The widgets, gestures, etc., are all well & nice. But, the under-screen gesture area's a nice innovation. Nobody likes trying to read around their own fingers.
But I think what makes Palm so competitive with this is how good of a PDA it is.
Note: the calendar and notification systems are more advanced than what you get on the iPhone and Android in v1. They take better advantage of the available space, are better integrated, and probably (knowing palm's history) will require fewer clicks to do useful things. Palm's always done a good job in these areas, and the competition's been weak.
Also, the GPS application looks like a modern self-contained GPS, not the google-maps-with-a-dot version on the iPhone.
As for using HTML/JS, it's lowering the bar for people to develop, almost to the floor.
Finally, Palm's got a tired, but well-recognized leader name. Which, for enterprises, is a lot better than Apple or Google. I can see the Palm being the place where people go if/when Blackberry fails. The iPhone can stay an iPod-phone, for consumers, and the google phone a stillborn geek device.
They actually timed the various user interactions on different phones. I'm not sure of their methodology, but for what it's worth, the Palm Centro came out at or near the top for the organizer and messenging features (but not so well for the dialing features). Hopefully this bodes well for their future phones.
But I think what makes Palm so competitive with this is how good of a PDA it is.
Note: the calendar and notification systems are more advanced than what you get on the iPhone and Android in v1. They take better advantage of the available space, are better integrated, and probably (knowing palm's history) will require fewer clicks to do useful things. Palm's always done a good job in these areas, and the competition's been weak.
Also, the GPS application looks like a modern self-contained GPS, not the google-maps-with-a-dot version on the iPhone.
As for using HTML/JS, it's lowering the bar for people to develop, almost to the floor.
Finally, Palm's got a tired, but well-recognized leader name. Which, for enterprises, is a lot better than Apple or Google. I can see the Palm being the place where people go if/when Blackberry fails. The iPhone can stay an iPod-phone, for consumers, and the google phone a stillborn geek device.