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Shel Holtz
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My review of the Palm Pre

Shel HoltzI finally got my hands on a Palm Pre, which I’m loving.

As much as I have coveted the iPhone, I’ve avoided getting one for a number of reasons. First, there’s AT&T, whose service I abandoned several years ago. The iPhone is great, but it still is exclusive to AT&T, and my experiences that were so bad I’m just not willing to relive them.

Beyond that, I want a real tactile keyboard. Apps are great but email, Twitter and texting occupy most of my time with a smartphone, and I just couldn’t get comfortable typing fast on the screen-based keyboard that is the iPhone’s only option. In fact, most people I know with an iPhone also carry a Blackberry or some other phone. The iPhone is their portable computer; the other phone is for email, texting and phone calls.

My travel schedule also demands that I be able to swap a fresh battery for a depleted one on the fly. I can’t stop and recharge my phone when it dies. That was another iPhone deal-killer for me.

So I was thrilled when the Pre was unveiled at CES—and named best product at the show. I’m already a Sprint customer, which I consider one of the hidden benefits of the Pre. The night before the Pre went on sale last Saturday, I called the store closest to me. The sales rep confirmed they’d have phones and I’d be able to score one if I got in line early enough. I was there around 6 a.m., but just before the store opened, a manager stepped outside and informed us the phones would only be given to those who had pre-ordered. I was furious as I sped to another store, where I was number 38 in line. I would have gotten a phone—the store had about 70—but because I had to be at a meeting, I couldn’t wait.

I tweeted my frustration at the first store—a franchise outlet, not a company store—and within a few minutes had a phone call and an email from a district manager who found me a phone and scheduled a time that accommodated my schedule for me to come pick it up and get it activated. That’s service, particularly since I was more interested in letting Sprint know about the issue with the franchise store (not my first problem with them) than in getting a phone (plenty will be available everywhere shortly).

So I’ve now had the phone for a couple days and can offer these observations.

It feels great. The phone fits comfortably in my hand or in my pocket. It has a nice, solid feel to it. It’s a bit thicker than the iPhone (accommodating the battery and the slide-out keyboard), but it’s also shorter. The incredibly sharp image shows that you don’t need a long phone in order to get great visuals.

Shel HoltzThe interface rocks. Operating the Pre is drop-dead easy. The main menu is activated by dragging your finger from the gesture area, just below the bottom of the screen, upward. Tap an icon to activate it, then swipe your finger left in the gesture area to turn it into a “card.” You can have multiple cards open at any one time, and navigate through them to enlarge the one you want to use. Getting rid of a card is a simple “flick” upward.

Phone quality is terrific. It’s a smartphone, which some of the smartphone makers seem to have forgotten. The quality of audio over the handset is great, maybe the best I’ve ever heard on a mobile phone, and I’m told by those who’ve called me or whom I’ve called that I sound great to them. The audio quality over my Bluetooth earbud is also better than it was with my last phone.

The camera takes amazingly good pictures. The 3.2 megapixel camera with built-in flash produces sharp images, like this unretouched image I shot of Scott Monty and Beth Harte at a pre-conference reception for BlogPotomac last week.

Shel Holtz

There’s no video camera yet (which is a drag, since I’ve been using my phone to demo Qik at conferences), but one is due via firmware upgrade, from what I’ve been told.

Shel HoltzThe app catalog currently is anemic but so was the iPhone app store when it was first released. I don’t buy the arguments that, given the iPhone’s two-year lead, the Pre app catalog should have come fully populated. The OS is new and Palm is cautiously introducing new apps regularly (one for Evernote just came out in the last day or two). The WebOS SDK has been touted as incredibly easy to use, so I fully expect a steady stream of apps, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that some popular iPhone-only apps, like AudioBoo, will be made available in Pre versions. The apps I’ve grabbed so far, though, are terrific, including Tweed, a Twitter client.

In the meantime, an app called “Classic” has been released that lets you run older Palm applications on the Pre. Since I kill a lot of time waiting in lines and the like playing backgammon, this has proven a useful tool. I’ve also grabbed several of the apps that are available, including Tweed, a nifty Twitter client, AccuWather, and Pandora. In fact, I jacked the Pre into my car’s auxiliary input and listened to Pandora through the car speakers on my drive home from the airport yesterday. That was awfully damned cool.

The web browser might as well be the iPhone’s, which is a good thing. It loads quickly, runs Flash, and you can zoom in and out with the same pinching gesture as the iPhone uses.

Video player is terrific. I’ve been watching YouTube videos and others, which look gorgeous.

I’ve experienced a couple unprompted shutdown. On more than one occasion, I’ve pulled the phone from its holster only to find it shut off, requiring a restart. It also shut down once when I closed the keyboard a little too hard. I’m hopeful this will be addressed with a firmware update.

The keyboard is great. I’ve read a number of criticisms of the keyboard, but I don’t agree with them at all. I find it remarkably easy to thumb-type quickly, even faster than I could on my last phone, the HTC Touch Pro, the keyboard for which is considerably bigger. Also, the way the keyboard curves when slid out provides an angle that makes typing even easier.

There’s an issue with the power button. The power button is in the upper right-hand corner, which is easy to get to with your thumb, but when the keyboard is out, the power button drops out of reach. You can touch any key on the keyboard to bring the phone back from sleep mode, but I automatically reach for that power button. This is another design issue I expect will be addressed in the next iteration.

The data integration functionality looks like a major innovation. The “synergy” feature, as it’s being marketed, is one of the true points of differentiation for the Pre. There is no single point source for calendars, contacts, or tasks. Rather, you indicate where all these reside—whether it’s the Google calendar or Outlook—and it’s all linked up in the cloud, allowing you to pull everything together. I haven’t had much opportunity to use this yet, but it’ll definitely make life easier. Here’s a brief video that explains it.

Another nice touch is that notifications of recent emails and text messages show up on the bottom of the home screen.

Touchstone is awesome. The Touchstone, a separate accessory, puts a whole new spin on recharging a phone. Just set the Pre on the Touchstone (it adheres magnetically) and it recharges without requiring any cables to be jacked in. I’ve gone home, yanked the phone from its holster and dropped it on the Touchstone. Done! It’s not that big a deal to plug in a mini or micro USB cable, but there’s something about simply setting your phone down to charge it that feels like a major convenience.

Sprint services run exceptionally well on the Pre, including Sprint TV and Sprint navigation (which offers turn-by-turn directions, traffic information, and other services).

Nice touches are sprinkled throughout the phone, like the ability to copy text and take JPG screen captures.

Is it an iPhone killer?

I’ve been asked repeatedly if I think the Pre is an iPhone killer. When Applie first released the iPhone, my dominant reaction was that Apple had raised the expectation bar for smart phones, but that Nokia and other manufacturers wouldn’t sit idly and allow Apple to erode their market share. One Blackberry model outsold the iPhone in April and the iPhone, for all the attention it gets, commands just 1% of the global mobile phone market.

Nothing will kill the iPhone. It’s an elegant piece of innovation with huge cachet and a well-stocked app store. The Pre—which has sold briskly at the outset and been met with generally glowing reviews—represents a solid entry into the market and probably the first to offer some innovative and desirable features not available in the iPhone (like the synergy functionality). When a host of new Android phones are unleashed later this year, the competitive landscape will be even more crowded.

For right now, the Pre is the phone for me. And I have a new daily task: Check the app catalog for new downloads.

06/14/09 | 8 Comments | My review of the Palm Pre

Comments
  • 1.I'm liking what you're sayin', Shel, except for that unintended shutdown issue. Let's see whether it is a firmware issue, or a manufacturing defect.

    I still have a few months left on my family AT&T contract, and we've been happy with AT&T service in the northern Illinois/southern Wisconsin area where we mainly travel. It would take something special to move me from AT&T, and the Palm Pre just might be that something special.

    Out of curiosity: Do you use any Palm-specific apps that are legacy from earlier Palm smartphones or even Palm handhelds? I still use a Palm T/X and wonder if any of its apps survived to the Pre.

    Tom Keefe | June 2009 | Gurnee, IL

  • 2.Tom, there are a lot of the same kinds of apps -- calendar, memos, tasks, clock, contacts, calculator -- but the legacy apps for the Palm OS are duplicated in the "Classic" app you can download from the catalog.

    Shel Holtz | June 2009

  • 3.Hey, Shel. Glad to see you got your Pre and like the review. The synergy and the universal search (where you can just start typing and your Pre guesses what content you are looking for) are definitely two features that can set this device apart.

    I also agree that development of the apps catalog will be a key to this phone's success. Hopefully once Palm releases the SDK, we'll see even more apps start to role in.

    If the unintended shutdowns continue, let me or @sprintcare know and I'll see if we can help out.

    Thanks for hanging in there with us on the getting your Pre and sorry it took a little longer than expected. Btw, I'm going to be in Chicago for the Ragan Social Media Revolution conference June 24-26. Will you be there?

    Disclaimer : I work for Sprint :).

    Justin Goldsborough | June 2009 | Overland Park, KS

  • 4.Justin, unfortunately I won't be at the Ragan conference in June. There are a couple other Ragan shows coming up where I'll be speaking, but it didn't work out for this one.

    I didn't have a chance to play with the universal search until after I wrote the review, but it's another real benefit.

    The phone has shut down again without my prompting a couple times. You're not hearing about this issue from anyone else?

    Shel Holtz | June 2009

  • 5.Re: Pre shutting down. Could be the following issue:

    The battery on some Pre handsets is too loose/small for the casing and the sliding will cause the battery to disconnect momentarily, thus resetting the phone. You can go to your local Sprint store and they should exchange the battery for you.

    A few people have also suggested a more MacGyver-like approach on precentral.net :). But the new battery would be my advice.

    http://www.precentral.net/slider-crashes-inspire-macgyver-solution

    Please keep me posted...

    Justin Goldsborough | June 2009 | Overland Park, KS

  • 6.as he said,no one can kill iPhone! eventhough many features are not available in iPhone,The technology in iPhone will always makes it better among all!

    Bakugan | June 2009 | India

  • 7.I also agree that development of the apps catalog will be a key to this phone?s success. Hopefully once Palm releases the SDK, we?ll see even more apps start to role in.

    Mic | June 2009 | Hollywood, CA

  • 8.As an iPhone user since the first gen. I can honestly say that we finally have competition. This is by far the best looking OS I have seen since OSX Touch. MS, Samsung and others have better start getting their shit together cause Apple and Palm are about to shut the game down on their asses fast.

    Jane Memo | July 2009 | Miami

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