Pondering Over The Palm Pre 2 Smartphone

The Pre is already more than seven months old and by the time it will reach the UK and Europe at the end of the year, there are chances that rumours of a Pre 2 smartphone will be circulating.

It is likely that Palm has already started working on the next version of the handset after receiving a promising initial reception at CES back in January and very encouraging sales figure in June 2009.

Palm may well choose to stick to the current format which has not been as badly criticised as the Jay Leno inspired HTC G1 Android phone whose "chiseled chin" had to be trimmed slightly.

The new Pre may or may not come with a keyboard. The jury is still out there although we can discount two different versions of the phone. The screen might possibly be extended to a 3.5-inch model which would put in on par with the iPhone.

Storagewise, the fact that it comes "only" with 8GB has been viewed by many as an inconvenient given that most other rivals like the G2 or the N97 offer a microSD card reader option.

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The Pre 2 should either double or quadruple the internal memory or allow user to add more memory through an optional memory card.

Other issues that have been raised include the fact that the phone heats up pretty quickly and battery life is not as good as it could have been (two problems found on the iPnone 3GS as well).

Palm could also possibly step up production of the next generation Pre 2 (especially if Palm wants to reach the goal of one million handsets sold per month), include its wireless "pebble" charger and widen the range of territories where the smartphone will be available.

Furthermore, we already know that Palm's equivalent to the Apps Store, its App catalog, hit the one million downloads ceiling on Wednesday the 24th of June and is rising steadily despite the limited number of apps available then (30 in all, all of them free).

The success of the Pre 2 will also hinge on the popularity of Palm's online store. A more aggressive marketing campaign to seduce developers will hopefully increase the number of applications available for download.

Apple has a massive lead on Palm with 50,000 applications already instore but Palm just need to focus on churning out more (ed: there are around 50,000 applications available for Palm OS and Palm already has an emulator called "Classic" to run them).