Blogger Phil Gyford recently decided he’d stop wondering which text input device is best for him and put them to the test. As you can see from the chart after the jump, the results, while interesting, aren’t really surprising. It makes sense that the keyboard would be the quickest, yet I’m also not surprised the iPhone, with its superior predictive text, is right behind it.

Today, I read an interesting article on MrGadget about why Apple needs to release the next generation of the iPhone soon. If they don’t, apparently Palm is going to break the deathgrip that Apple has on its growing portion of the cell phone market today. Needless to say, I wholeheartedly disagree (even though I want to see another iPhone just as much as the next Apple fanboy), and here are my reasons why.

With the Mobile World Congress currently taking place, it’s safe to say that there are going to be some big releases; some amazing devices. Take the Palm Pre, shown back at CES, for example. It’s possible it may be released at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona. But the question I have, is will any of these devices be an iPhone killer? Will something take Apple off the top spot?

The Palm Pre has yet to be released, and there is already tons of talk about Apple, Palm, intellectual property (IP), and all the other goodies that come along with introducing new products that could be considered similar to others. You probably remember Tim Cook’s statement earlier this week on their conference call about their IP and competition (or shall I say, about the Pre, specifically). On top of that news, there are a couple comments from Palm spokeswoman Lynn Fox to take into consideration.

Enter the Pre (pre what? you might ask). The Palm Pre. Palm’s newest smartphone, just announced today at CES, is slated to be the next iPhone killer: a smartphone that does all the same things the iPhone does, and then some. It features a multi-touch screen, but unlike the iPhone also comes with a physical slide-out QWERTY keyboard. And MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) capability, which gives you the ability to send video and picture messages. For a full comparison, see Harry McCracken’s excellent side-by-side T-Grid over at Technologizer.

In a lawsuit filed by Typhoon Touch last Monday, Apple, Inc.—along with ten other companies—were implicated in the proceedings. The lawsuit was focused on Dell, but Apple, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Lenovo, Panasonic, HTC, Palm, Samsung, Nokia, and LG were all mentioned. The lawsuit involves patents filed by Typhoon Touch, specifically numbers 5,379,057 (“Touch Screen and Computer more »

Sybase announced that it would be launching a new software for the iPhone that will let users access their email in a secured environment. This new program will be similar to the ones used in BlackBerry and Palm Treo handsets and will be made available to iPhone users sometime before the end of this year. more »

According to market analysts, the iPhone has ruined Palm’s smartphone bid and Research in Motion’s Blackberry is next to go. An analyst for Needham & Co. reports that Palm has the hardest battle against the iPhone, pushing up hardest against their outdated OS and awkward UI. Palm has seen decreasing user-ship even before the iPhone more »

Yesterday at Steve Jobs’ WWDC keynote, he made it clear that Apple was not going to make the same mistake with the iPhone that other device manufacturers have made with theirs. Manufacturers such as Palm have taken the open source stance on third-party application support, which has really become a complete hands-off approach. Apple on more »