Fommy Product Review:
Overview: Well the promised day has finally arrived after literally years of waiting by some, the Palm Pre has been released and we got our own. The Palm Pre and it's brand new WebOS may signal a new age for Palm or it may sadly be the last nail in the coffin. But after taking a long look at it, I believe that the iPhone, Android and maybe even BlackBerry have a serious competitor in Palm now.
Screen: First, I have to say, I was blown away by the screen, this is the first phone I've used where the screen has been implemented seamlessly into the device, no frame, no beveled edges, nothing. Heck, with the phone completely off you can barely tell at all that it even has a screen. So I must give Palm an applause for implementing the screen so well. But once it's actually on, it's another story, and not a bad one. The screen is quite bright right out of the box, but you can crank this bad boy up to frankly excessive brightness levels, although it will surely put a huge drain on your battery life.
What I found most impressive is the actual quality in general, the screen is vibrant, beautiful and smooth and I can find new pixelation in the slightest. This is probably due to the 480x320 resolution; while this is used in quite a few phones these days, the Palm Pre makes better use of it because overall the screen is smaller, which is the only real downside about the device: the screen is only 3.1 inches across compared to other devices who have almost have an inch more on it. There is also one small downside if you happen to use your phone in bright areas: the screen and the phone in general are very glossy and thus reflect, which means the phone does have some glare issues on the screen in bright areas, as is the norm unfortunately.
Last, of course it's a touch screen and I found it to be extremely responsive, definitely on par with the like of the iPhone and above most other touchscreen devices in general. In general I had very few issues with the touch screen, but I do think the accuracy could be improved a bit, I had an exceptionally hard time hitting some thing, particularly the upper right and left corner context menus.
Body/Frame: Overall, this is probably the most troublesome aspect of this device. I really love the smooth exterior and uncluttered design, it looks really clean and stylish. There are really only a couple of things here, the volume controls, the mute switch, the headphone jack (yay), and the cover for the charging /synchronization port. The front of the device is pretty spartan, having only the microphone, call speaker, and non-existent screen. While the back only has the logo, camera and speaker.
It's not all rainbows and butterflies though. As I made mention before, the phone is extremely glossy, and aside from potentially blinding other drivers on the road, the phone is also a huge smudge magnet, by far worse than any phone I have ever used before. It's just a shame to see this gem covered in a layer of dirt and fingerprints, I almost wished they had given it a matte finish instead. Overall this means you might want to pack a cleaning cloth with you.
Just as a minor quip, I also find the door to the charging port extremely hard to open, probably due to me having extremely short fingernails; not much, but it's a small annoyance.
The bigger issue to me is the keyboard and the feel in general though. It's very lightweight and pretty compact but I have some concerns. First, it's mainly plastic, like most phones, but I unlike many phones I seriously would not want to drop this thing even once. It just feels like it would easily break, which doesn't give me a whole lot of confidence. My other big problem is the slide out keyboard. First, I have to say I think this is wonderful, but in general I'm not very happy with the implementation. As someone else described it, the phone has a banana like shape with the keyboard out, but to get it to that shape you have to slide the screen in up and then out in one motion, and it seems much harder than it should be. I realize in the long term people will get used to it, but I have to be worried about how much strange this puts on the mechanisms.
Controls: Well, back onto greener pastures a bit, this is another area where the Pre has really set the bar. There was originally rumors of the Palm Pre having multi-touch technology like the iPhone, but as it stands now I have seen nothing to indicate it does, so it is either not included or something that most applications simply aren't making any use of (probably for good reason). What really makes the phone stand out though is "gestures". Unlike most devices, the bottom of the screen is also sensitive and it's here you can make use of some interesting commands such as bringing up menus, minimizing things, forward/back, etc., all with a flick of your finger across the bottom of the screen. It's a bit hard to use at first, but it has grown on me very quickly and I look forward to seeing how future applications and Palm devices will make use of this invisible control mechanism.
As you may see in photographs, it also appears to have a trackball, but it isn't, this is also just part of the gesture interface, and a good way to center yourself. The only thing it really does is click, which is mostly just used for minimizing and maximizing.
My big problem in the control section is the keyboard, while extremely nice to have I think it could use some improvements. The big on is that the keyboard like everything else seemingly is glossy, and while I don't notice much glare on the keys they are quite slippery, which hinders fast typing. While on the other hand I found the keyboard lacking in general, it's just too cramped to use for me, and I frankly wouldn't ever consider writing anything long on it. On the other hand the buttons just don't seem to be designed well, although this may be a combination of other factors, I think the keys could definitely stand to be raised and spaced out a bit more. In general this is category where I would vastly prefer to have a competing product (a BlackBerry) unfortunately.
Software: Overall I can't say a whole lot except that I'm impressed. The new Web OS that Palm has designed works great, it's quick and easy to use, although it does take some time to learn. Simply, when you run an application it will be put on a "card" on your screen, where you can maximize/minimize/close it for extremely easy multitasking; you just simply flip through them by scrolling across the screen or close them by "throwing" them up and off, it sounds odd but it's very simple to use in actuality. Overall the device is very snappy, even intensive applications like Google Maps with satellite maps on loads significantly quicker than other devices, and doesn't chug along either.
But what I really love is the universal search. You just pull out the keyboard and start typing and it will give you a list of search options or specific things on your phone. You could type in the beginning of a phone number and pull someone up in your contacts, search for an application on your phone, search the Internet or just place an old fashioned call. I can't possibly put into words how useful this actually is, and I really hope we see this feature or something similar make its way onto other devices in the near future.
The application loud-out to start if very full and covers all your normal bases: messaging , camera, photos, e-mail, music, videos, memos, tasks, Google maps, web browser, Youtube, Amazon mp3, PDF viewer, calendar, and more. The big downside is as of launch, there are only a handful of downloadable applications available, the most notable being the Pandora music service, but I do believe that once developers see how great the device actually is we will see tons of application in the upcoming months.
Connectivity: Not a whole lot to say here except: good job Palm. This phone has the complete package, and I couldn't be happier. It uses the now standard micro USB for convenient charging, has WiFi for great speed, Bluetooth for headsets, 3G for fast speeds on the go, and to top it off: a 3.5mm headset jack. That's right, no proprietary connectors, just easy music listening: just plug and play.
There is one more very interesting connectivity feature though: iTunes synchronization. Yea, this phone syncs seamlessly to iTunes, just plug it in, set phone to "media sync" and iTunes will recognize it just like an iPod, giving you all the normal synchronization options. Just a quick heads up though, this will only work with DRM free music from iTunes, don't expect it to work with Apple's proprietary copyright management.
Additionally, you can hook it up to your computer and store files and music on it normally as well, no iTunes required for that.
Browser: Overall, I was very impressed by the browser, and I can't say I'm surprised given the web based nature of the operating system. For the first time, I think the iPhone has been beaten. The browser from my tests beat the iPhone in speed and pages in general began to show up earlier, meaning you could start reading and watching quicker. The only place where the web browsing experience didn't stack up was overall screen real estate, which the iPhone has the clear advantage on. Additionally, the iPhone has cool multi-touch controls for zooming and so on, while the Pre is pretty basic in that respect (double click to zoom in/out) I did notice some small imperfections on a few sites, but I have yet to notice anything utterly breaking the page or anything like that. So for a web browsing phone, this is amazing.
Other: Just to wrap things up is the camera, audio quality and battery life. First, we didn't extensively test the battery life, but under moderate usage with all the bells and whistles on it should still last you through your standard work day unless you are constantly using it. Throughout our battery of tests over several hours, we only got it down to the mid 50s range, so if you're an average user you should have no battery problems if you charge every night or every other night.
The camera is quite nice, and in general I was pretty impressed with the quality at only 3 megapixels and as an added bonus it does have a flash, even though it's not very powerful, but don't expect it to replace a stand alone camera. On the big downside, it has no video recording capability at all, which will supposedly be released in a software patch down the line; hopefully it won't take too long to come out.
Last is the speaker on the back, unlike most phones which have a pathetic speaker, this one actually produces fairly loud audio making this a great device for listening to music and watching video.
Conclusion: Overall, I think this is a wonderful device that I would recommend to anyone, and I really think this is a great effort by Palm to turn things around, and frankly if I had to guess, I would say if they keep up with products like this, they will once again by dominating the industry in a few years. The phone isn't perfect by any stretch, but I think it's a great competitor for the industry giants, and with a few improvements I think it could easily surpass them. And on a personal note, I'm honestly a bit envious.
Pros:
+ Great(!) Web Support
+ small and compact
+ QWERTY Keyboard
+ Camera flash
+ Unparalleled connectivity
+ Innovative gesture system
+ iTunes synchronization
+ Very nice software
+ Seamless and smooth
+ 3.5mm Headphone Jack
Cons:
- Could use sturdier construction
- Very glossy, lots of smudge and glare
- Keyboard could be better
- Slide-out is hard to use
- Needs more applications
- No video recording
Specifications:
- Operating system: Palm webOS
- Network specs: 3G EVDO Rev A
- Display:
- 3.1-inch touch screen with a vibrant 24-bit color
- 320x480 resolution
- HVGA display
- Keyboard: Physical QWERTY keyboard
- Email:
- Microsoft Exchange email with Microsoft
- Direct Push Technology
- POP3/IMAP (Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, etc).
- Messaging:
- GPS: Built-in GPS
- Digital camera:
- 3 megapixel camera with LED flash
- Extended depth of field
- Sensors:
- Ambient light
- Accelerometer
- Proximity
- Media formats supported:
- Audio Formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, AMR, QCELP, and WAV
- Video Formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264
- Image Formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP
- Wireless connectivity:
- Wi-Fi 802.11b/g with WPA, WPA2, WEP, 802.1X authentication
- Bluetooth: 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support
- Memory:
- 8GB (~7GB user available)
- USB mass storage support
- Connector: MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
- Headphone jack: 3.5mm stereo
- Palm Touchstone Charging Dock: Compatible
- Dimensions:
- Width: 59.5mm (2.3 inches)
- Height: 100.5mm (3.9 inches)
- Thickness: 16.95mm (0.67 inches)
- Weight: 135 grams (4.76 ounces)
