nlowhor

Matt Crowley, recently featured at http://blog.palm.com, answers some questions in a Facebook discussion group at http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?to...id=32915930478

His discussion of the internet as a big microSD card maybe implies some solution for media and files synced/stored in the cloud?

"Great questions. Thanks for getting involved and sharing your excitement about Palm Pre.

Okay, let me get into some of these questions and comments. Some I can answer, some I can’t. Some you won’t like, some you will. I will do my best here. But whatever the case I do appreciate your input and it does matter.

microSD:
‘Design’ was the highest goal on the Palm Pre project. The phone has to look and function great in the hand and up against the face on a call. The decision to include or not include expandable storage is an easy one when design is the highest priority. The physical size of the device would have been compromised if we added another physical component to Pre. Just a millimeter can seriously impact the curvature of the design in a way that minimizes the design intent. We wanted to maintain a slick curved slider design without building out too much thickness. When you look at the two parts of the product and see how thin they really are, you may be amazed that we were able to fit everything in. And yes, all the stuff does fit.

The other advantage of embedded memory is that you have a large amount of storage out of the box for media and files. Including 8GBs of storage on the phone is a large amount of storage for many people, but not all. Yes, not all. We know that not everyone will be happy, but that is one of many decisions that needs to be made and the product goals help define these decisions.

The last point I will make on storage is to think about how you currently use remote storage. For example, I have my Google Calendar for family events and I have my corporate EAS Outlook calendar. These calendars are pulled down from remote storage (Internet) to my device. If my device is new, all I need to do is log into my account(s) and the content gets pulled to my device over the air. This is true for Contacts as well. We call this "Synergy". This is something that is just straight out cool. Contacts are now pulled down from the web to my device. So if you update your Facebook contact information, and I am friends with you, your contact information will be updated on my Palm Pre address book. Think about that for a second. I no longer need to cable my device to my computer to make an update to my contacts. I get the updates over the air. Now my contact information is more up to date and if my device is replaced or new, I just enter my account information and I get it over the air to the device. This puts a whole new thought on external storage. The Internet is a BIG microSD card.

One Handed Operation:
We made sure that we designed the device and the user interface around one handed operation. A good example of this is the Back gesture. The Back gesture is a flick from right to left on either side of the Center button. You can be right handed or left handed (like me) to navigate back."

Syphon

Nice, thanks for the find.

The Phone Diva

His argument about size doesn't fly though. I have thin phones with microSD slots.

__________________
♥ GSM Phone & MP3 player freak! ♥
*The ex-Lady Treo. Too many phones now!*
Current smartphones: AT&T LG Incite(can't believe I'm back on WM, LOL), AT&T Backflip(don't laugh, it's not too horrible)
Current dumbphone: Sony Ericsson G705/W995a(next)
Current smart dumbphone(LOL): Jailbroken 16GB iPhone 3G
Next smartphone: The HTC Aria and/or the Samsung Captivate.

Syphon

I agree. Even the Razr, which is pretty thin, has a MicroSD slot.
Although I would have liked MicroSD on the phone, I can live without it. 8GB is enough for my multimedia needs.

dave75

For a slider with a 3.5mm headset jack, touchscreen, removable battery, etc it's pretty small. I don't think you can say that they could fit a microSD slot in without making the device bigger.

nlowhor

I'd like to have microSD, but I've got 8 GB in my 800w with like 3-4 GB free. I know 8 GB is enough for now. By the time I really feel the need for more, it'll be time for my next WebOS device.

They did cram a lot in there when you look at the pic from the side with it slid open. Those 2 parts are pretty thin.

jmg_P1OS21

I have a 16GB SHDC and I only ever have less than 1GB (if that) ever free...

no room for a MicroSD? Where will they find the room for a SIM card on a GSM Pre?
(I would not care if it's underneath the battery, it would be a PITA and NOT ideal in such a nicely thought out Pre design though...)

__________________
Now it's the WAITING GAME: a GSM Palm Pre
T680 (COPPER) + Cingular = FUN!!
My T650 & 6230b and NX70 are retired... =(

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

noncents.net

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


justdai.com
reddingk.com
georgeozuna.com
goaskoscar.com

jhoff80

To be fair, the Razr doesn't have GPS, a touchscreen, a mechanical slider, etc etc.

Or it could be just that there was no more room on the circuitboard for another component.

TurboTiger

This assumes all of your info is going through the cloud. So if you choose not to send SplashID and my Outlook info that contains sensitive info through the cloud, you'll be SOL with a new or replaced device until you get home and sync thorugh companionlink. Whereas now with my Centro, I just stick my sd card right into the new or replaced device and hit restore on BackupMan and I've got everything on new/replace device.

I hope I can over this cloud stuff but so far I'm stuck. But I continued to read and try to be open about these new things.

Good Luck.

__________________
Sprint Centro

johncc

Nice try Matt, but I don't buy it.

schnoid

That's exactly what I was thinking! microSD is soooo small and it could fit in a quarter the space of a sim card. For all i care, they could include microSD on the CDMA model and not include it on the GSM model. If someone really needs microSD they can go to sprint. I'm still whole heartily think that Palm left out for the same reason iphone does. They're banking on the fact that people will buy a 16GB, 32GB, etc model of the same phone. Sure it might be a good marketing scheme, but its really annoying for those of us that have come to really appreciate a sd/miniSD/microSD slot on our phones. Please palm, if you read this, don't turn into apple! I think the Pre will be revolutionary but there is still so much you'll be able to do for future phones like video conferencing

__________________


To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

dave75

I agree, pretty weak argument. They could have made it a little bigger and I don't think they would have had many complaints, but it is small for everything that's in there.

As for the SIM card, I have no idea. Maybe there are fewer components in a GSM phone than the CDMA. Or maybe they left the space for the SIM card, but they're not going to have an sd slot on the CDMA and not on the GSM. Or maybe they will grow the device. Don't know.

SedahDrol

Well since they have a micro usb port they could just simply enable the ability to use a usb flash drive and solve their problem. Enabling this feature would simply be a software issue.

__________________
--Nextel Blackberry 7520 -> Sprint Treo 700p -> Sprint Treo 755p -> Sprint Pre

decypher44

That is some great thinking. And if Palm doesn't make it work, someone else might.

KrazyRogue

Maybe they'll introduce a 16gb Pre at MWC along with the GSM version. Now wouldn't that be cool. Buy hey, who knows.

pgh1969pa

Palm has always been good at rationalizing about features they left out. Before they finally got around to adding WiFi to a Palm OS device, the company and it's ******* (Jeff Kirvin) would rationalize that WiFi was not necessary. Now it's hard to find a competitive smartphone without it. Now microSD storage is the new WiFi.

Regardless of what they think customers need, the best two reasons to include external storage are 1) most smartphones have it and 2) customers want it. Sure, the iPhone doesn't have it, but you can get a larger capacity iPhone.

It just seems like they are trying to steal some pages out of the Apple playbook and that's one of the decisions made on the iPhone. They should've copied Apple's larger memory if that is the case.

sivan

BT/USB file transfer is easier and fast enough. The data you'd want to back up such as the SplashID database isn't large.

I'll take onboard memory and solid connectivity options over the SD card BS any day. It ****es me off that manufacturers are still shipping devices with 128MB with a cheesy SD card slot for a solution.

__________________
Palm Vx > Treo 650 > Centro > G1 > Pre > BlackBerry 9700

MannyZ28

I have a 8 gb card in my current Sprint touch, and I am barely using 1 gb of it. As long as you don't carry tons of music and movies with you, 8gb will go a long way. Yeah I am ****ed that I can't use that card, but oh well, got enough room to play with, and for me it's just not a deal killer. None of us are engineers, so who knows if size really is or isn't the issue. It's not just the size of card itself, you have to find a place to stick it in to as well. There are so many things in that phone, they have to sit in a certain way architectually, so just because there is some room SOMEWHERE in the phone into which a micro SD card would fit, it still needs to be in a accessible location.

Anyways, this whole cloud thing sounds great, but...I am kinda old school, I type in my contacts and phone numbers, I use Outlook Express, so what's an easy way to have the cloud rain information onto my new Pre when I get it? Will it accept a CSV file?

pgh1969pa

I could kill a 8GB card easy.

Speak for yourself....I am an engineer.

VaccPalm

For me the important usage of the cars i daily backups. On the road and you lose all your data. Backup files are pretty big since they back up the whole phone. Im not sure how you would backup without a SD card. Backup using the cloud ?