Palm Pre's 'Magsafe' vs Apple's iPhone 12

[trifid]

I mentioned this on another thread but I thought it'd be interesting to discuss in depth. Anyone remember Palm Pre had 'magsafe' back in 2009? I thought it was really interesting to see how they had implemented it and compare it to how Apple is doing it especially after seeing quite a bit of controversy surrounding several aspects of the implementation.

One thing I found interesting about the way Palm did it back in 2009 is that the magnets allowed you to change orientation 90º so that the phone snapped in place either in portrait or landscape mode.

The other interesting innovation in 2009 was that when docked, the phone would act differently (for example it'd default to phone speaker if you took a call). Also it seems they put a lot thought in the materials such that it wouldn't leave marks or scratch the phone.

Check out the videos below:

 

[lc96]

I loved my Palm Pre. Then went to Apple, iPhone 4, I think.

 

[Fried_Gold]

I had a Palm Pre, loved it but battery only lasted about 2-3 hours, even bought a new battery and it was exactly the same.

 

[deftio]

The touchstone only had magnets in the base - the phone didn't have any magnets just steel discs.

Also the touchstone had bidirectional communication between the dock and the phone, and later allowed phone to phone communications.

I designed the Touchstone - was an interesting ride to say the least.

 

[nickdalzell1]

The Palm Pre (and WebOS itself) also had Gesture navigation well ahead of Apple or Google. Way ahead of its time. Too bad they didn't get an LTE variant or I'd get one on Amazon and play with it. I missed WebOS entirely.

 

[Spock]

I loved my Palm Pre. Then went to Apple, iPhone 4, I think.

I did the same thing. I really enjoyed my Pre but I had the first generation and I could only use the hardware keyboard and it was to small for me. The software was wonderful, really felt modern to me.