Now that HP has Palm firmly in its grip it could be seen as a time to look positively at the future of the company. It could be a time to expect the glory days of Palm OS all over again. It could be a time to rejoice in the brilliant webOS running on better hardware. It could be many things, but the past is now completely irrelevant as far as Palm is concerned.
The Palm name means little in an industry that is now dominated by RIM, Apple and Google. It holds little recognition to 99% of people who are only just discovering smartphones. The fact is that Palm’s glory days occurred when the whole world wasn’t looking. The backing of HP is important of course and it will help, but HP is not a recognised name in the world of mobile technology. This may as well be a start-up company rather than two mythical heavyweights launching smartphones and tablets to a world already confused by too many devices.
It won’t be as simple as I have described above, but there is a danger that new HP/Palm products will fail to be recognised outside of the circles that care about Palm and remember what it stood for. Almost nothing from the original Palm days remain and while this is sad, it doesn’t make sense to cling on to something that does not exist anymore. HP may well come up with a killer device, and I surely hope it does because all competition is good, but let’s not kid ourselves that much of Palm will exist in the final product.
I would love to go back to Palm. As good as my HTC HD2 is; it is still burdened with Windows, and all the memory issues that go with it. When the Pre was announced, I was all excited, then the reviews of poor hardware started to appear. Palm lost its appeal, and I went back to Windows after a short stay with a Centro ( to be fair, the Centro was good for me, but failing eyesight meant that the screen was too small ).
If/When HP do release a new phone, I will have a look. For us Palm fans, it may be what we were expecting from the Pre when it launched. But I will be looking for some degree of backward compatibility ( I really miss DateBk6 ), but most of all, I miss the reliability.