Two years ago Apple’s iPhone made mincemeat of
the so-called expert cell phone designers: LG, Samsung, Motorola, Palm and
Nokia. Apple raised the bar so high that’s it’s taken two years for there to be
a serious competitor. Enter the Palm Pre. With Palm on the abyss of extinction,
it’s come roaring back with a superb new phone that is equal the iPhone in most
respects.
I’ve been using the Pre, available from Sprint,
for about a week now and it’s a delight to use. What’s most noticeable is that
it’s small, with a footprint not much bigger than a credit card. It’s shaped
like a thin bar of soap, smooth with rounded edges and nearly seamless.
The face of the phone is a gorgeous color screen
like the iPhone, with the same resolution (320 x 480 pixels), but about 10
percent smaller. The face slides up to turn on the display and expose a thumb
keyboard. It’s about the same size as Palm’s smallest keyboard, not as good as
a Blackberry, but decent, and for me, an improvement over the iPhone’s touch
keyboard. The back cover pops off to replace the battery, a plus over the
iPhone’s non-removable battery.
New
Operating System
The Pre uses an all-new operating system called WebOS that
will not run the old Palm applications (although a third party is working on
software that will work with some apps). It allows multiple apps to be open at
the same time, such as e-mail, calendar and camera. In my testing it worked
well, although some windows were a tad slow to open.
Action is initiated using its touch screen
that’s sensitive not only over the display, but below and above it. Depending
on where you touch and swipe, different actions occur. Finger gestures let you
select an application, minimize it, and move between several. To close one,
just flick it off the screen. Icons for your four favorite apps are lined up
along the bottom, and notifications appear beneath them, such as a missed call
or a new email. Accessing features requires very few taps or keystrokes. To
dial a phone number start typing the contact’s name on the keyboard, just like
on a Treo.
Syncing
Unlike previous Palms, the iPhone and Blackberrys, the Pre
is not designed to sync directly with your contacts and calendar on your
computer. Instead it syncs with on-line apps such as Google calendar and
contacts, Facebook contacts, etc. and combines data from all of these sources.
The first time you set up the phone you can import the data from your computer
to the phone.
You’ll need to set up Outlook or iCal to work
with Google’s apps, and that’s one of the weaknesses, especially if you’re used
to managing your calendar and contacts on your computer. (Setting up Google
calendar to sync with my iCal was a pain. Google imported repeat appointments,
but not single ones.)
I found it added some duplicate contacts,
because of slight variations in the contact records, and it brought in some
entries with non-working numbers, since I hadn’t kept my Google contacts
updated. The advantage of using Web apps such as Google, is that it does sync
over the air. Missing Sync (markspace.com) has released a free beta of
software to sync directly with your computer’s calendar and contacts.
One of the Pre’s unique capabilities is that it
can import music and Podcasts from Apple’s iTunes. Connect the Pre to your
computer and iTunes is fooled into thinking it’s connected to an iPod. It will
copy all your unprotected tunes, as well as podcasts, onto the phone. Podcasts,
however, are interspersed throughout the list of songs. Apple may not be
pleased with this, and could disable it in an iTunes upgrade.
Call
Quality
n my testing the Pre’s phone worked very well. Opened, it takes on a curved
shape that hugs the face. Reception was very clear with less audio distortion
than the iPhone. Those I called thought it sounded like I was on a landline. It
uses Sprint’s CDMA network and will not work in most countries in Europe or
Asia (Taiwan and Korea are two exceptions).
During this test period in which I used the
iPhone and the Pre in San Diego and Los Angeles, I couldn’t help but notice
that my iPhone on AT&T dropped calls several times a day, perhaps 20
percent of the time, but the Pre on the Sprint network did not drop any calls.
The Pre has 3G, WiFi and GPS radios built in
along with Google Maps and a 3-megapixel camera. The photo viewer works much
like the iPhone’s: flick your pictures across the screen and pinch to zoom in.
Web browsing is excellent, with pages viewable in the landscape and portrait
mode. Sites opened quickly and it was easy to zoom in and out with finger
motions, much like the iPhone. The built-in phone, contacts and calendars apps
worked well.
Accessories
The Pre comes with a cloth pouch, a combination headset and stereo earphones, a
USB to micro USB cable, and a small USB wall charger. It does not include a
detailed instruction book, just a foldout with basic instructions, but one is
available on Palm’s Web site (palm.com).
Several accessories are available from Palm: a
very high quality leather belt case, a plastic protective belt case, and a new
a charging platform called Touchstone. Instead of plugging the charger into
your phone, you plug it into Touchstone and lay the Pre on top to charge by
induction. (Similar to a cordless toothbrush). It’s very pricey at $70, but it
includes a replacement back for the Pre with a circuit inside. The back is
matte black with a soft touch finish instead of the standard glossy back.
Conclusion
So what’s the bottom line? This is an amazing little phone that matches the
iPhone for performance, functionality and fun. If there’s one drawback it’s the
lack of the applications developed for the iPhone over the past two years. But
give it time.
The Pre costs $199 for new and eligible customers,
and is available from Sprint for the rest of the year. (Verizon is rumored to be
offering the Pre in January.) The Pre is available under Sprint’s Simply
Everything plan that’s $100 per month, about 30 percent less expensive than
AT&T’s equivalent plan for the iPhone. If you’ve been waiting for an
alternative to the iPhone you wait is over.
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