Palm Pre - Will Production Match the Demo?

Well, if Palm doesnt release anything which is as good as the demonstration i think they will die. I doubt they can survive bad reviews.

So, it can not be buggy, and it can not be slower than what we saw. Palm also needs to release all the applications they demonstrated.

Other applications can come later, if they have some sort of update function.

Agree with Jon, this thing needs to come out on point! If bad reviews start coming in, not just fanboy ones, but big name websites, then this thing will be doomed, same with palm.

I do think that Palm understands this and it will succeed though

It was my impression that the 'secret key combos' were for things that they have working already, but just to automate messages popping up because you can't exactly sit around and wait for a text message to come in while you're trying to demo it.

I fully expect everything that they've shown to work just as well as it did in the demos.

I don't know how there's any possible way they can exceed the expectations of features they've shown in the demos, but I do have a slight feeling that there's a couple things they still have up their sleeve. That being said, I won't be disappointed if they 'only' match their demo in the final product.

I do not get the point in matching the demo version, the demos did not demonstrate, Navigation, Pandora, Documents-to-go, SprintTV, etc. Along with many other features and applications. Speaking of Navigation, there is info somewhere of someone mentioning Telenav (Sprints Navigation) was very smooth and impressive on the Pre. I also remember a Palm official getting a call during his demonstration so I guess there were live versions available.

Calm down people.

It's just like tech columnist David Pogue said: You haven't even touched one yet, so quit you're grumbling.

Pogue HAS toched one, and was so smitten by the experience that he want's one. That's a pretty good testimonial, since Pogue is second-biggest Apple homer on the planet (behind Walt Mossberg.

Palm's track record with WebOS is that they are taking their time to get it right. The most frustrating thing is how long it has taken Palm to get the new OS to market with their post-Foleo team.
They likely could have released a phone just as buggy as the Storm many months ago. And this is exactly the reason we can not yet buy it at the end of January, 2009.
This article does make the sobering point that Palm needs to get it right. All recent indicators are that they will.

Secret key combos? Where'd you get that from? With all the demo videos on the web given by so many different Palm employees, people would have seen the secret key combos if there were any. But if you watch any of the one on one demo videos, you'll see that there are none.

At the big presentation, maybe there was one for the calendar alarm, but the main Palm demo guy said at the start of that big presentation that it was the actual software.

Why would they have demoed so much and let David Pouge touch it if so much if it was fake? I bet there are still some bugs to work out and some debug code to remove but there can't be anything that was fake. Just think how bad it would look if Palm got caught faking something! I think they're too smart to try that.

I cannot speak for the industry, but I am expecting the Pre to be pretty close to what they demonstrated. I am expecting a few bugs initially (given a brand new phone, new OS, new 3rd party development). So I plan to be a bit forgiving. As long as Palm produces regular updates after the launch to fix MINOR bugs, they will have a very happy customer & fan in me.

I beg to differ. Palm will make sure any and all bugs are going to be dealt with before releasing this phone. They been working on this phone and OS for over two years. I think anything that has been worked on for that long would have gotten all of the bugs taken care of. Lastly, they can not afford any bad criticism. Pre and webOS needs to be extremely successful or Palm will fade away.

That's just unrealistic. No device of this complexity has ever shipped without some bugs slipping past testing. I'm sure Palm has been diligent about fixing any bugs they have found, but when the Pre hits the stress of real world use by hundreds of thousands of people who don't know how it's "supposed" to be used and try things the designers never imagined, well stuff happens. Hopefully they will be minor bugs and easily fixed, but they will be there. Palm doesn't want criticism, but they can't afford to wait much longer to release either.

It's not unrealistic to come out without any bugs on it. It's been done before by every phone manufacturer. Of course, like the previous comment when the masses gets their hands on it things can go wrong. However, you have remember, most phones from the drawing board to the consumer is about an year. The Pre is been in works for two years. Now, where the phone might crash or freeze is something that can not be avoided. All phones (especially smart phones) does this once in awhile.

Odds are better that the actual device will be closer to the hype. One reason is there's little to no third-party software available for it, therefore they have no previous device data point to compare the performance to (except the demo'd ones).

One major problem Palm kept running into with previous devices is that they seemed to do all their beta testing in the hands of novices using completely "stock" devices. When the phones got into the hands of "real" users they easily found serious and not-so-serious problems because they were REAL users.

Since the "Pre" basically wipes the legacy slate clean, if Palm screws this one up too then they're lucky to survive the year.

I think it will. Palm knows this is their big break to make it back in the business and stir up the wireless game again like they did years back with the Treo. They will make sure that the Pre works great and doesn't require a lot of firmware updates off the bat, like some phones that have come out recently.

The only thing I'm concerned with is the keyboard. I've seen plenty on the OS and I am confident in it's ability to multi-task well but I still don't know exactly what typing on the Pre will be like. I do a lot of texting and emails so my main device must have a great physical or virtual qwerty keyboard that I can type on accurately and easily. I used to have an iPhone and the auto-correction software worked great for me as I was able to send plenty texts and emails with ease. I now have a Bold which I can also send plenty texts and emails on but I am slower on the physical keyboard. I'm still getting used to having a physical qwerty so we'll see how that goes for me.