What's the one thing that would convince you to buy a Palm Nova-powered smartphone?

Palm has announced that they'll be showing off their new operating system at CES, to be available on devices by mid-2009.

For me I'd love to see a really killer camera and video implementation, something that would let me ditch my Sanyo Xacti forever.

[#1 posted by schwal , December 15, 2008 11:52 AM]

An iphone/android level designed interface, cheaper, and on verizon.

[#2 posted by MB , December 15, 2008 11:52 AM]

Make it not suck.

Aside from that, a (slightly) thinner form factor and a better browser. Wifi and a camera that was worth a damn would be icing.

Just hope my 755p lasts until then (which may well be never).

[#3 posted by midknyte , December 15, 2008 11:53 AM]

The ability to load third party apps w/o nebulus approval. Oh wait, they already have that...

[#4 posted by 5000! , December 15, 2008 12:21 PM]

I'll second the request for a great camera. But even without it I'm ready and waiting to buy any new Palm smartphone that's not a Windows Mobile device.

[#5 posted by dacker , December 15, 2008 12:46 PM]

$100 and a $10/month data plan

(hey, a guy can dream!)

[#6 posted by Chris S , December 15, 2008 12:50 PM]

I want to be able to have the device on my Canadian carrier of choice. And not just "has the technology", but "is for sale".

... which is what I wanted for OS5/Garnet. My carrier never used Palm OS devices.

I like my T|E2, and only the cost of the T|X kept me from going there. So, I guess I want WiFi as well. But I didn't think I had to say that.

Joel, much as you would like the killer camera, I've yet to see a cell phone that could accomdate the optics to handle 5x or 3x zoom. I think no zoom means you will never get a killer camera in a PDA or cell platform. Good? Yes. Killer? No.

Finally - a new OS can be great, but backward compatibility is essential. I have a number of small Palm apps that work well, but are so old their sources have been lost to the mists of time. I want to still run them.

[#7 posted by Adam Fields , December 15, 2008 12:59 PM]

Running on Verizon, actual working fast connect/disconnect bluetooth (which is a big win for the blackberry currently), better/faster bluetooth tethering, smaller form factor, higher resolution screen, integrated vindigo functionality (but updated since 2001 without sacrificing the speed and simplicity that made the original STILL better than any of the other maps/restaurants/bathrooms/etc... services), multiple person calendar syncing (they acquired WeSync years ago, but never folded it in), a decent Mac desktop version, no confusing "green phone/red phone/what the hell does this button actually do" buttons.

[#8 posted by Anonymous , December 15, 2008 1:03 PM]

Here's what I want, being a happy user of the 700P and the Nokia N800:

- 640x480 color touchscreen
- backlit physical keyboard that partially covers the touchscreen, then slides away.
- at least one SDHC (or mini) slot
- Charges through miniUSB connector
- Good PalmOS emulation for legacy apps
- Updated, Linux-native versions of the built-in apps.
- An easily replaced battery that can handle 4 hours of talking, and 8 hours of web-browsing, and 36 hours of standby -- all together -- before being recharged.
- A 1/8" stereo headphone jack as well as a microjack for walkaround headset.
- 802.11b/g
- Versions for GSM, VZ and Sprint
- An open API to interface with the phone functions.

[#9 posted by monopole , December 15, 2008 1:16 PM]

Build quality, Build quality, Build quality, and a modern Bluetooth stack. I used to be a fanatical Palm user until their products started falling apart if you looked at them funny. Same for my friend, who simply gave up when he couldn't get a working Treo after three tries and his T|X failed four times.

[#10 posted by jahknow , December 15, 2008 1:23 PM]

Integrated Taser

[#11 posted by w000t , December 15, 2008 2:41 PM]

Scarlett Johansson

[#12 posted by eain , December 15, 2008 2:42 PM]

Copy & paste.

Seriously though, the #8 above pretty much sums it up.

[#13 posted by Clay , December 15, 2008 3:20 PM]

#1 is right; that's the only thing that will matter.

It's not about features or specs; Apple has proven that. It's principally about user experience: Everything, including feature set and build quality, all ultimately track back to a priority of user experience.

Only when every part of the design process, from case materials to UI font is tested with the question "how will this affect user experience?" will Palm have an iPhone competitor.

[#14 posted by technogeek , December 15, 2008 4:22 PM]

#9: +1

[#15 posted by Enochrewt , December 16, 2008 7:54 AM]

Most of these things listed above are hardware features, which is fine, but you'll be able to get that stuff in other phones. The meat of a Palm phone is the actual OS, and I'd like to see:

Better file management and program installation. When deleting applications left little orphaned files, which could eat up precious internal memory, and it was a challenge to find and get rid of them without a third party app such as FileZ. An actual install/uninstall process would be could.

Java Virtual Machine issues need to be cleared up. I don't remember exactly what the deal was, but I think Palm no longer wanted to pay for the license. A hard reset of the phone and you could no longer install it and it left you with less functionality than when you bought the phone.

Don't screw with the SMS messaging interface too much, much of the Palm OS interface needs to be updated, but this was near perfect, and shouldn't be touched except for some graphical polish.

And my only hardware suggestion is to not use the proprietary headset jack like in the Treo. I mean, it was still a 2.5 jack, but it only played mono sound if you didn't use the special adapter. That's just messed up.

[#16 posted by Adam Fields , December 17, 2008 7:30 AM]

I really liked the SMS messaging interface, except that it was totally broken on the 700p. It sometimes would completely freeze the phone for over a minute after sending a message, and every 2000 messages or so it just dumped the database entirely.

Which brings me to my #1 killer request: every built-in feature must work, every time, the first time, with no weird ui hiccups and no crashes. I can understand if weird things are unstable, but there's no excuse for locking up the phone by sending a text message.

[#17 posted by Rickmccl , December 24, 2008 5:38 PM]

Nethack, and ssh.