Palm Pre Review

Reviewed by: Emily Anderson – Sep 06, 2009

Introduction

The buzz surrounding the Palm Pre has shaken the smartphone world. On the verge of bankruptcy, Palm poached Jon Rubinstein, the project manager of Apple’s iPod, to head its research and development. A year later, the result was the Palm Pre.

Palm Pre

Your Price: $199.99 with service

Many have compared the Pre to the popular iPhone. Both have touch screens, robust operating systems, a wide range of applications, Internet, GPS, etc. — but the Pre adds on a QWERTY keypad and a 3.2-megapixel camera in a smaller design package.

Its specialty is integration. Running on Palm’s new WebOS software, the Pre has a feature called “Synergy” that combines information from multiple sources, so calendar items, emails, text and photo messages, email messages and contacts are integrated into a single list.

Calendars from a user’s desktop, online email and Internet be viewed together, and conversations with each contact are combined into a single chat-style window.

Plus, more than one application can stay open at once, so there’s no need to close emails for a call, end a call for an instant message, end instant messaging to play a song and so on.

It’s not a perfect phone, though. There’s no camcorder, flash support, on-screen keypad or slot for a memory card. Microsoft Office items can be read but not edited on the phone. And applications, although handy, don’t go quite as far as those on the iPhone.

The Palm Pre can keep a person connected and organized. It can also keep a person entertained. But the applications menu doesn’t have a large enough buffet to serve every interest.

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Design

The Pre’s completely black shell has two effects. The good effect is that it makes the screen pop even more than it already does, considering its color capacity and high resolution. The not so good effect is that it makes some keys hard to find, especially the keys on the edges of the phone.

It slides open to reveal a full QWERTY keypad. Designed at a slight angle, the Pre fits in the hand easier than the rigid iPhone, with a screen that is easier to see while typing. Its smooth raised keypad is simple to use and easy to read — though they’re not very large — and backlit for typing at night. More room between keys and a longer space bar would make typing easier since typing errors occasionally happen.

The right side has a slot to plug in the phone’s charger or micro USB chord, the left side has volume keys, and the top of the phone has a headset jack, a ringer switch to turn sounds off and on, and the power key.

The Palm Pre weighs 135 grams, is 3.9 inches tall, 2.3 inches across and two-thirds of an inch thick.

The Pre has a vibrant screen and an uncluttered keypad, but the keys — sometimes hard to find on the phone’s jet-black shell — could be larger.

Its sleek design, smaller size and slight curve when it slides open make it easier to hold than the larger, stick-straight iPhone. The QWERTY keyboard is also a nice addition compared to the iPhone’s on-screen keypad, but the keys are unfortunately small on the Pre. But having a smaller screen, even with good resolution, still means a littler view of videos and other screens.

Out of the box, the Palm Pre comes with a Lithium Ion battery, AC phone charger, stereo headset, micro-USB sync cable, carry pouch, recycling envelope, terms and conditions of services booklet and guides for getting started and features in English and Spanish.

Video of Palm Pre webOS 1.2 in Action

If you still haven’t got your fill of unauthorized webOS 1.2 information, then perhaps this will sate your desire: jhoff80 has posted a video on YouTube detailing some of the changes in the forthcoming update. Of particular interest is the new copy/paste functionality in the browser, which now lets you select both text and graphics. Huzzah!

Other confirmed browser upgrades include image saving & URL copying (by holding Orange + tapping) and improved zoom on text-entry fields. Also coming is the oft-requested email searching, and a minor change to notification behavior that doesn’t seem to be for the better. Hit the jump for the video!

Palm Pre: The Missing Manual Published

Call off the sniffer dogs and the search choppers, folks: the Palm Pre’s Missing Manual has been found! For some odd reason Palm neglected to include copies of this weighty 287-page tome in the Pre’s packaging. (Possibly because it would have had to have been shredded and compacted into a tiny cube of paper pulp in order to fit.)

But I digress. O’Reilly’s new book is written by USA Today personal-tech columnist Ed Baig, includes a CD-ROM and (most importantly) is in full-color for maximum prettiness. Covering everything from gestures to media, it promises to “help you go from newcomer to expert in no time” and comes in both dead-tree and ebook editions, which will set you back $24.99 and $19.99, respectively. Or $27.49 for those greedy types who just have to have it all. It ships this week.

New Palm phones in Sprint inventory: P120 and C40

Precentral posted a leaked screenshot of Sprint’s inventory management system showing 3 Palm devices, other than the Centro. The first is the 100 we already know – the Palm Pre at $549.99. But after that are two more models we haven’t seen: the 120 and C40. The 2 new devices both share the $1.00 placeholder price, which of course will change once the devices are confirmed.

So does this mean that the 120 represents a Pre with extra memory? And the C40 represents a completely new device like the rumored Palm Eos?

“So now the question we have to ask is what’s what? If the P100 is the Pre, perhaps we should reason that the P1XX series is going to be the Pre and its derivatives, which could mean that the P121 and P120 are a variation on the Pre, perhaps one with more memory (an easy change to make). Going with that hardcore logic, the C40 would be an entirely different model, presumably the Eos, which we have heard will land on Sprint. If true, this would mean that the Verizon inventory screen indicates that they will be receiving two versions of the Pre and not the Eos, at least not right away.”

Source: Precentral.net

Facebook on the Palm Pre is Unofficially Getting Better

thout a doubt, I think the iPhone is now the “Facebook phone,” courtesy of the stellar new Facebook application. It’s so good that some Facebookers I’ve contacted are actually considering an iPhone purchase. I’m wondering if this signals the start of a new trend — “killer” apps might actually affect consumer handset purchases in the future. But the awesomeness of Facebook 3.0 for iPhone doesn’t mean my Palm Pre is completely left in the cold. I’ve been watching the development of FriendsFlow over the past weeks. It’s a homebrew application that’s starting to rival the semi-lame http://x.facebook.com web page that the Pre works with.

I wouldn’t say that FriendsFlow is a fully functional Facebook client, nor a serious competitor to the iPhone’s new version — not by a long shot. But it shows promise. There’s a configurable interval for refreshes, so you don’t need to reload for updates all the time. And it leverages the Palm Pre’s native notification system. I don’t see a way to view photos, see events or post more than comments or likes to a news feed, so there’s plenty of work yet to be done.

While it matures, I’ve got it installed, and I keep upgrading as often as updates become available. For the news feed alone, I’ve actually been running it all the time while the Pre sits on the Touchstone charger — makes for a nice little way to keep up with my friends.

iPhone Killer, Qu’est Que C’est? Maybe “Pre”

Palm, once king of all handhelds, released its highly-anticipated Pre smartphone–the first to be powered by the company’s new webOS operating system–over the weekend to rave reviews. But it’s not the twittering (or Twittering) of tech reviewers that caught my eye. I was struck by what Palm Executive Chairman Jon Rubinstein told Reuters:

“‘For us, the opportunity is not to take customers away from RIM or Apple,’ but rather to entice users of lower-level cell phones to upgrade to a more powerful smartphone.”

In other words, the Pre–not the Blackberry Storm, nor the next version of the iPhone expected to be announced this morning–could commoditize smartphones. This may ensure once and for all that mobile marketing (from SMS to mobile Web ads) is the essential way to reach consumers.

The new handset has a lot going for it: Offers the best of both touchscreen and QWERTY; software allows for easy multitasking; battery can be replaced by the owner her/himself.

Consumers seem to dig all this. Certain Sprint stores around the country sold out of the Pre on Saturday. That might be the dark lining of the silver cloud: Consumers, rather than the targeted corporate clients, are the ones excited about the Pre.

No, Palm’s flagship handset isn’t without its flaws, like the fact that it only works on CDMA networks (not good if Palm wants to enter the global smartphone race) and the dearth of third-party applications.

But consider that the Wall Street Journal’s Walt “Thank You Apple, May I Have Another” Mossberg says: “It’s a beautiful, innovative and versatile hand-held computer that’s fully in the iPhone’s class… I’ve been testing the Pre for a couple of weeks, and I like it a lot.”

Sounds like the Pre could have more going for it than the other smartphone big boys.