14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that Palm's Pre mobile phone can attract a lot of people after all, although its sales have been easily surpassed by the Apple iPhone 3GS. ZodTTD, one of the popular names on the emulation scene, has managed to come up with a version of psx4all for the newly launched device, making it possible to enjoy PlayStation action directly on the Palm handset.
The Palm Pre has been touted by its maker to be capable of offering a wide range of capabilities to its users, and some people doubted the device's power, yet it seems that they were wrong. It looks like ZodTTD, already known for the series of hacks and jailbroken emus made available for Apple's iPhone, has brought some of his stuff to the Pre as well, and says that this device performs better than Apple's newly released iPhone 3GS.
According to ZodTTD, Pre also features some of the hardware available on Apple's device, or on the Pandora gaming handheld, and is able to offer enhanced performance. Even so, the more important thing is that psx4all has been ported to the Pre, and that users will soon be able to enjoy it on their own devices.
For the time being, however, things are still in development, and not all the features are working as they were supposed to. As such, ZodTTD says, “there is no sound output (but it’s emulated), as Pulse Audio is required for the Palm Pre, and I have yet to support it. It will come soon.” At the same time, the hardware rotation and scaling still need some work done, as for the moment the raw framebuffer device is being used.
Other issues that are under development at the moment include the fact that keys turn unresponsive at times, and the possibility to have the game played in full screen when in landscape mode. For what it's worth, this guy seems to be rather excited about the power of Pre's OMAP3 SoC (System On Chip) with its ARM Cortex A8, and says that “the Palm Pre has the performance edge over the iPhone 3GS, at very least with my software.”