The Palm Pre is the most anticipated mobile device of the summer. In fact, it may be the best mobile phone of the year.
The Pre (available only from Bell in Canada - $199 on a three-year term) is the latest smartphone to hit the market, and it's also been billed by industry analysts as the device to save Palm - which hasn't exactly been creating the hottest phones lately.
Combining a touch screen and a keypad, the device is more than just a pretty thing. It's a sleek and clever business tool that's capable of synching all your digital worlds into the palm of your hand.
From a design perspective, the Pre is sexy. It has a plain black gloss front interface with two chrome accents - one for the earpiece and one for navigation. Tapping the power button in the top-right hand corner turns the phone or the display on or off.
There's two volume buttons on the left (up/down) and a handy quick-mute switch on the top.
The back - home to a 3 MP camera, LED flash and speaker - is wrapped in rubberized black plastic
Slide the phone apart to reveal a mirror for the camera - on the front you'll find a QWERTY keyboard.
The keyboard and the touch screen are really key players of the team here. While the screen lets you easily navigate from application to application, the keyboard springs to action when it's time to type a message, dial a number or do a search - for practically anything on the device or on the web.
Which brings me to what the phone's like.
At first, it was awkward. I got lost. I didn't know where I was going and felt like sticking to my personal phone for the rest of the week.
You need to give the Pre time. The phone has a learning curve, but once you've figured things out - you're good to go.
The Palm Pre's operating system (webOS) lets you have multiple applications open at the same time, and it lets you easily flip between these open programs, also known as 'cards,' by sliding them across the screen with your finger.
This makes it incredibly easy to see what's open on-the-fly, and you can also re-arrange the order that these cards are in.
That being said, the number of applications available to download from the Palm Pre's app store is small compared with what's available for the iPhone. This could change, perhaps, as more developers build software for the Palm Pre. All your basic apps are there, however.
Users can open applications by clicking customizable icons on the Quick Launch bar along the bottom, or by sliding up the menu screen. Users can also slide across the menu to get to various settings - all with the touch of a finger.
The device has a notification bar under the Quick Launch bar, which is where email, message, voicemail, missed calls and tweet alerts show up.
Another main feature of the Pre is Palm Synergy, a service that syncs your contacts, calendars, and other information across a variety of platforms including Facebook, Gmail, Outlook Exchange, etc. into one Palm account.
This lets you contact practically anyone you know just by typing their name. The phone instantly pulls up their contact information - including phone numbers and email addresses - letting you send an SMS, make a voice call or shoot off an email, instantly. It will even match their Facebook profile photo to their contact entry on your phone.
The device's web browser is slick and easy to use like that of the iPhone's, with several similarities, including the pinching finger movements to zoom in and zoom out. I did have problems, however, loading mobile sites automatically.
I found that while using the phone, there was occasionally a slight lag in performance - sometimes it was loading applications or entering text.
Another issue I have with the Pre is the battery life - which isn't that impressive. I found it lasted about a day with moderate phone and data use. The Pre can be charged wirelessly, however, using the Touchstone dock - sold separately for about $80.
Something I really like is the music player, which is quite smooth. Touch-based, you can scroll through songs, artists and albums with finger flicks - plus the device scores major points with its ability to sync with iTunes.
The phone comes with 8GB of on-board memory, which can't be expanded. As well, about 1 GB is used for the device's software, leaving just over 7GB free for music, movies, pictures and other things. Not a whole lot, considering the $199 iPhone 3GS from Rogers currently has 16GB of space.
There is a feature that's missing here - an equalizer that could help music pop from average earbuds.
I know it seems like I've been picking apart several of the Palm Pre's imperfections, but to be honest this is a pretty wicked device. Using an Apple iPhone after having the Pre felt like I was going backwards, which goes to show just how great the Pre is.
Not only is this Palm a wicked smartphone, it's also a different smartphone.
Everywhere you go, it seems people either have a Blackberry or an iPhone. It's the norm. It's expected. It's boring. The Palm stands out.
People were asking about the Pre everywhere I went. People were playing with it. Nobody ever said it's not as good as the iPhone. I heard a complaint that it doesn't have BBM, but that's about it. I even had to beg for some friends to hand the phone back.
Yes, 8GB isn't a whole lot of space, there's not a whole lot of apps (yet) and the battery performance isn't anything to write home about.
But the Palm Pre is a great mobile device that has what it takes to take on the iPhone.
