I picked up the palm pre over the weekend and have played with it enough to have an initial review.
The good:
-small, sleek, design that looks good.
-sync with gmail/facebook
*always handy, I know have a pile of numbers saved of people I rarely ever call. While this seemed like a “bad” at first once you utilize the search function you realize you will never actually thumb through your list to find someone.
-the cost (of service)
*after haggleing with the sales person I worked out a 4 line 1500 minute unlimited GPS, data, messaging plan for less than $40 per person with 3 free phones. Compared to Iphone this is pennys.
-combined chat
*Got a text from the phone my girlfriend was trying out, later on in the day an instant message, and later a text from her other phone. It all gets put into one conversion with icons which denote where her message came from.
-turn by turn GPS navigation
*works quite well except a few times when it was worse than retarded: Turn left, than make a U-turn. (give me one example when that would make sense)
-Multi-tasking “cards”
*unlike the Iphone you can load a webpage while you do something else on another card. Real nice feature but probably is the cause of the battery problems.
-Slide out keyboard
*it may be small but its much easier to handle than the Iphone’s interface. Not to mention it doesnt cover up the screen. All it needs is a tab key for username/passwords type of fields.
-Removeable battery
*if you want this phone talk the sales guy into giving you a free battery so you can charge both and actually use it for a day.
-notification bars
- bars at first let you know about an event (alarms, calender event, email, message…) then after you ignore them for a while they turn into small icons in the corner. Icons also include the media player if its playing in an unopened card you can click the music icon to get a popup bar with pause/forward/back controls without stopping what your doing.
The bad:
-No good apps… at all (ok maybe pandora)
-no video recording
-Small space
*non-expandible 8gb storage is not enough for something that is supposed to be able to hold all my music and the lastest episodes of topgear. Compared to my 16gb ipod touch the lack of storage on this is frustrating. (yes Palm 8gb $199, Iphone 16gb $199)
-Slow
*once I added my music it takes forever to open up something like the camera. Forget about having multiple cards open.
-in accurate touch
*I keep looking for a way to calibrate the touch screen but in realitiy calibration is not the problem, the device simply isn’t intuitive and when you touch the point which is selected is very small the combination of the two makes it nearly impossible to hit links on web pages without zooming in quite a bit.
-Battery life
*with the sounds turned off, no cards open, and it in my pocket for 8 hours at work I can bring the battery down to 10% by flipping online in just one hour. This will be a device that needs to remain plugged in (spring for the car charger)
-Web browsing
*sucks ass, why can’t I get on forums? It wont let me sign in. When I finally trick it to let me sign in it signs me out on ALL forums when I hit CP.
-Dock/menu
*Things like the web browser and my music can only be accessed by a click through the menu/dock that is at the bottom of the screen. With a phone this slow I’d rather have it on the desktop at all times.
-Sounds
*when you hit the side volume controls on the side it only controls ringer volume. To turn off message sounds and email notifications you have to flip through a few different menus to be able to turn off/down the sounds. This is a bit rediculous and makes it a real pain in the ass to take to a movie or in the classroom.
-No calls when…
*apparently you cannot recieve calls when connecting the phone to your computer to sync songs or other media, another thing I just found out is that if you let it die (like today after only 12 hours of being on with very little use) it will take over 15 minutes of charging before you can power it back up.
-No visual voicemail
*are you kidding me? And this is being compared to the Iphone why?
The real nail in the coffin:
-The service
*The salespeople at sprint were quick to tell me that their service isn’t as bad as people say anymore because they now share towers with Verizon. Well the truth is there service is still terrible. It seemed like I could never get it to “switch towers” when I wanted it to, keeping me on Sprint with one bar when I was talking, or “Roaming” on Verizon when I wanted the internet, which you can’t access without the sprint network. This means I can’t get google maps, email, or use web browsing in my house, at my work, anywhere I tend to spend the most of my time. When it finally flips back to sprint I get one bar and the internet is too slow to use.
Possible redeeming factor:
-Free updates
*rumors are that Palm will be making multiple updates to fix some of the problems I have listed here (some of them are very easy to fix), or to add new features such as video recording.
My suggestions: Pay the extra bucks for the right service AT&T or verizon (I don’t have personal experience with AT&T but I haven’t heard many complaints) Either wait for the Palm Pre to be released on Verizon in 6 months which will probably be right about when they fix all the bugs, or pick another phone (Iphone)
Bonus info: I’m pissed I can’t delete the NASCAR app that comes with the phone. WTF, I refuse to associate with anything nascar.
Any idea as to how many people ask me why I have a nascar app on my phone? a: all of them.