Palm Pre 2 Officially Unveiled, Comes up Seriously Short

From DailyTech: Today Palm ended weeks of speculation unveiling the Palm Pre 2 (previously code-named Mansion) and its new webOS 2.0. HP has shown its hand and it appears as underwhelming at best.

On the surface the device itself seems reasonably well-equipped, containing the kind of high-end hardware you'd find on a high-end Android phone. The phone packs a 1 GHz processor (doubling the original Pre's processor which was underclocked to 500 MHz). The camera is bumped from 3 MP to 5 MP. Memory holds steady at 512 MB -- the same as the Pre Plus. And the Flash storage -- 16 GB -- is also identical to the Pre Plus'.

The biggest disappointment is the screen. The Pre 2 still packs the same 3.1-inch 320x480 HVGA display as its predecessor, at a time when Android and Apple have graduated to higher resolutions. Other potential downside is the lack of microSD support and the lack of support for the latest/fastest 802.11n wireless standard.

If this was Hewlett-Packard's grand scheme to use its recent acquisition Palm to make a splash on the smart phone market, something seems to be missing.

Compare Palm's launch today with Microsoft's launch of Windows Phone 7 next month and you'll realize that Palm is at a distinct disadvantage. Palm only has one new handset -- Microsoft has nine (as does Android, for that matter). Palm supports apps (including Angry Birds and Oprah Mobile!), Skype, Bluetooth, and VPN, but Microsoft is expected to support these things as well (and Android already does).

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