Video: Third-party Applications on Palm’s Pre

While Palm isn’t an official exhibitor at the CTIA Wireless show, their partner carrier is. Last night at the MobileFocus event, I swung by the Sprint booth with Matt Miller and found that they had two Palm Pre handsets. Matt Crowley from Palm gave us a 7-minute look at third-party applications based on Palm’s webOS.

We got a look at Fandango, which is an excellent example of a well-integrated title that leverages the Pre’s native functions. Using Fandango, you search for a movie and the app shows events in your area based on the phone’s GPS. Even better: When you buy tickets for show through the app, the event is automatically entered in the Pre’s calendar. Slick.

Matt and I also saw the NASCAR app and I already want it. I subscribe to NASCAR’s TrackPass, which uses real-time, in-car telemetry to show me where every driver is, right on my computer. That same functionality is in the handset application. I have yet to see that on any other mobile platform, although Sprint may offer it as a paid service. The carrier is the title sponsor of NASCAR.

There’s plenty more to see: Google Maps, the program launcher, Amazon’s MP3 service for direct music purchases (w00t!) and more, so have a look. You’ll note that this video is actually Matt’s; he was kind enough to let me publish it, since I didn’t realize that my video camera had run out of storage memory partially through the vid. Thanks to Matt for covering me on this one. And for not laughing at me due to my SD card issues…well, at least he didn’t laugh while I was around.

After the video was shot, we got a chance to get our fingers on the keyboard. If I was hard pressed to pick a potential Achille’s Heel to this device at the moment, I’d likely go with the keyboard. The keys are small; Centro-small, if you will. That may not be an issue for folks, but I wanted to give it a mention. The keys do have a nice, rubber feel, but they’re as small as they can be while still maintaining a level of usefulness. That’s not likely to stop me from purchasing a Pre, however. The software integration with web services has me giddy.