09.06
First the Palm Pre’s form factor is great. It’s light, and fits in the palm of your hand. The Palm Pre looks great in person, even though it’s a major finger print magnet. The slide mechanism isn’t great, but it seems to get better with use. The keyboard, although small gives some decent feed back and travel (unlike the G1’s keyboard, which is horrendous). All the buttons seem well placed, and the addition of the 3.5mm headphone is praise worthy. (I hate proprietary headphone jacks). I’d also mention, that some websites seem to think the lip of the keyboard is sharp.. I haven’t noticed it, nor would I ever have if some sites didn’t mention it. It really noticeable at all in my opinion.
Secondly, the Palm Pre’s screen is absolutely stunning, and a selling point of this phone from a hardware stand point. Firstly, it’s smaller than the Iphone and maybe the G1 although they look close to each other.. The decreased viewing space but comparable resolution of the Pre to the Iphone and G1, results in the Pre having an extremely sharp and vivid display that seems significantly brighter than both the Iphone and G1. Kudos to Palm for getting the most important hardware aspect right.
Being able to fully sync wirelessly with Google’s email and calendar instead of being forced to pay for something like MS Exchange feels like skydiving. The difference between the iPhone to this is transformative. Indeed, the jump from the Treo to the Pre is the like going from the Super NES to the Nintendo 64 (for those that remember). By the way; keyboard is fine, regardless of the review. If you are used to the Treo series, you won’t mind the smallness of the keys. The gesture area appears to only have a few functions. While welcome, that portion of the phone seems like a curiously large investment for something that only does two (that I can tell) things. Would be a good area to expand functionality.
The software itself is a whole different animal. WebOS is simply a beast, that has set a new standard that will likely be copied by competitors, mainly the synergy aspect and the way the Pre handles multitasking. Both of which are done extremely well and better than any phone I’ve used to date.
You can see the former Apple guys putting this together in Palm’s basement as you play with the Pre: that’s how intuitive it is. Deck of Cards is such a brilliant move, even if it is what makes the Pre eat batteries for breakfast. And Synergy…it works so well it’s almost eerie.
WebOS is also fairly snappy (after the update to 1.0.2) With a first day launch here, Palm has already showed an urgency to get this phone off on the right foot by updating it on the very first day. It seems that many lag issues were present at the time of launch, as reported by many new owners in forums. However, for most it seems the update fixed this. Personally, the first thing I did was update so I never experienced any lag issues at all. The phone has been fast in multitasking, or single tasks and at the very least on par with the Iphone in the opening and closing speeds of programs, while easily beating the T-mobile G1. (The G1, since cupcake has had a great deal of lag issues and forced closed issues associated with the new widgets).
Finally, Sprint TV is interesting but a novelty. And the goofy little NASCAR icon on the desktop…really? I find it slightly hard to imagine Pre fans and NASCAR fans intersecting. But who knows.
The only issue, which was expected is the lack of applications at the time of launch. This isn’t a huge concern for me, because I can still use the old and reliable palm applications for now while waiting for the new ones to roll in. But the bright side is.. Because of the huge amount of Palm support out there, within a few months I would be surprised not to find a great amount of applications of high quality in the Pre’s market. Considering the foundations of WebOS, and how ease it’s supposed to be do develop for, It think the market has a bright future ahead.
Overall its a great device for sprint and palm who need it. Don’t know why people are complaining about apps. Their coming and unless your like 13 years old, why do you need to have a million different apps on your phone? I’ve also seen that people have given this 1 or 2 stars. Seriously now, the device is far from terrible or mediocre and people who give it those ratings shouldn’t be taken seriously….especially if you don’t own it.
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