First Impressions:
The Palm Pre finally has come to Canada through Bell on August 27, 2009!!! It was exciting to see the Palm Pre in action. In most Bell stores they have a live demo unit waiting for everyone to try. My first impressions was quite positive and pretty close living up to the hype. It is a touch screen slider phone with a full QWERTY keyboard and a brand new Web OS by Palm. It was announced that this New OS will be the new platform for every new palm mobile device. This means no more Palm OS and Windows Mobile!!!
I have been a Palm fan since the first Palm Treo 650. What made me fall in love with my old Palm Treo is it’s basic OS and compatibility to my Apple Computers. This Palm Pre device definitely caught my eye and has a pleasing interface. The touchscreen was very responsive, and felt very good in my hand. Voice calls were very clear and enjoyed the multi-tasking and clever “touch gestures” to navigate through the system. First Impression was A+!!!
Design:
As I said before the phone looks absolutely gorgeous, its a slider and has a full QWERTY keyboard. The design was most likely the response to people that critiqued and critiqued the “iPhone”. One of the things people talked about was not having that physical keyboard, and Palm has delivered … but the keyboard design is very cramped. I have smaller hands and didn’t mind, but can tell this can be a major issues for a majority of people. The keys are made of rubber buttons that increases some tackiness to the keys that do make it easier to type in such a cramp space. If you have ever used the Palm Centro it is exactly the same and will know what I mean. The slider was something to bring a different spin and thought it was great and “cool” to attract the younger generation. I could foresee over a couple of months or a couple years this mechanism could be a problem as I had a slider phone before (sometimes you slide just because your bored LOL which can wear out the slide part faster).
I was told from the Palm Rep, that was available at the store I was at, is that the design was to replicate a river stone and when the phone screen was off it blends to the phone not knowing where the screen starts or stops. Very neat and bought into it for sure. The phone is made of plastic and doesn’t feel as solid as a Blackberry, but the phone really is light and has a good feel.
Overall design I would give a 7 out of 10.
Performance:
Palm’s Web OS is the driving force for this phone. It uses a technology they call “Synergy” to make everything simple and easy all in one place. Brilliant idea, as it will pull all your contacts and calendars from various sources such as Microsoft Exchange, Google, and social networks such as Facebook. This “Synergy” makes sure that all my information is synced from my phone to the web which means if anything happens to my Pre, when I get a new one it zaps all my info to the new phone. Very cool.
The phone didn’t lag to much from program to program, and the web experience was amazing. I have to say vs. the iPhone the web is pretty on par if not better. My favourite feature about the Pre is “Universal Search”, which means at the home screen I just start typing. It starts searching that word in the phone, and if it doesn’t find it in the phone it directs me to where I can … google. I love how they integrated this search feature so you don’t have to open a bunch of apps, when your in hurry, you just type, find, select and done.
The phone was pretty fast and couldn’t argue how nice the screen was to play with, but the performance of the battery wasn’t so great. In the Palm Pre’s defence I was using it to the max and added 3 different e-mails, surfed the web, and downloaded some pretty cool apps and died within an hour and a half. In an average day though I think it would become an issue.
Overall Performance 8 out of 10.
Product Summary
The Good:
Nice design & feel, great features like built in WiFi and takes advantage of what we use most … the internet. Great call quality, touch gestures, and full physical QWERTY keyboard. Multi-tasker, simple to use and integrates with everything google. On Bell the largest 3G network in Canada.
The Bad:
Battery life is horrible compared to other “Smartphones”. No video recording. No landscape mode other than web mode, which is a big issue if you read a lot of emails (Landscape mode a must). Escaping from the old Palm OS means NO infrared (sorry to Realtors that really use that feature as a necessity). The App Catalog is still in beta, which means very few apps compared to apple and blackberry. It’s the first version of Web OS, so will have a few bugs which future updates should resolve.
Bottom Line:
For a 1st Gen phone, it is not too bad. Great features, very nice internet experience. The app catalog will make it worth wild to keep this phone fun and interesting. For your average consumer I would rate this phone a 9 out of 10 for sure. However, for the business power user I would rate this phone 6 out of 10.
With future updates improving battery life and a few other small issues I would most likely give the business power user a higher rating.
GOOD STUFFS. THANKS