I was able to finally acquire the latest object of my irrational obsession, a Palm Pre, on Tuesday. I have only desired two other things in recent years as much as I desired this Palm Pre: my G35 and the original Treo 600 when it was brand new. Well, now that I have one and have done pretty much nothing but play with it for the last four days, I thought it was time to give my initial impressions.
So, the quickie review. Overall, I love this phone and it is quickly becoming the best personal electronic device I've ever owned. It's almost that Hitchhiker's Guide device that I was wanting. Here are the salient points:
Pros
- It's an iPhone for the Sprint set, which is awesome
- Highly intuitive WebOS interface - the "activity cards" totally rule
- Twitter client at launch!
- 3 megapixel camera with auto-flash
- Slide out, physical keyboard
- GPS and WiFi enabled, as well as EVDO network support
- Integrated contacts are huge - phone, email, IM all in one contact location with context-appropriate launching of desired communication method
- Content constantly syncs with Google, Microsoft Exchange, or Palm for integrated, available-everywhere PIM activities
Cons
- Dismal battery life when using GPS and WiFi
- Cell reception is pretty bad (at least in the cellular black hole which is my apartment)
- Memory doesn't seem to purge sometimes- "closed" cards may still actually be taking up memory
- No zoom on the camera, and no video
- No MicroSD slot for memory expansion
Note for owners of a current phone that Sprint considers "smart" (Palm Centro, Blackberry, Treo, etc.): If you purchased your smartphone less than 22 months ago, Sprint will not consider the Pre as an upgrade and will therefore NOT give you the $250 off the $550 cost of the phone as advertised. You will only get $75 off AND you will not be eligible for the $100 mail-in rebate (as you will still be under the original 2-year contract which got you the discount on your previous smartphone, whether you realized it or not). So, if you have "recently" purchased a smartphone, you will pay $475 for the Pre, not $299.
Hit the jump for my in-depth review of the Pre as I see it.
Finally, there's a competitor to the iPhone and G1/G2 available for the Sprint network. I'm not going to go into the similarities between the interfaces and which one is better. I'm on Sprint, and I want to stay on Sprint, and so my only option is the Pre. If you have one of the others and love it, more power to you. Enjoy. I will enjoy my Pre and have no desire to get into a pissing contest over who's phone is better.
With that said, the WebOS interface is super slick and I'm loving it. The ability to have multiple applications open at the same time and running in the background is huge - I can have the email program polling GMail, Tweed or Spaz monitoring my Twitter feed, surf the web with a full featured browser, and listen to Pandora radio all at the same time. It's multitasking for the phone, and it's great! The app store already has a lot of apps and several that I was really wanting - Tweed, Spaz, Pandora, Fandango, AccuWeather, GoodFood, and many others. Hopefully, the WebOS community will really catch on and the Pre app store will soon catch up with the other phones in this category. The location-aware applications are new to me and they're something that I've really wanted for a long time and so I'm looking forward to being able to give them a good run when I get a chance.
I'm having a lot of fun with the gestures. Being able to flick things off the screen to close them or delete them is great and it didn't take me long to figure them out. It can be hard to get used to precise tapping with stubby fingers, but overall the Pre seems pretty forgiving and does a good job of guessing what you were aiming at which comes in handy especially when browsing the web. It has the multi-touch display, which allows for "pinch" and "spread" maneuvers with the fingers to zoom in and out, and it has the gyros in it which cause some apps to flip to be used lengthwise. Nothing new there, really. The browser doesn't do flash, but I don't know if browsers on other phones do either.
The slide out keyboard is the number one seller for me and I love it. It can be awkward to use when the screen is flipped landscape, but that's a minor issue. I also really love the "silence" button on top that mutes the phone with the flick of a switch - great for movies, church, or any other place where ringing phones are frowned upon. The exterior is simple and elegant and fits well in the hand. Buying the Touchstone charger also gets you a new, no-slip matte black back for the Pre, which I prefer better than the glossy one which comes with the phone out of the box.
The last thing in my initial impressions that I wanted to mention is the notifications. incoming SMS messages, missed calls, emails, etc. all show up in little notifications at the bottom of the screen, unobtrusively waiting for me to get to them while not taking up the full screen and interrupting what I'm doing. I can either choose to click on them (which opens up the application so that I can take care of it) or I can flick them off to the side to get rid of them without acting on them. It's very nice, and a big change from the Centro. Unobtrusive is good.
While I do love this device, it does have some points that bug me a little bit. First and foremost, the 5-hour talk time/130 hour standby time that is advertised is only if you have pretty much all the useful services disabled - GPS and WiFi apparently suck down power like you wouldn't believe. My apartment is apparently the Bermuda Triangle of cellular phone signal and so I find myself relying a lot on WiFi to use apps like Tweed when I'm here at home and it's pretty bad if I can't get through the day without having to recharge.
Which brings me to the second major sticking point - the antenna seems to be as bad as my Centro, maybe even worse. I am finding that I have to go out on my porch to get reliable connection at home, and the out-and-about reception doesn't seem to be so hot either. I know that a lot of my predicament at home has to do with the location of my apartment, what with being on the ground floor and facing the interior of a quad with other 3-story buildings to block my path and all. But, I was kind of hoping that the reception would be a little bit better with a newer, smarter phone. I guess not. Couple this poor reception with the power suck of using WiFi and things begin to get a little frustrating.
There are a couple of other niggling issues, like there being no zoom on the camera or ability to record video, but those are kind of minor in the grand scheme of things. I would like to know why they felt that an expandable memory slot couldn't be added, if it was a space constraint or what. That was a big selling point for the Centro in my book and if the Pre had that it would be a lot closer to the all-in-one device which I've been desiring because it's only a matter of time before there's an 80GB microSD card and that would allow me to kick my iPod to the curb and just use the Pre. And, the USB cord is a proprietary one, of course...so no using just any old standard USB cable or microUSB cable for you!
All in all, though, I love this device. It's beautiful to look at, enjoyable to use, and puts the power of the Hive Mind at my disposal like never before. It truly is a smartphone of the highest order, and I really hope that it saves Palm's bacon and keeps them in bidness. With the Pre having the biggest opening-day sales in the history of Sprint, hopefully that will become a reality and Palm can stick it out and support the Pre for its entire life cycle. I love this phone and you can pretty much count on hearing more about it either here or in person as I integrate it fully into my daily life.
So...anyone interested in a slightly used but still in great condition Palm Centro? I have a dual set of power and sync cables for it, and I could probably be tempted to throw in the 8GB microSD card that is currently in it. Hit me up via email if you're interested.
