The official Google blog seems to be excited about the recent launch of the Palm Pre smartphone. The gadget’s webOS is compatible with its built in features like Google Search, Google Maps, and YouTube. Users can also amalgamate their Google Contacts, Gmail, and Google Calendar to the Palm Pre.
The smartphone’s universal search feature is expected to be one of the most widely used functionalities. With this search functionality, users can type a query from the home screen, without the need to launch the web browser. At times, the input query does not find a match with any of the users’ contact info or any application within the phone. The user will then be directed to search either on the web with Google, local places on Google Maps, articles on Wikipedia or Twitter.
The advantage of Google Maps featured onto this device is that it would search for nearby businesses and users’ points of interest based on the consumers’ location. This feature can only be available if the user has activated Location Services. This capability is built onto the smartphones’ operating system and the phone displays Google Maps icon amongst its built-in applications.
Palm aptly names its operating system as webOS as all applications running on this platform are controlled by a Webkit-based rendering engine for content. This enables easy portability of Google Maps to the operating system. Users can take full advantage of known Google Maps features such as My Location, local search, driving directions and traffic.
Additionally, Palm has built a YouTube application using Palm’s Native application MoJo SDK which features on the Palm Pre. It uses HTML, CSS, and JavaScript development tools similar to web app. This application makes watching videos fun, as it auto-rotates to landscape orientation so that it fully utilizes the dynamics provided by the phone screen.
This device is also equipped with Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts. Just by entering their account name and password, the smartphone provides results by synchronizing the users’ email, calendar events, and contacts. Moreover it supports the IMAP IDLE protocol so that users can access push Gmail.
The Google applications are devised using web standards in combination with Palm’s MoJo SDK.