Review: Palm Pre

While the Palm Pre is certainly one of the best smartphones available ? the question everyone wants to answer is: can it kill the iPhone? Or, short of outright death and dismemberment, can it at least capture some iPhone glory?The short answer is: not in a blue moon, but then the truth is Palm doesn't necessarily mean for the Pre to be a personal entertainment device.As we'll see, the Pre has the makings of a truly powerful business communicator. In fact, peek under the hood, there's a Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 processor, 8GB of internal memory, 802.11g Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth with A2DP stereo.Read: see all of the Palm Pre screens up closeComputer-like What you'll discover is a capable mobile computer that supports multi-tasking, contact sync across multiple web services, and push email that could lead to swift adoption at companies both large and small, filling the void left by the popular Palm Treo from years ago. The real challenge then is that Palm needs to revive its lagging developer community ? which is almost non-existent.While Apple continues to sell MacBooks and iPhones to the college kids and trendy/smart/cool-types, the reality with those who take computing more seriously is that the iPhone is a limited device ? despite the fact that there are some 50,000 apps available for it. It doesn't multi-task apps (at least, not yet), only barely supports enterprise-class email, and has a clunky soft keyboard for typing longer messages. The Palm Pre has a true hardware keyboard and is designed to keep pace with big business in very tangible ways.It's a powerful smartphone that occasionally acts like a powerful computer ? and shows amazing promise.Chats and text messages are combined into one view, making it easy to track down conversations with both business and personal contacts.CALENDAR: The calendar also syncs up web services nicely, adding both Gmail and Microsoft Outlook meetings in one viewGPS: Google Maps taps into the GPS on the Palm Pre, of course, but doesn't support turn-by-turn voice nav FRIENDS: Contacts from Facebook and Gmail get nicely combined ? which is great unless you do not manage your contacts wellEMAIL: Once you type an email into the Palm Pre, it recognises your Webmail service and starts syncing your mailUnpacking the Pre, you get the sense that it is designed for fun and not as much for business, with an artistic design flare for the box and included materials. There's an earbud headset and a USB charger, plus a small manual.Palm also offers the Touchstone Charging Dock ? the phone sits on a magnetic cradle and charges using inductive charging technology. You can't charge the phone on the cradle and connect it to your PC, so you have to do one or the other.SNUG: The Pre fits nicely in your handThe Pre weighs 135 grams, which is a hair heavier than the iPhone 3G and exactly the same as the iPhone 3GS. Strangely, the Palm Pre feels lighter because the slide-out keyboard adds some overall length and the fact that the plastic feels a little...well, plasticky. Sliding the keyboard out, you will notice a slight curve to the device. One of the first oddities of the phone: the edge of the keyboard is actually quite sharp.CURVE: The device is slightly curved with a sharp endWhen you close the keyboard, you have to be careful because you can ever-so-slightly pinch your hand in the side of the phone (it happened at least twice during our tests). Overall, the Pre looks sleek and stylish, matching the sparse buttons of the iPhone and HTC Hero.There's a 3.5mm headphone jack, power button, a call lock switch on top, a side mini-USB port (with a cover) on the right side and volume controls on the left side.The phone just feels right in your hand ? resting right in your palm and not quite as elongated (with the keyboard closed) as the iPhone or as thick and bulky as the T-Mobile G1.SMALL: The Pre is a smaller device than the Apple iPhoneIt's also smaller and more portable than the HTC Magic. In fact, no other phone quite matches the size and shape ? it is thicker than most slide-out phones like the Sidekick II, but not as tall as the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.That said, after using the phone for 72 hours, we found the plastic construction to be a little worrisome ? it feels as though after a few tumbles the enclosure could crack, and we were worryingly able to twist the screen a few degrees from the keyboard.When you turn the phone on for the first time, it's easy to forget about the hardware. Palm put all of its resources into making sure the operating system ? called WebOS and essentially a very well-designed Linux distro for smartphones ? as fluid as possible.It is so fluid, when you touch the screen, you see a subtle ripple effect. There's a quick set-up process where you create a profile for the phone, a tutorial and a video. Let's start by covering the touch interface.HOME SCREEN: The interface is extremely zippy and responsivePalm uses a dualistic design approach where you touch the main screen to perform actions such as deleting emails (by swiping to the left) or moving windows on the screen.Then, below the main screen, there's a second gesture area where you can swipe to the left to close the current window. Apps run on "cards" that are easy to manage and move around.CARDS: Applications sit on cards which you can move aboutYou can swipe to the left or right to see cards on the screen, toss them up to remove them, and select options on each card with your finger.The card interface is important because the Palm Pre supports multi-tasking, the best implementation of the PC concept of running multiple apps at once and switching easily between them.Still, if you open more than about five apps, the phone will start to run slow and your swipes and other gestures won't work as accurately. There's an easy solution: close a few of the open apps.Speaking of the touch interface, it's powerful and accurate if you are already familiar with a touch phone interface, and we found it was great after about 15 minutes of trial and error.APPS: The Pre can run many apps simultaneouslySome of the gestures are a bit odd ? such as flicking your finger up to start the app launcher. It's likely won't find this gesture by accident. In fact, we tested our Palm Pre with several teens and a couple of adults who just couldn't understand how to use the phone.It requires some training, which is not good for a device that Palm hopes will sell in the millions. When we explained that you flick left to go back, and press the center button to see cards, our test subjects had a much better experience - but the touch interface is not as intuitive as the Instinct or iPhone.That said, in the short time we've had to play with it we've also realised just how much we prefer some of the functionality of the webOS platform to the iPhone. Going back to the iPhone, we kept having to swipe a finger to go back a screen (instead of always having to press the home button). We've learned to run only a few apps on the Pre, but the interface on the Palm is just outstanding. We have also noticed another perk.When you combine Facebook contacts with Gmail, the Pre automatically uses the Facebook profile picture for that contact, even if you did not have it for Gmail. This is the future integration we liked so much, and points to a day when Web services communicate with each other and make the Internet more like a cloud OS.Accurate touchingAccuracy is very good - the touchscreen recorded finger presses and swipes perfectly - unless we had too many apps running.The iPhone will occasionally have problems with finger presses, especially on the edge of the screen, but the Palm Pre is more accurate. Navigating through apps on the Palm Pre is a breeze, and it's easy to add applications using the Pre App Catalog.ApplicationsThere are only about 20 or so apps available at present, but that will likely change soon - Palm will be offering a free SDK this year and has a long history of working closely with developers.It is encouraging to see a few new third-party apps have been released since its launch, including one from Intuit that lets you process credit card transactions, the Evernote client, and a few syncing utilities. This is good news, because it means developers are starting to release apps for the device - about three or four per day so far. Also, you could argue that there are thousands of apps available for the Pre already if you count legacy apps that run using the free, third-party, free-to-try Palm Classic app (which does cost to own though).However, classic apps can't match the ease-of-use and integration characteristics of apps designed for the Palm Pre ? running classic apps would likely appeal only to those who have a Palm app they really need.Below the main screen, you can store five apps ? they are interchangeable, so you place the music player icon there instead of the mail icon for instance.SHORTCUTS: Store five apps at the bottom of the home screenPlacing apps there is reminiscent of using a Palm phone of yesteryear, but you quickly learn to access apps from the main launcher. It's impossible to know, incidentally, whether having hundreds of apps installed on the device is even possible or will make the Palm Pre hard to use, since there are so few available at the moment.But the paradigm for accessing apps is sound ? you can flick up or down or side to side to see more icons. The HTC Hero has a much more awkward paradigm where all apps are either stored on the desktop screen in a viewing area that only supports one center screen and three side screens either side, or in one long collection of apps.The iPhone offers up to 9 holding areas for apps and can support up to 148 apps at once.More interface featuresThere's a few more interface options to mention. If you hold you finger on the lower portion that holds up to five apps and drag it up, you will see a ribbon that flows on the screen in an animated fashion.It's impressive, but not necessarily that useful because you can't load dozens of apps there and use it like the dock on a Mac or the taskbar in Windows Vista.One other interesting UI feature ? there's a drop-down menu in the upper left corner that is easy to miss unless you look for it. For example, when you are typing up an email, you can access the menu to see options for that email (such as marking the message as a high priority), saving the message as a draft, and the copy and paste functions.Pinch to zoomThe Palm Pre also supports zoom in and out by pinching and spreading your fingers out, such as when you are browsing sites and when you are viewing photos.There are quite a few interesting gestures to explore on the phone. When you have the launcher up, you can close it by flicking up from the gesture area. You can press and hold down on a card to move it to another spot. You can double-tap to zoom all the way in or out on the screen.RIBBON: Active apps can be controlled from the ribbonThe touch interface is not entirely perfect, however. The ripple effect when you touch the screen is helpful, but there are times when you press the screen and you don't see a ripple, or you see it and it seems like nothing happened. If you are running too many apps, you can swipe to delete an email and nothing will happen for about a second.If you swipe again, you can delete multiple emails by accident as the Pre catches up. These are occasional glitches, and likely all related to memory handling.Keyboard niggleAnother minor issue: the Pre has an accelerometer that senses the direction of the device, so it will switch to landscape mode if you are viewing something at that orientation, but that also means the keyboard is now useless.An onscreen keyboard has been found inside, but that's only accessed as a secret option.Interestingly, making phone calls ? like on the iPhone, but not as much with the G1 ? seems secondary, almost as an afterthought for people who actually still talk to each other occasionally.The truth is, the Palm Pre is a better voice device than the iPhone and is actually one of the better smartphones for making phone calls.CALL: Dial a number or select a contact from your contacts bookPalm likely learned its lesson with the Centro and previous devices ? voice communication better work, because without good voice controls and quality, a smartphone can die a quick death.Crisp voiceIn a series of calls made during all times of the day, each call sounded crisp without any of the strange audio delay found with lower-end smartphone models.CONTACTS: Selecting a contact is easy and intuitiveThe speakerphone is loud and picks up extremely well; it works better than the iPhone. However, while the calls sounded good in the sense that there was no artifacting or distortion, there was a lot of audio compression.This means voice chats tended to have a bit of a robotic tone to them rather than sounding full and life-like ? for example, calls were clear, but highly compressed.Making calls is extremely easy ? you press the green phone icon and can start typing a number. Or, you can use universal search. Here, you can just start typing the name of any contact to find the phone number for that person.Easy operationOnce you find a contact, you just click the number to dial. The Palm Pre does not support visual voice mail - a text indicator about who called, or the fancier transcription features in Google Voice that take a voicemail and convert it into text for you ? but the Pre does use alerts to let you know when you do have a voicemail.Unlike the HTC Hero, which shows alerts in a small portion of the screen above the main apps, the Palm Pre shows alerts below the main screen, and they are quite large.The only downside: if you happen to get an alert at the exact same time as another incoming call or when you are about to dial a number, the alerts obscure part of the phone dialer screen.The dialer is functional and easy-to-use, although we would have preferred a dedicated hardware button for making a phone call.Soft keys on the phone dialer are responsive enough even for fast dialers ? we never had any problems dialing numbers.The Palm Pre is a good messaging phone, but not the best we have ever tried. It beats the iPhone, which is why we think the Palm Pre has a better shot as a business phone than a personal media player.Keys on the slide-out keyboard are quite small. They are a hair smaller than the soft keys on the iPhone. In fact, you will likely be able to type faster on the Palm Pre because of the tactile feedback. You can press quickly and move on, but the iPhone soft keys provide no sensation when you press ? unlike the Samsung Instinct, which uses haptics to give you feedback on finger presses.TYPING: The slide-out keyboard is a real assetWe typed dozens of messages, both in Gmail, as SMS and instant messages in AOL IM (the only supported IM client that anyone actually uses). We loved the @ symbol being on the keyboard itself rather than having to access it with a modifier key, because it meant typing email addresses much faster.The real advantage to using the Palm Pre is that you can run multiple apps at once and copy and paste between them.Say you just got an email from a business associate and you want to send the text as an SMS to someone else. This simple activity is not possible on the iPhone.ATTACHMENTS: Adding attachments to messages is very easyOn the Pre, you hold down the Shift key, highlight text, and then access the Edit function (you click the menu in the upper left corner). Then, you switch over to the SMS app, start a new text message, go to the menu again, and click Paste to paste in the text. It's useful ? and unique to the Palm Pre, for now.The Pre uses Microsoft Direct Push technology when you are connected to an Exchange server.This means the phone operates like a BlackBerry in that you will receive emails without having to click refresh or send/receive. You can use one inbox for all of your messages ? from Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail.EMAIL: Setting up your mail is easier than on many smartphonesThe Pre uses a new Palm feature called Synergy that automatically syncs contacts form Facebook, Exchange, and Gmail. It means you will have one long contact list, which sounds more cumbersome than it actually is in practice.Also, the Pre uses the Google model of search rather than the Microsoft model of organisation. For example, you can just start typing a name ? such as Jack ? and you will see anyone with that name. Then, you can click their email address and start typing the message, regardless of whether they are an Exchange, Gamil or Facebook contact.COPY & PASTE: You can copy and paste text between apps and messagesA few complaints about messaging, though.At times, the curvature of the device made it a little hard to type on the keyboard. As we mentioned earlier, we feel this smartphone has potential in business ? because of the support for Microsoft Exchange, a hardware keyboard and other factors.However, it is a bit crippled by the curved keyboard. In a hands-on comparison between the Blackberry 8900 and the Palm Pre, it was no contest ? we could type circles around the Pre because the keys on the 8900 are just big enough and separated from each other such that you can type much faster.The Pre also has a limited auto-correct system that contains only common words such as 'the' and 'and' compared to the iPhone and Blackberry, which fill in words from a database of thousands. In typing messages on the Palm Pre, we only saw the auto-correct feature kick in a couple of times. The Palm Pre is an amazing web device, which is not a big surprise since it uses the Webkit engine ? the same one Apple uses for the iPhone. We tested several complex sites with multiple sections and languages ? IGN.com, ESPN.com and iGoogle.com ? and the Pre rendered the sites perfectly.Like the iPhone, you 'pinch and spread' to zoom in and out on the page, and when you flick down to scroll through a page, you can press again to stop quickly.WEB: Best-in-class web browsing is a highlight of the PreThe web features on the Palm Pre are the best we have seen, even compared to the iPhone and Hero. There are quite a few hidden surprises as well.For example, you can add a website to cards in the main browser window so you can visit the site quickly.Rendering is fast and never got bogged down unless - once again - we had too many apps running, which was a common occurrence during our testing (we think the average user won't try to run 30 different apps, start a new email message and browse the web at the same time ? so it shouldn't be too much of a problem).CARDS: You can add bookmarks and place then on homepage cardsWe tested another 10 sites and never saw any rendering problems, even when we visited Twitter.com, Last.fm, Pandora.com and several other Web 2.0 sites that tend to break the browser on other smartphones.SHORCUTS: Add your favourite sites to your shortcuts listReally, there are only a couple of minor gripes ? there is no 'global view' that we found that lets you see all open pages, and we would have liked a back button that shows previously visited sites so we could back up three or four sites before the last one we visited.The 3 megapixel camera is not the strongest selling point here, mirroring the limitations of the iPhone and G1.We prefer the Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition or Pixon 12, which provide all the typical digital camera features you would expect, such as white balance controls and multi-level zoom. Interestingly, while the camera is limited, the photos we took were not half-bad.FLASH: With the flash, the image is crisp and well balancedNO FLASH: Without the flash, the performance was not so good indoorsThere are a few options for controlling the flash, but overall the photos looked crisp and colourful without the usual dull colour treatment found on other cameraphones ? including the iPhone.LOW LIGHT: In these conditions the camera does well although it lacks sharpness and detailWe tested the camera in two primary conditions: outdoor shots and indoor shots. It's possible to take a photo with the Pre that looks indiscernible from a regular pocket digital camera in an outdoor setting.INDOORS: The performance is not great, with washed out colours and minimal detailIndoors, though, the flash and ISO correction are too limited - it is not a phone you will want to rely on for birthday parties or graduation ceremonies, except in a pinch.One interesting feature that trumps the iPhone though ? you can enable GPS geotagging so that images you take on the Pre have their location stored in the metadata.We loaded several different kinds of media onto the Palm Pre.In two cases, the Pre had problems - we loaded the movie The Incredibles as an H.264 video file, and loaded some sample Windows Media files saved as MPEG-4. The Pre was not able to play any of them.It's supposed to support MPEG-4, H.263 and H.264, so we think with our H.264 movie the file was just too big ? at about 1.5GB ? to load into memory.Interestingly though, the Palm Pre does work with iTunes. This feels a bit like loading Windows onto a Mac, and we wondered how Palm was able to get permission to make iTunes think the Pre was just another iPod or iPhone.ITUNES: The Pre is the first device other than an iPhone to work with iTunesOnce connected, we had no trouble copying hundreds of music files, photos, podcasts, and other media over to the Pre (but not movies or TV shows).Playback on the device is excellent: the speaker on the back of the unit is large enough for listening in a pinch, and the included earbud headset matches the quality of those included with the iPhone.MUSIC: Audio performance is fantastic, and the inclusion of a 3.5mm headphone jack is welcomeThankfully, the Pre has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, so we used both an earbud set (the Denon AH-C700) and hi-fi quality headphones (the Ultrasone HFI-580) and found the Palm Pre to be up to the challenge ? music sounded full and rich, not tinny like it does on some smartphones, making the Pre a worthy MP3 player.For movie playback, the 320x480 screen resolution makes video look sharp, and the screen runs in 24-bit colour so movies also look colourful. (You can only load movies when the Pre is in USB mode, though.)The actual screen dimensions ? about 3.1 inches ? mean the size of the screen is a little smaller than the G1 and a finger width shorter than the iPhone, but the benefit is that ? at the same resolution ? movies actually look a little sharper. You can't record movies with the Pre, which is a problem since that is the new exceptional feature of the iPhone 3Gs.Battery life on the Pre is a fairly predictable five hours, or up to six if you only use it to check your schedule and have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned off. It takes about two hours to fully charge the device. When the device is connected to a roaming connection, battery life drains faster - the device might last three hours, especially if you have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled with music playing. None of these complaints are major - the iPhone and G1 are not known for lasting very long either.Since the phone was released just a few days ago, it is hard to tell whether battery life will stay the same or suffer from issues that have plagued a few other smartphones where the battery works fine at first and then fails to take a complete charge and slowly lasts shorter times the longer you own it.We'll keep this review updated so if we have any other problems of this nature we'll let you know.BATTERY: You can check the battery usage in the preferences window, but there is no large battery icon like there is on the iPhoneOrganiserThe concept of a PIM (personal information organiser) originated with Palm, and in many ways the Palm Pre is a return to that concept.However, it's not just because there are contacts, a scheduler, a simple notes app, or any particular tool. It is now because of multi-tasking.MULTI-APPS: All applications are stored on the one pull-up menu screenYou can actually keep all of those apps up all the time and check them at will. Over the course of 48 hours, we relied on the Pre in countless ways to keep us on tasks, for reminders and meeting notices, to check in with our contacts, and as a phone to keep in lock-step communication with friends and business associates.LIFE: Using the calendar is pure joy ? since it combines all of your appointments from Microsoft Exchange and Google Calendar into oneCLOCK: You get all the usual organiser features like clock and calculatorWe also liked the alerts system, which pops up a large reminder about upcoming meetings. When the device is in stand-by mode, there is also a helpful summary screen that shows any new messages, appointments and missed calls. (To use the device, you flip a lock icon up into the main screen, which is cool.)Palm figures you will rarely physically connect the Pre to your computer, but if you do, it works flawlessly.There's a prompt to use the device to sync data, as a USB storage drive or just to charge it. The only slight glitch we found here is that, if you really do drain the battery dry, it takes quite a while (upwards of 20 minutes) before you can even use the phone again, because it needs to charge up for a while first.We had no trouble using the Pre with a Lenovo X301 laptop, a home-built desktop and a Mac Mini we had laying around. For media sync, the Palm Pre worked flawlessly with iTunes ? even though it is weird to see iTunes recognize the device as an iPod ? but only for music, not movies.Comparison versus iPhone and G1In the end, we enjoyed using the Palm Pre. It's different from the iPhone and the Hero in a good way, acts more like a computer (which is ideal for power users), and syncs contacts from Facebook and Gmail automatically.CLOSE CALL: They're similarly matched but the iPhone still comes out on topAfter two years of living with the iPhone, we're ready for a new interface and recommend the Palm Pre for those in a similar situation ? wanting to multi-task apps, explore a new interface, and even get inspiration in their own job from how the Palm Pre operates as a smartly designed gadget.That said, the Apple iPhone is still a better device.Compared to the HTC Hero, there are some interesting differences. Sure, the Palm Pre has a minimal set of apps, but that could change quickly.And the list of decent applications available for the Android OS is grwoing all the time - from the cool Layar browser to Twidroid, the excellent Twitter Applicaiton. And that's before we even look at the gamut of goodies from Google, as well as the likes of Spotify for Android. In a grudge match competition, we'd pick the Hero over the G1 but not by a wide margin. And the Pre is a much better touch phone than the HTC Touch Pro, the Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition, the Blackberry Storm and the Nokia XpressMusic N97.It is not, however, a better business phone than the Blackberry 8900, due to the small and overly curved keyboard and the fact that the Blackberry is already an accepted, trusted device at many large companies.Palm does not deliver on every single promise with the Pre, but the device will certainly find a sizable niche and appeal to anyone in the UK already on O2 (and perhaps getting bored of the iPhone).In some ways the world is not ready for all of the web integration the phone could have offered.There are just shades and shards of things to come: you can use one calendar to see your upcoming schedule in Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange/Outlook, instead of the more common multi-calendar approach, but you can't use Yahoo Calendar (not yet, anyway).You can start typing just about anything ? a contact name or an app name, for example ? and the Palm Pre will start searching, but you can't search the browser history.There are finer details you discover over time: when you type a contact name that is not on your phone, the Pre shows you links for sites like Wikipedia and Google to explore that name.Yet, the smartphone avoids over-reaching ? you'll see Facebook integration and Twitter apps, but Palm avoided less popular social networks like Bebo.It's really a taste of what a grown-up Web OS on your PC will look like, where standards such as OpenSocial, OAuth, and HTML5 start behaving like Windows, where apps communicate with each other and you log in just once to the web and then use all of your apps and access data as you do in Windows.We liked:You might have to pry the Palm Pre from our hands ? we definitely liked using it, and the interface is a joy to use once you understand how it works and figure out all the tricks.We're power users ? we like being able to multi-task the apps, playing music in the background while we type an email and check SMS. The multi-tasking allure might wear off eventually, but for now we are hooked on it.We disliked:The keyboard is just okay - it is too curved and too small for any really long typing sessions. The device is not as well-constructed as the iPhone ? the plastic feels like it could crack too easily. And, we were disappointed by the battery life, even though we did not expect too much from a media phone. Verdict:In the end, this is what makes the Palm Pre so compelling, and a better choice for savvy computer users than the Apple iPhone or even the highly extensible T-Mobile G1. It's a new mobile computing paradigm more than a highly useful phone.Search for the best Palm Pre deals on OmioRelated LinksTechRadar's reviews guaranteeMore phone reviewsEvery Palm Pre menu screen revealed and explainedSearch for the best Palm Pre deals on OmioRelated StoriesReview: Nokia 6303 ClassicReview: Samsung Galaxy i7500Review: Samsung Blade GT-S5600VReview: Motorola Dext MB200Review: HTC Touch2

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