PhoneTalk

In this week's edition, we discuss Steve Jobs leaving Apple, the new BlackBerry Curve models, the BBM music service, and a presidential app. She also takes a closer look at the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and answers viewer questions.

Yesterday, we learned that HP is discontinuing support for Web OS devices, which means no more WebOS phones and TouchPad tablets. (Note: HP bought Palm last year and ditched the Palm name on the Pre, Pixi, and WebOS) First, if you currently have a WebOS device this news doesn’t mean anything is going to happen to those existing products. It simply means your next smartphone is probably not going to be a Pre, Pixi, or Veer.

Much of the reporting on the demise of the HP WebOS devices focuses on what it means for the industry going forward and speculates on just how many smartphone OS’ the market can handle. I’d rather take a look back at just what Palm devices did for the mobile industry and how we have a lot of the usability we have today is thanks to a little product called the Palm Pilot.

It started with a little PDA

Back in 1996, Palm (at the time a division of US Robotics) came out with its first PDA, the Palm Pilot. It was definitely different than the other digital organizers currently available. Its pocket-friendly size, four main buttons for navigation (sound familiar?), and a unique handwriting-based input method called Graffiti set it apart. At that time, people were carrying around fairly large devices with full QWERTY keyboards made by companies like Casio. In fact, the only real competition the Pilot had was another device called the Psion Series III Organizer. In case you don’t remember what happened to that product, you can still find remnants of it in the Symbian smartphone OS. There was also another product trying to find a place in consumer’s lives, Apple’s Newton. (For more information on the Newton, read this story on Gizmodo – it’s a great summary.)

In time, those products disappeared from the market, but not the Palm Pilot. That device continued to evolve. We didn’t know it in the late 90s, but the Palm Pilot gave us a glimpse at the type of products we use today. This is probably a result of how it was created. I remember attending a press event for Handspring (the first company to license the Palm OS and was later acquired by PalmOne) where Jeff Hawkins told the story of how he carried a block of wood around in his pocket while developing the Palm Pilot. As he walked around, he would think about what he wanted that piece of wood to do. That speaks to UI on many levels. For example, the first Palm Pilot measured 4.7 x 3.2 x 0.7 inches and weighed 5.7 ounces. That kind of set the standard for the acceptable size of a mobile device. Today, we have tons of smartphones with 4.3-inch touchscreen displays touting a similar size and weight. Take the HTC EVO 3D (Read more)

In this week's episode learn more about Google's intent to purchase Motorola, HP's decision to stop support of WebOS devices, and new BlackBerry Bold's coming to Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile. Also, find out how to get the Android 2.3.4 update on T-Mobile's HTC Sensation 4G.

In this edition, we cover new features coming to Apple's iOS 5, Sprint's Motorola XPRT and Motorola PHOTON 4G phones, the Motorola TRIUMPH for Virgin Mobile, and tablet news about the HP TouchPad and Toshiba Thrive. Watch the video below to get the full scoop.

Last week, HP announced its new webOS line-up and although the Pre 3 and HP Veer won't be available for a while Verizon will be offering a new Pre, the Pre 2. The new phone running webOS 2.0 looks a lot like its predecessor, the Pre Plus, and will be available this month. The Pre 2 will feature a 3.1-inch glass multi-touch screen, 1GHz processor, 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, WiFi (the connection can be used as mobile HotSpot for up to 5 WiFi-enabled devices), Bluetooth, and 16GB of onboard storage for saving music, movies, e-mail, pictures, and more. The cell phone will also support full HTML web browsing with Adobe Flash Player 10.1 and Skype mobile.

After much speculation about what HP would do with Palm, we saw today that the company has been busy as it unveiled two new webOS phones and the webOS TouchPad tablet. Perhaps the most innovative feature shown at the press conference today was the new level of synching and sharing demo'd between the TouchPad and the webOS smartphone. But first, here's a run down of the products announced:

First up is the Pre 3. It's similar in style to the Palm Pre, but is a bit more robust. The Pre 3 sports a 5-megapixel camera with flash and the ability to record 720p HD video and a front facing VGA camera for video calls, it also has a bright 24-bit display, a Qualcomm 1.4GHz processor, improved web surfing experience with HTML5 features and Adobe Flash Player 10.1 support, and even supports industry standard VPN to connect to corporate networks. There's no word on if it will be for CDMA or GSM networks. Like its predecessor it also maintains many noteworthy features such as Mobile HotSpot (share the data connection with up to 5 WiFi-enabled devices), and the phone will be available in 8GB or 16GB configurations.

Next, is the HP Veer the smallest Palm WebOS smartphone to date: it's about the size of a credit card, which makes it extremely pocket friendly. It measures 54.5 mm x 84.0 mm x 15.1 mm and weighs 103 grams. The smartphone sports a Snapdragon 800Mhz processor, 5-megapixel camera, 8GB of onboard storage, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and a 2.57-inch glass display. Like the Pre 3, it has an improved web surfing experience with HTML5 and Adobe Flash Player 10.1 support, and you can share the data connection with up to 5 other WiFi-enabled devices via the Mobile HotSpot feature. It's a quadband GSM phone. Finally, the HP Veer supports HP Synergy, a way to bring together information from multiple sources across the web automatically, so the information you need is in one place.

Finally, we have the TouchPad, the webOS tablet. It's a pretty slick looking device with a nice bit of innovation included. It sports a 9.7-inch capacitive multitouch display, virtual keyboard, instant-on access, support for Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Snapdragon 1.2GHz dual-core processor, front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for video calling, and it will be available in 16GB or 32GB configurations. Now for the smart part: Whenever you launch new activities the webOS will automatically group related cards - this makes for an extremely organized desktop. Additionally, with the Touchstone you can easily share data between the webOS phone and the TouchPad. For example, you can share a URL with the Pre3 simply by tapping the two devices together (almost like magic) or you can start reading a website or blog on a TouchPad and then tap your smartphone to take it to go.