Palm Pre! The 2-Week Review

The waiting

For those of us who follow us on Twitter, you probably know that RP and myself “camped out” for the Palm Pre on June 6. Well, I was getting a Palm Pre, and RP was there for the experience (or, as he told others, to get his hands on a KRZR). My contract was up, and I was very eager to get my hands on this phone…I’d been following it for about six months or so, and convinced myself it was the “next big thing.”

HoboRonin awaits his KRZR
Not surprisingly, we weren’t the first ones there. We’d first tried BestBuy, but knowing that our local store was getting only one unit, we knew we were doomed should there be an individual sadder than I there. This was the case, so it was off to the Sprint store with us.

We were number 2 in line at the store, arriving at about 5:45. The gentleman in front of us arrived at 4:00am, and the guy behind us arrived immedately after us. RP, despite quietly mocking those of us geeking out about the device, made several jokes which got him accepted by the crowd. “What time is it? Oh, about eight oh PRE!”

Our small but content line at 6am, courtesy of Roams11 at PreCentral.net.

The remainder of the wait wasn’t bad, the other folks who showed up were pretty awesome—with the exception of one guy…I don’t know how to describe him any better than, like—somewhere there are (maybe) some children particularly embarassed of their father. When 10 of us were let in to purchase our Pres (he was number 11), he had his face pressed up against the glass, doing somewhat of a dance that someone does when they need to relieve themselves. The Sprint rep was very helpful, and even though I was #2,because I was the first person in who was already a Sprint customer, I was the first one out. The other geeks accumulated outside (the ones eager enough to be there early, but not quite early/eager enough to get one!).

The Device

For me, the form factor of this device was a huge selling point, for a number of reasons. While I enjoyed the overall form and function of the iPhone, I am someone who would require a physical keyboard. I do a lot of typing on my phone (between texts, emails, web surfing, etc), so having this keyboard was important. What’s nice about the Pre is that it has a keyboard, but it tucks away nicely. When the Pre is closed, the feeling is very comfortable and organic. It just fits and feels right in the hand. there had been initial reports of sharp edges when the phone was open, and while I’ll admit that while they stand out a bit, it is no where near the “razor sharp death trap” that the Gizmodo review made it out to be (Ed note—I love Gizmodo, but I think they really embarassed themselves with this part of this review…especially making a video of them slicing some sort of soft cheese with their review unit).

The front of the unit is simple, almost a featureless gloss black when the device is closed, save for the earpiece and the center button. The glossiness of the device is fingerprint prone, but I haven’t found it to be problematic. On the left side is the volume rocker, and on the right side is the micro USB door. On the top is a (yes!) standard headphone jack and a physical ringer off switch—something I truly appreciate. On the back you’ll find the Palm logo, the 3.2 megapixel camera, the LED flash and the speaker for the speakerphone. All said and done, the design of the unit is relatively clean and organic.

When you slide open the device—my unit slides easily yet solidly—the full QWERTY keyboard is revealed. The keys are slightly “gummy” like those on the Palm Centro, but give enough feedback to let you know that you’re typing. The keyboard is not as good as the keyboard on my my BlackBerry Curve 8330, but I think the comparisson isn’t necessarily fair, given both the reputation and design of the two devices. My only real complaint about the keyboard is the tight spacing between the keys down the center of the keyboard (T & Y, G & H and V & B). Otherwise, I find it easy to type with.

The screen is a gorgeous 320x480, 3.1” display; the same resolution as the iPhone, but packed into a smaller area. It is very crisp and bright. The screen is capacative multi-touch, and works very similar to that of the iPhone, allowing gestures (more on this later). The touch screen is very accurate, and I’ve had few mis-touches. One thing that’s neat about the touch screen, but takes getting used to, is that the touch area extends beyond the actual viewable screen. This leaves the area below the screen as the “gesture area,” a place where you can make gestures, such as to go back or forward, outside the viewable area of the screen. A few LEDs embedded in the front of the unit mimic the gestures you make, providing some input feedback.

The Palm Pre’s hardware is good, but it’s still first generation hardware and certainly could improve. The operating system, however, is where the Pre REALLY shines. Like the iPhone OS, WebOS is very graphical and gesture oriented. The key feature of WebOS is how applications appear as “cards,” and it is easy for you to switch back and forth between applications, and have multiple things running at once. Where the iPhone runs applications “in-place,” so to speak, the Pre runs them simultaneously. You can be writing an email on one screen, flip over to your browser to look something up, change tracks on Pandora (without even leaving the current application), run the GPS and make a call, for example.

Left to right: Phone Dialer in “card” view, multiple cards open (app store, Tweed and phone), some eye candy pulling up the launcher within an app

The OS is Linux-based, and has already proven to be quite hackable, something that Palm has even seemed to support to a degree. Many of us are still waiting on the Mojo SDK to be released so we can get started creating applications.

The gestures on the device are excellent. Some of the scrolling and back/forth gestures from the iPhone are present, but Palm kicks it up a notch, using gestures to switch between applications, and even closing them by “throwing” them off the screen. Emails, too, can be deleted by swiping them off. The Pre, like the iPhone, has an accelerometer that will switch the phone into landscape when it is rotated. Fortunately, I have not found ANYTHING about the phone that requires shaking it. Thank god.

Currently the app catalog is somewhat lacking, but some of the Pre “hackers” have incidentally shown that the Pre should be relatively easy to develop for. I expect a lot of existing Linux applications could be ported to the Pre. Many WebApps (pages with extra functions, formatted for this type of device) that were created for the iPhone function great on the Pre, as they both have WebKit derived browsers. The apps that are available function great, and really work with the robustness of the device.

Wrapup

All said and done, the Pre is a pretty awesome and impressive device, but it still needs some time to grow. The OS is gorgeous and functional, and the device itself is well thought out. 2+ years of iPhones have left many users (myself included) with many expectations about what a phone like this should be and have. Admittedly, the App Store doesn’t have many applications yet—but it will take time. One needs to remember that the iPhone didn’t have these things from the get-go either. Even copy/paste is a “new” feature. I say in 6 months the Pre will have left its infancy and become a robust and interesting platform.

by mashthekeys
2 years ago