Full FeedPalm Pre demo shows off features Apple doesn’t allow
Palm showed off many features of their yet to be released Pre this week at the CTIA Wireless Association’s annual event. Many of the features appear to be direct arguments towards getting a Palm Pre over Apple’s iPhone. For example, Palm showed off the Palm Pre version of the Pandora application at their Sprint booth. Since the Pre allows background processes, it was pretty powerful to see users be able to listen to Pandora while doing other things on the phone, as well as skip songs from anywhere on the phone. Although Apple allows this with the iPod application, other music applications have no such luck. The demo units also displayed an interesting Classic application that allowed the Pre to run older versions of the Palm software.
Although the iPhone 3.0 software will allow a somewhat restricted version of background processes, the Palm Pre will allow almost anything. Apple has said that their way helps to keep battery life at a maximum and rogue applications at a minimum, and I have to agree with them there. However, it will still be interesting to see how well the Palm Pre does considering how nonrestrictive it will be. What are your thoughts?
Via [AppleInsider]
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Bg processes are great. BUT they bring two HUGE problems (along with some others I’m sure)
First, battery life. Apple told us this is why we can’t have them. I don’t blame them. My battery is bad enough as it is.
Second, you are more prone to viruses. Third-party apps running in the background mean that they are constantly going back and forth sending and retrieving information from anywhere and everywhere. And before your battery dies on you, one wrong thing can get in and then WE ARE ALL doomed. A cellular network virus will be worse than running Windows Vista (that was uncalled for). But anyone with a web-enabled phone, which is about 95% of everyone, will be at risk. And it goes without saying that this virus will spread like wild fire and bring nothing but chaos.
Sorry for such a long comment. Just getting my point across.
on April 5, 2009 at 09:34 PM - LINKif i understand you correctly, the palm pre will hasen the advent of mobile viruses. get the pitch forks.
on April 9, 2009 at 01:05 AM - LINKPower consumption can and should be managed correctly. Apple’s stance that any background process will consume battery power should be taken with a grain of salt. In any well-designed power aware OS, there are several ways to manage power:
1) Make the process interrupt activated. For example… It’s obvious that all smart phones need to be connected to the internet all the time. However, each application binds to specific ports to listen. The applications can be asleep until a packet specifically for them comes along, consuming virtually no power.
2) Certain applications are power hungry, so use them judiciously. For example, Pandora will consume the same amount of power whether it runs in the foreground or background. I doubt that context switching between a bunch of apps will cause a huge overhead in power consumption. So the bottom line is that running these apps will cause battery drain. If you need to stretch your battery life, then “don’t do it”.
3) Certain tasks are power hungry. Things like the display and sounds consume a significant amount of power irrespective of whether there are background tasks or not.
Bottom line… a badly designed application will consume a lot of power. This means that Apple, Palm, etc. should provide tools to the developer to determine the application’s power consumption and guidelines to make the application power friendly. Maybe adding a power-consumption specifications on applications would help consumers decide whether it’s a good idea or not to use that application.
For example, on my Treo I abandoned Chattermail in favor of Snappermail because the former sucked the life out of my battery, even when they retrieved mail at the same frequency.
on April 9, 2009 at 06:47 AM - LINK