Palm Pre Review Posted by
The Boy Genius on May 29, 2009 2:12 pm
193 comments Filed in
BG's Corner,
Handsets,
Palm,
Reviews,
Sprint,
WebOS
We know, we know. You wanted the review sooner. Well, you know what?It’s here now and we’ve busted through this handset like a Japanesetourist with an SLR in Times Square. So how does the Pre stack upagainst the competition? Can it contend with the top-of-linesmartphones that are currently on the market? Will it end world hungerand bring Isaac Hayes back? Read on for the world’s first hands onreview of the Palm Pre!
Palm’s Mission:
Before we jump into the really, really good parts, we thought it wasimportant to recap the “magic” that Palm has done its best to create.Announced at CES 2009, the Pre was instantly a media smash. At least inthe tech world. Journalists, bloggers, consumers, prosumers, evencorporate users all wet their pants with excitement in anticipation ofthe Palm Pre. In the midst of a recession that had slowed most of thetech world down to a crawl, the Pre was a shining beacon of light thatrepresented the most exciting new mobile phone since the iPhone. Theproblem is, that was six months ago and the average person can’t payattention to something for longer than 52 seconds. Dedicated Pre blogsand a small breed of new fanboys are still on fire of course, but thatis hardly a sure sign of commercial success. The question is,
has Palm been successful in creating hype with the average consumer?Here we are roughly 8 days away from the launch date and its lookinglike even if the answer to that question is yes, Palm and Sprint won’thave enough inventory to make the launch a success.
Screen:
The screen is where the Palm Pre shines. Selections take little tono effort and there’s that oh-so-magical water ripple effect whenactually touching the display. It’s vibrant, rich and all around reallyclear. Like we said in our Pre-view (har, har), we’d rate it justbehind the iPhone’s glass capacitive touch screen — it’s that close tobeing perfection. The size difference between the two is reallynoticeable however, with the Pre having a 3.1 inch display, but asyou’ll read on later, this makes the device much more pocketable. Justknow that as high as your hopes are for the Pre right now, the vibrantdisplay is one area where you will most definitely not be let down.
Keyboard:
It’s really not good. My hands aren’t that big (I can type fasterthan you could ever dream on a BlackBerry, iPhone or E71) and my thumbliterally takes up 3 or 4 keys on the keyboard. There’s less space inbetween each key than say, a BlackBerry Curve 8300 keyboard, and thetexture takes some time to get used to. It’s a rubberized coating kindof like the Centro and Treo Pro, and while the keys are a bit harder(better), the coating could possibly get irritating as usage increases.It’s really such an important area that couldn’t afford to be messedwith and we’ll admit it… we’re a little let down. You’re going afterthe big guns here, and this is kind of disappointing.
You can’t compete with RIM in the keyboard area and you can’tcompete with Apple in the soft-keyboard area, so how are people goingto enjoy using your product when the data entry isn’t perfection? It’slike buying a brand new Ferrari, but getting an Accord steering wheel.It’s not the end of the world, but it isn’t greatness.
Size:
The size of the handset itself is wonderful. Really no complaints.It’s fits perfectly in your hand and Palm did a great job blending anawesome touchscreen with a separate multi-touch gesture area, slidingdesign, and everything else together in this package. It’s a happymedium between something larger like a Sidekick and smaller like aBlackBerry Pearl. As far as portability, it fits perfectly in yourpocket and some people will love that the phone is so compact whenclosed — it’s really crazy small.
Feel:
This is an important area when designing a phone. Besides workinglike you had hoped, you want people to feel like they are holding aquality product, especially when talking about such a high-end product.Well, forget a high-end product, how about the product that everyone iscounting on turning your company around? To be honest, the device feelsa little cheap. The edges of the bottom piece are sharp on the back ofthe screen and even worse, when sliding it up and down, the top partthat houses the screen will sometimes catch on itself.
It feels good in your hand, but the actual build quality reallyleaves a lot to be desired. One of our friends that checked it out overhere said it felt like a Fisher Price toy. We wouldn’t go
thatfar, but it really seems to be constructed with lower-grade materialscompared to other flagship phones. One of the things that might bethrowing us off is that it just feels so light. It’s an odd thing tohappen when you’re expecting to be heavier than you’d imagine. Normallyheavier = higher quality, but we’ll have to put the Pre through ourusual battery of tests to really determine what’s going on here. Thetakeaway should be that it’s really light, feels a tad less expensivethan we would have liked, and not as polished as it could have been.
OS:
WebOS itself is off to a great start we think. Taking the hardwareaspects of the Palm Pre completely out of the equation, it has a bunchof potential. Especially with being public version numero uno. It willbe interesting to see how developers try to take advantage of theoperating system, yet we can’t help but feel it’s going to be iPhoneweb apps all over again until Palm releases an SDK that lets everyone(not just special partners) access areas of the OS that are needed tocreate applications that aren’t just “fluff”. Granted Pre apps will bea whole lot better than iPhone web apps ever were; it’s dishearteningto see something like this happen out of the gate though. They willnever be able to compete with the Symbian, Android, BlackBerry andiPhone app stores and services like this. But don’t worry too much —we’re sure Palm will come around in due time and release an SDK thatgives devs access to everything! It’s just not optimal out of the gate,that’s all.
Switching gears, Synergy is so cool in itself. Well, the conceptpart of it. We haven’t linked everything together yet, but we’re notsure if Palm’s got the right approach. I mean, I’d like my Facebookcontacts in a Facebook application, not in my main contacts app mixedwith my Exchange and personal contacts. Obviously you can just not linkFacebook, but the point is that centralizing data isn’t the end-allanswer to our problems. It’s just that we have to create and managethem in a clean and organized manner.
Hey, what about Universal Search? Well, it works ok. We guess. It’sgreat they added a Twitter option to it instead of just Google,Wikipedia, and Google Maps, but what good is it when it just launchesthe respective web page for anything not stored locally? We also wishthis could be 3rd party customizable. Imagine being able to integrateyour favorite services into the Universal Search card.
One thing we didn’t tell you in our Hands On was that during ourfirst photo session, the device completely reset. Like, wiped cleanreset. We had to go through the entire setup process and get the phoneup and running. Since we didn’t use an account, we’re not sure how thebackup/restore function works (we haven’t tested it yet is what wemean), but everything looks to be tied to a Palm account including IMservices, etc. No word on whether or not this is the final shipping OS,though. We hope not.
Multimedia:
On the unit we received, Multimedia was unable to be explored. Itsimply linked to non-existent help files (just like the webOS SDKEmulator does). We’re pretty sure after 10 years Palm has learned howto make an MP3 player, though, so we’ll just give them this one at nocharge.
Battery life:
To be really fair, we haven’t been able to really put this thingthrough the ringer in regards to battery life. When we first got it, ithad a pretty low charge of around 30% and that lasted for about two anda half hours of us taking photos, going through different options, etc.Take that for what you will but we don’t see a problem with Palm’squoted battery life and from other reports, the battery is a prettydecent at keeping you going throughout the day. It is obviouslyremovable which will make a bunch of you either jealous or angries, butfor the rest of us, a quick swaparoo means you won’t need to lug arounda solar charger in your pants. *Gasp*
Browser:
The browser for the most part renders pages properly and prettyquickly. It took around 15-20 seconds to pull up BGR over Sprint’sEV-DO connection but navigating is a little bit of a problem. We foundthat zooming in and out didn’t produce a smooth effect, rather itsimply increased the size of the page sort of how Internet Explorerzooms in. Panning around was crisp though and the browser wasincredibly responsive. It hasn’t locked up on us a single time which ispretty impressive considering we beat it up quite a bit, and withplenty of other stuff running as well. Additionally, the accelerometerwas absolutely positively instant. The Pre switches between portraitand landscape more than lightning fast, no question, and we candefinitely see motion-controlled gaming playing a big role for thislittle guy. Granted, you know, that little SDK thing happens we talkedabout earlier…
Applications:
To be honest, there weren’t too many applications to explore here.The App Catalog was empty so we were left scrounging around anythingthat’s preloaded. Google Maps was something that will come with everyunit so we checked that out first. It works really well. Loading wasquick and the location feature and GPS integration was effortless (notjust Google Maps but the GPS works really well on this handset).
We ventured deeper and deeper into webOS and you know what we found?The PDF Viewer! It actually is pretty solid but all theDocument-related apps on here are viewing capable only, not editors.But that’s coming later with DataViz.
The Media application layout looks really clean as well, you know,before you click something and are taken to the ominous Help files thatdon’t exist yet. The YouTube application that you have all seen by nowhas an awesome layout and we could see it being used very frequentlywith no issues.
Conclusion:
Everyone’s expectation are set enormously high for this device andit really feels like the original iPhone launch again. Well, maybe notquite as insane but still. Palm has done a masterful job of craftingand molding the hype factor, but there seems to be an underlying issue.In being so secretive, they’ve let people’s imaginations run wild andexpectations couldn’t possibly be higher.
The OS is great. There’s no ifs ands or buts; it’s really refreshingto see something that’s brand new with a UI unlike anything else outthere. The only problem with this is, Palm’s never been a hardwarecompany that anyone’s really cared about. They have been the furthestthing from innovative since circa-2003 — their hardware has always beensecond rate at best and it doesn’t seem to be changing now. Couple thatwith the nation’s underdog carrier at a $299 price-point (beforerebate), and we’re not sure how many people are going to be lined upovernight, yet we’re pretty confident once people are able to play areal unit themselves, there will be more than a lot of happy Palm Precustomers.
Once the initial Pre launch is over and done with and all the hype,smoke and mirrors are clear though, we can see Palm being prettysuccessful moving forward. Hell, Palm has converted tons of people intoraging Pre fanboys before they could even see the phone in person! VeryApple-esque. More carriers will get the Pre, more handsets will bereleased and WebOS could very well keep things interesting even if thehardware is lacking.
Tags:
capacative,
exclusive,
G1,
hands on,
handset,
iPhone,
Palm,
pre,
QWERTY,
Sprint,
webOS
狗仔卡
离线
提升卡
置顶卡
变色卡
