Palm vs the iphone. Ding! Ding!
(Originally posted on Palmaddict 5/29/2007) Some things don’t have to wait for an iphone release and one of those things is a comparison of the navigation features between the Palm & the iphone. We were given a clear demonstration of how the iphone can help you find contacts using the finger scroll back in January. We can now compare this with how Palm deals with this. I think Quick Look-up is one of the best and most underrated features of the palm. Palm’s Quick Look-up may have even come before Apple’s instant search and definitely before Microsoft Vista’s version. I can finger scroll back and forth several times looking for my contacts if I don’t have my scroll technique down just right but with Quick Look up I can zoom in with pinpoint accuracy to any contact I want with just a few clicks.
Selecting the category before doing your look-up makes this even faster. So when it comes to the hand to hand gunfight I believe Palm can blow the smoke of it’s index finger and re-holster it’s hand while the iphone falls backwards without even get a shot off. The only thing I don’t like about Quick Look-Up is its lack of use in other applications, for example memo and a whole host of other third party programs. The only other programs I have noticed (after extensive research) that have used it are Keysuite & AddressXT but they limit it to the address book. Also Dictionary software seems fond of this navigation feature as well. Maybe some outliner, to do list software might pick this up. Hint, Hint.
