[Pre] Something Fishy About the CES Demos

[ScrapMaker]

Why is it, that EVERY, and I mean every single demonstrator, and even videos pouring out later, use the SAME EXACT example for "universal search?" It's weird that they ALWAYS do the Blue Man Group. Even videos popping up recently are using the same exact example. It makes me wonder if the OS still has limitations, but they wanted to have it ready for CES?

Not that I don't think the Pre will be great when it's released--I was just pointing out how weird it was that they all used the same boring example...

Also, I found it strange that the text messages and IM messages were responding so dang quick... as if, they were simulated. I mean, at one point, he sent out a text, and got a sentence-long response in less than 2 seconds. Same for IM stuff, (but that is a hair more believable.)

Overall, I liked the CES presentation, and it really put the Pre in a great light.

mmmmm... Pre! ooh, and Pre with SE will be amazing... it's just so powerful, that I see the turn-by-turn directions being as snappy as a dedicated device :)

[Noodle]

Wirelessly posted (Noodle's Phone: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320))

i'm sure they had some sort of auto response set up for the I'M and text demo. Or maybe they had someone backstage ready to respond for the demo. As far as the universal search who knows why they just used the blue man group. I'm sure it will work just fine.

[ScrapMaker]

Wirelessly posted (Noodle's Phone: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320))

i'm sure they had some sort of auto response set up for the I'M and text demo. Or maybe they had someone backstage ready to respond for the demo. As far as the universal search who knows why they just used the blue man group. I'm sure it will work just fine.

I hope so... I know it will be great, but the reason this is any concern, is maybe the launch really IS further away than a lot of us are hoping... Makes me think that the phones had limited functionality and that they were scripting/staging a lot of it.

Of what I saw though, it looked amazing, (from the videos.)

[noktekniq]

most developers or companies would create some sort of demo feature on the phone so that it makes the performance look great. it's just like the commercial for the blackberry storm. everyone thought it looked awesome, but the performance and the experience was a true disappointment

[Darth Pooh]

I believe Palm stayed at the Venetian Hotel.... that's where guess who performs? Yep, the Blue Man Group... sounds like a nice little discount was given for the plugs.

[Darth Pooh]

And to add, if you check out other videos, specifically... Palm Info Center videos, they actually bring up their website, so it isn't like you weren't seeing a functional phone. But there was a script all of the Palm Reps obviously stuck to.

[ScrapMaker]

And to add, if you check out other videos, specifically... Palm Info Center videos, they actually bring up their website, so it isn't like you weren't seeing a functional phone. But there was a script all of the Palm Reps obviously stuck to.

True, I did not know that there was a correlation to the BMG and hotels/etc..

I can imagine there are some deals going on there..

I don't doubt the prowess of the Pre, but I kinda wonder about the IM/SMS stuff, if it was REAL, or somehow scripted... it happened to "on-time" to be relying on ANY wireless provider.

It would have been hilarious if the messages didn't show up at all.

So I can see WHY they would use a demo, but I wonder if that's what they did, or if this truly was a full phone, getting REAL SMS and IM, and it's just good where there was no delays...

[Darth Pooh]

True, I did not know that there was a correlation to the BMG and hotels/etc..

I can imagine there are some deals going on there..

I don't doubt the prowess of the Pre, but I kinda wonder about the IM/SMS stuff, if it was REAL, or somehow scripted... it happened to "on-time" to be relying on ANY wireless provider.

It would have been hilarious if the messages didn't show up at all.

So I can see WHY they would use a demo, but I wonder if that's what they did, or if this truly was a full phone, getting REAL SMS and IM, and it's just good where there was no delays...

Completely agreed on the delays (or should I say non-delays) of the SMS's, but that was for the Pre Demo... it wasn't meant to show off service abilities but how the OS handles notifications. Therefore, I don't think a scripted auto response is that big of a deal. We know it's obviously going to work ;)

At CES, almost no cell service works reliably... repeaters inside the building can barely handle the traffic going through them.

[NM08SRT8]

Well, Being a Demo, they have to have the phone set up in just away to demo everything. Why they used "BLU" is because thats how they have the phone setup, purposely. Peoples last names, emails, etc are all set this way to demo off what all the phone can look up and/or search for while you're searching for it. Nothing fishy about it honestly. Everything will be fine.

[jhoff80]

And don't forget the awesome Arrested Development references the demo allowed for, between Michael Bluth and Tobias Funke in Contacts, as well as the Blue Man Group in general.

:lol:

[ScrapMaker]

And don't forget the awesome Arrested Development references the demo allowed for, between Michael Bluth and Tobias Funke in Contacts, as well as the Blue Man Group in general.

:lol:

Arg, I want this phone now! ;)

I am getting fed up with the sluggishness of my Touch, and I want to get the Pro, again, now that hardware version 2 seems much, much better...

I wonder if I can convince Sprint to let me upgrade twice? hrm like, a gauranteed upgrade of some kind...

[udratherbme]

The demos have to be a script in order to show off the possibilities of the phone... texts could com in that fast if you are expecting it and know what is about to happen, but like dvd players and tvs that have demo programs all that stuff was programmed to happen along w/ the script that the palm reps are supposed to follow... again it has not passed FCC regulations yet so it is only so much they can show off

[cpm199]

Yes, here is a good article that seems fairly unbiased about the Palm and here is just one excerpt from that article about the Universal Search feature.

"Dialing is somewhere where Palm's reliance on Universal Search becomes an over reliance on Universal Search. To dial a contact, you either have to pull up the contacts app and manually scroll down to the person you want (there's no alphabet shortcut) or start typing. So, when you have hundreds of contacts, your only reasonable choice is to use the search. There isn't even a "favorites" screen of any kind; Palm just gives you a retro speed dial feature where you can map numbers to particular keys on the keyboard—a clumsy solution for speed dialing.

Speaking of Universal Search, it does actually work quite well. It's the same concept as on iPhone 3.0, searching your contacts, apps, Google, Google Maps, Wikipedia and Twitter for whatever you type. Searching is actually faster than the iPhone's search, but only because it doesn't also search emails, or calendar entries or your music. So that "Universal" in Universal Search isn't quite so Universal.

Universal Search for contacts works well"

http://gizmodo.com/5277499/palm-pre-review

[Zeeshan]

I'm sure blue man group was used for advertising purposes.

on a side note, this actually made me want to see that show and i watched it a couple months later when i went to vegas for a couple days on business. so i guess it worked?