Palm Pre Review

Key features:

• 3.1" 16M-color TFT display of 320 x 480 pixel resolution and excellent sunlight legibility
  
• 3 megapixel fixed focus camera, LED flash
  
• Quad-band GSM support
  
• Tri-band UMTS support with HSDPA
  
• ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz, PowerVR SGX graphics chip
  
• 256 MB RAM
  
• Sliding-out full QWERTY keyboard
  
• Palm webOS is an innovative multi-touch user interface, heavy on multitasking
  
• Touch-enabled Gesture Area
  
• Built-in GPS receiver
  
• Wi-Fi
  
• 8 GB of onboard storage
  
• Accelerometer, proximity sensor
  
• 3.5 mm audio jack
  
• Bluetooth with A2DP support
  
• Application Store for direct apps download and installation
  
• Office document viewer
  

Final words



From a user's point of view, Palm were only a step away from going
bust, when they announced the Palm Pre and its webOS almost a whole
year ago. From the very start, it was shaping as one of the most
eagerly anticipated and novel gadgets of 2009.

Unfortunately, the smartphone didn't get that big in our part of the
world - probably due to the late launch of the GSM version worldwide.
But it may be enough to jumpstart Palm's business.

Palm Pre sounds like a recipe for success but obviously something
went wrong. It's got a great potential - a brilliant capacitive
touchscreen (which could have been a tad bigger actually), zippy
hardware platform, various connectivity options, integrated GPS
receiver and much more.

But unfortunately there are a lot of things about the Pre that seem
quite premature even though they've had almost a year now to work on
its software updates. The WebOS UI is quite a looker and it's well
planned and executed.

But we run into "blank spots" wherever we hit. For instance, the Pre
has no file manager so your only option to delete files is via a
computer cable connection. The Pre has got stereo Bluetooth support -
but no wireless file transfers? The Pre has a nice physical keyboard,
but what about a virtual on-screen one? We can go on listing, but we've
made our point.

What is more, they've had over a year to optimize the OS code, but
the Palm Pre still feels slower than the iPhone 3GS even though both
use the same hardware. Truth be told, its performance matches that of
the older iPhone 3G instead of its successor's.

Still, the Palm Pre, with its colorful and innovative user interface
feels like a breath of fresh air to us tech journalists. It brings lots
of new ideas and we really hope Palm will have the chance to improve
them in the future.



Apple iPhone 3GS • Apple iPhone 3G

And if you think we're being too harsh on the Pre and its unfinished
business, turn back the clock just a few weeks to our Nokia N900
review. It felt even rawer than the Pre. But both have huge potential
and our only regret is Palm just didn't make good enough use of a whole
year since the Pre's launch.

Well, if you don't fancy the idea of becoming a Maemo 5 early
tester, you can also go for a device like the Nokia N97 or the N97 mini
which run a touch optimized version of the Symbian S60 platform. But,
yes, their OS feels inferior to webOS in terms of user friendliness and
feel.



Nokia N900 • Nokia N97 • Nokia N97 mini

Speaking of new software platforms, there is one more that we can
think of: Google's Android OS. And if the Pre was Palm's survival plan,
Milestone (DROID) was Motorola's. It runs the latest reincarnation of
the Android OS and has an impressive feature pack. There is hardly
anything missing. If you feel like going for Android, you can also take
a look at the now elderly HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1) or the newer HTC
Hero. The Hero lacks a hardware keyboard, but we'd skip it anyway.



Motorola Milestone • HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1) • HTC Hero

Another well-equipped device without hardware keyboard is the
BlackBerry Storm2 9520, which has an improved touchscreen after all the
issues that used to plague the predecessor. The next level of the Storm
evolution packs a large capacitive touchscreen, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, and GPS
plus the typical BlackBerry messaging.



BlackBerry Storm2 9520

It is clear Palm didn't see much point in inching their way out of
oblivion. They needed to come back with a bang. And they did. The Pre
did its job and the sooner they move on, the better.

Whatever negatives we might have said about the phone can't change
the fact that we like it. It's a strange looking thingy with a rather
vague concept of build quality. But it got propelled to the top by its
creative webOS. Not bad for a late comeback.

We guess it's now time for the next webOS phone and we don't mean
the Pixi. Mainstream would be too much to ask from Palm, but a device
capable of a much wider appeal seems the only thing to do their OS
justice.