Palm device collection.
[Part One of a two-part series]
If you already own a Palm device and you’ve been ogling a new Palm Pre, don’t let fear of migration stop you from buying. Be warned, however, that it’s not always a piece of cake to migrate your apps and data (even from another Palm device), no matter what the guy at the Sprint Store said.
I know what you’re thinking: How DO you move everything over from my (Treo/Centro) to the Pre?
What a pain this is gonna be!
What if I/he/she/it messes up and destroys my data?
…And the ever-popular: My LIFE is in that phone!
Fear not, my friends. First of all, let’s get something clear at the outset: There should be no reason for you to be losing any data on your Palm device anytime — EVER. After all, you ARE hot-syncing with your PC or Mac on a regular basis, aren’t you? And you have your computer set up to regularly back up all your important data to both on-site and off-site backup locations without human intervention, right? Well see there, you’ve already got THREE backups of your smartphone’s data. What are you worried about?
Palm Centro smartphone uses the old PalmOS.
Now, I’m not going to lie and pretend that moving your apps and data over is a simple, push-a-button-and-you’re-done process. The Pre uses a brand new operating system called webOS (finally, something to replace the incredibly ancient Palm OS!). webOS is incompatible with Palm OS apps, including the old Palm Desktop, HotSync and the thousands of third-party apps out there. But never fear — the job can be done, and we’ll show you how.
Today, we’ll see how to move your data — documents, MP3s, video files, PIM data — to your new Pre. We’ll also discuss which new Palm Pre apps can do the work of some old Palm OS apps.
Move your documents, MP3s, and video files
You’ll be able to store media files on your Pre just like on you old Palm device. It connects to PCs and Macs via USB cable, and presents itself as just another mass storage device, so you can move files on and off the handset easily. And now that the iTunes Store sells DRM-free AAC tracks, those will also play on the Pre. As a matter of fact, the Pre is compatible with iTunes, although no one can say how much longer that’s going to last. You can also buy MP3s from Amazon over the air. Very cool.
How to move raw PIM data into the Pre native apps
There are a few ways to move your PIM data to the Pre:
- The Pre works with Google Calendar and Contacts. You can use the The Palm Desktop app to export your existing PIM data (and your local Outlook data for that matter), and then you can import it into Google’s cloud apps. Then the Pre will sync with the Google cloud and Outlook. Voilà, you’re done! You can also sync your Pre via the cloud with Microsoft Exchange and with Facebook. Once your data is migrated to Google, your phone synchronizes with Google’s web services every 15 minutes.
- If you’re married to the Palm Desktop and you want to continue to sync your data with your local computer via your Pre’s wi-fi connection or via a third-party online service, you can find out more about those options here.
- If you want to connect your Pre to your computer via USB and migrate your data straight from Palm Desktop to your Pre without involving a Web portal, Palm’s website has more information about how to do that here.
Which new Pre apps replace old Palm apps?
Sprint TV is available on the Pre. The Pre will play sideloaded videos (media files transferred to a mobile device via USB, Bluetooth or by writing directly to a memory card for insertion into the mobile device) out of the box. For travel info, Handmark’s Pocket Express can be replaced by the Pre’s FlightView, which lets you track the current location of flights around the U.S. by route. Along with Google, this should be enough to do the job. There are no worries either about Pandora, Amazon, TeleNav-powered Sprint Navigation, and NASCAR — these all have native Pre apps. Better yet, the Pre can multitask, so you can have Pandora running in the background while performing other tasks. Finally, a webOS-compatible version of Documents To Go is coming later this year.
In Part 2, we’ll discuss how to run some of your old familiar Palm OS apps on your Pre — and how to get them installed there. Look for it in a few days. You’ll be sure not to miss it if you subscribe to our RSS feed by clicking here, or on the icon at the top right corner of this page.
