In a tucked away room in the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, Sprint and Palm are demonstrating a number of Pre applications for the first time. Earlier this afternoon we got a bit of footage of Classic, a PalmOS emulator by MotionApps’ purposed for running any legacy applications you may have laying around. Since then, we’ve also had the opportunity to check out the Pandora, Fandango, Sprint TV, FlightView, and Nascar applications, and brought back a boatload of video for you to check out.
For all videos below, I’d recommend hitting the HQ button for the sake of visibility. These applications are all pretty dang gorgeous, so the extra click is worth it.
Pandora:
They were one of the first to be disclosed as being in the know when it came to the webOS SDK, and now they’re one of the first with something to show. Pandora brings all the streaming radio functionality you’d expect of an app to bear the name, but leverages the Pre’s notifications bar to serve as a media controller from outside the app.
Fandango:
Like all of the apps Palm had on display, the Fandango application is reaaally smooth. The UI is gorgeous, it localizes theater times and ticket availability via GPS. A bit of a neat trick: it can automatically add the movie to your calendar, making sure you don’t miss your flick when you lose track of time whilst grabbing a pre-show drink, and allowing you to invite others.
Sprint TV:
The fact that the Pre is launching exclusively on Sprint is a bit of a big deal. Unlike AT&T with their iPhone deal, Sprint is making sure to get some of their services onto the device right out of the box. Sprint TV is one of Sprint’s popular offerings, allowing you to pull live video feeds from CNN, Fox Sports, Disney, ABC, the Speed channel, and others.
FlightView:
Gotta pick up grams at the airport? Want to check if her flight is on schedule? FlightView is a fairly basic application, but it serves a purpose. Punch in the flight info, and you’ll get notifications of any changes along with access to a live flight tracker once it’s in the air. Recently searched flights are automatically stored for later viewing.
Nascar:
Not to unfairly generalize here – but is there all that much overlap between the Palm Pre’s audience and devout Nascar fans?
Whether it sees much use, the Nascar application seemed well designed. The demonstrator had a bit of trouble getting it to connect to video streams while we were recording, but we’d seen cars successfully tearing around the screen just minutes before. I’ve gotta ask: Any Nascar fans out there dying for the Pre?