Palm Pre review: A pebble in your hand
Gsmarena have posted their review of the Palm Pre. Here are the phone's key features, main disadvantages and final impression.
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
Main disadvantages:
•No video calls over the 3G network
•No memory card slot
•Glossy plastics look cheap, love fingerprints
•Camera has no auto focus… nor any settings at all, disappointing image quality
•No video recording unless hacked
•Web browser lacks Flash support, but it's on its way
•No DivX/XviD video playback support
•No Bluetooth file transfers
•App Catalog available in a limited number of countries
•Small and fiddly QWERTY keyboard keys
•No onscreen keyboard, portrait typing only
•No smart dialing
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Main disadvantages:
•No video calls over the 3G network
•No memory card slot
•Glossy plastics look cheap, love fingerprints
•Camera has no auto focus… nor any settings at all, disappointing image quality
•No video recording unless hacked
•Web browser lacks Flash support, but it's on its way
•No DivX/XviD video playback support
•No Bluetooth file transfers
•App Catalog available in a limited number of countries
•Small and fiddly QWERTY keyboard keys
•No onscreen keyboard, portrait typing only
•No smart dialing
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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