the most recent whispers from the webOS rumor mill hold true, we just might be seeing webOS 1.4 ship out to Pres and Pixis around the nation some time today. We know it'll bring video recording support, and it'll have a few UI enhancements tucked throughout — but what else? We want the details! Fortunately, it looks like Palm's own changelog might have just leaked out, jampacked with more details than you could ever want. An anonymous tipster sent the log over to the guys at PreCentral. There are a handful of typos and oddities which make the whole thing seem a bit shaky – but then again, this could just be a rough draft. What are you most excited about in webOS 1.4? For us, it's definitely gotta be the "Time Zone bug fix". I friggin' love Time Zone bug fixes. Change log: Fixes Time Zone bug Fix Network time sync bug fix to reflect accuratenetwork time BT car-kit transition to device corrected No EV-Icon bug fixed (random) Random browser formatting bug fixed Fixed bug that incorrectly displayed Sprint when actually was Digital Roaming Enhancements Phonebook Transfer Supports Video Capture Capability Performance enhancement within phone and calendar Apps Calendar Dial phone # from within a meeting event Allow custom Alerts sounds for Calendar event and reminders Added AM – PM detail within Calendar events Email Embedded phone $ or email address (embedded inemail) can be easily added to Contacts app New email sort options  (date, Sender, Subject) Return to inbox view after send – email Messaging Ability to forward SMS to email Ability to dial phone # from SMS chat session (No need to open contact any longer Press and hold on a phone # to get more options( Call, SMS) Universal Search now includes EAS (outlook Exchange) GAL corporate address look up. Application Launcher – Easier user interface providing usermore feedback during an application launch Pre Button in gesture area blinks when notification pending Added Adobe Flash 10 Beta – Palm Pre only Supports Flash 10 Beta – download available in Palm AppCatalog

LG hopes to launch their first Windows Phone 7 handset around September or November   When Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7 just a few days ago at Mobile World Congress, the only sort of time frame they'd give for release was "by the Holidays". As it turns out, they may have meant Labor Day. Engadget Chinese met up with LG during some sort of Chinese New Year celebration, and got hit with a nice little knowledge bomb: LG's hoping to launch their first Windows Mobile 7 phone by September. Alas, they also said that it might slip back as late as November — which is about the time we're expecting much of the first batch of WP7 phones to launch.

iControlPad iPhone game controllers in production, one features extended battery Posted: 25 Feb 2010 08:30 AM PST Oh my, does this look nice. If you've got a jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch and you've been wishing/hoping/praying for some sort of tactile controller to come along so you can use your favorite emulators as the gaming gods intended, the wait may soon be over. The iControlPad (previous coverage here) has gone into mass production.

Quake 3, Android style Posted: 25 Feb 2010 07:30 AM PST Quake 3 has been ported to Android. It looks slick, too (see video demo below). The project is called "kwaak3" and is based on Quake 3 ports to the iPhone and Nokia N900. The developer got everything up and running on a Motorola Milestone (a GSM Motorola Droid with multi-touch, basically) and makes use of the phone's keyboard, "so it won't work on your Nexus One or other phone at this point," according to the project page.

Palm Says Revenue Will Be Lower Than Expected, Cites Slow Sales Posted: 25 Feb 2010 06:20 AM PST Handset manufacturer Palm has updated its guidance this morning, indicating that revenues for the quarter and full year will be "well below its previously forecasted range of $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion". The company expects that revenues for the third quarter of fiscal year 2010 will be in the range of $285 million to $310 million on a GAAP basis. In a statement, Palm says disappointing sales are due to "slower than expected consumer adoption" of its products, resulting in lower than expected order volumes from carriers and the deferral of orders to future periods.