Messaging: The messaging interface is a bit odd at first. You have two views, conversations and buddies. The conversations tab encompasses all communications from a given contact and shows them all in a threaded format. So when a picture message is sent it shows up with the rest of the texts and shows a preview of the image. The scrolling is smooth for the most part but it does tend to lag if the contact has a picture. I did notice one thing here, there seems to be no way to forward a txt and there is no way to copy its contents and send it in a new mail. This seems like a very simple and important thing to have hopefully an update to the OS will fix this!
Email: The email was easy to set up, in fact, as part of the activation process in the sprint store, you have to set up at least one email on the phone to setup your palm profile. I opted to use my gmail account, as soon as it was entered (all I did was enter the email address and my password it did the rest) all my mail started to pop up in the inbox. One thing I noticed here is that I don’t seem to get any audible notification that the mail has come in and I cant seem to find a setting anywhere to set or change the alert. On that same token I cant find a place to change the tone for the messaging only the ringtone itself. Yet another thing that can hopefully be fixed by an update!
Bluetooth: Connecting Bluetooth gadgets is a breeze on this thing. I was able to connect a jabra 8040 headset, a Motorola HT820 wireless headphones, an Anycom Bluetooth Music Station Converter and my Pioneer AVIC-Z3 in the car, all without hassle. Music streaming sounds great on both the Motorola and the Anycom. After streaming music for 2 hours it did drain roughly 20% of the battery. Talking on the headset and car speakers worked great and it easily moved from one device to the other when I turned off the headset and started the car.
Battery: So far I have only had to full days to test the battery so nothing here is conclusive. The battery comes out of the box approx 50% charged. I played with the phone heavily the rest of the day and had to put it on the charger around 3pm. I pulled it off the charger at about 9am on Sunday and by the time I got home that evening with moderate-heavy usage (everyone wanted to play with it) it was at 18%. Not to bad considering how much the phone was played with. Today, Monday, it left the charger at 8am and with low-moderate usage (I use my pro for work during the weekdays) it is now at 20% at 12am. Initial results look promising but only time will tell on this one. FYI: I have pulled the battery out twice, once because I was switching out the back cover (it was open and very tempting to pull out) and again when the gps couldn't get a lock. The phone was fine after, no sign of this dreaded hard reset I've been reading about.
Charger: The one that comes in the box is in two pieces, a micro usb cable and a little cylindrical adapter that has a usb port on one end and a flipout wall plug on the other. The plug cover on the side of the phone is pretty hard to remove the first time and feels like you are cracking the side to do so. I really wish they used a mini-usb rather than micro. I understand it is a space saving but I just feel like mini has been more widely adopted and chargers and other accessories are just more readily available. I used to use one car charger that I shared between my diamond and pro. The charging through the cable takes a little over an hour for a full charge.
If you are willing to shell out another $70 you can get the touchstone charger for an even better charging experience. The touchstone kit comes with a new matte back cover that has a softgrip coating. I personally like this a lot better than the glossy back that comes with the phone, it feels more secure in hand, doesn’t show fingerprints and should protect better from scratches. Upon placing the phone on the touchstone it snaps into place and a notification pops up telling you it is charging. If a call comes in while the phone is on the charger it automatically routs the call to the speaker. If you then pick up the phone it automatically switches back to the earpiece.
Camera: The camera is a 3.2 megapixel fixed-focus camera with led flash. The interface is very very basic. One button for the shutter, one to view pictures you’ve taken and one to turn the flash on and off or auto. While the clarity and focus is not nearly as nice as the diamond’s, the real genius to it is the speed. Press the shutter button and it takes the picture immediately, the picture quickly disappears and you are immediately ready to take your next picture. Granted my experience is limited mainly to the devices I’ve owned in the past, but this truly tops them all for usability. The camera does lack settings though, no control over megapixels, quality etc. etc. Lets face it, a camera on your phone is for those quick shots anyway, when you don’t have a digital camera on you.
Updated as of 6-15-09:
App Catalogue: While this is by no means a new idea, it is definitely a well implemented one that is nicely laid out and easy to navigate. The ability to download, install and read/write reviews all over the air is a welcomed feature. The app catalogue is still quite empty at the moment (only about 30 apps) but I have no doubts that it will start to fill up as the WebOS platform starts to take off!
System Updates: The system updates are all done OTA just like the app catalogue. There was already an update to WebOS 1.0.2 waiting to be downloaded when I first got the phone. The update did not reset any data on the phone, all of my contacts, calendar entries and apps were still there after it ran. I also noticed that the system update will check for updates to your apps as well.
GPS: So far the GPS has been great. It gets a lock very quickly and seems to be quite accurate. I have used it along side my avic-z3 navi in the car and the phone keeps up with it just fine. There were even a couple of times that the sprint navi was able to recalculate the route faster than the z3 although most of the time they were exactly the same. It is nice to have a connected gps though, the maps in my car are already outdated but the sprint navi is always up to date. It is definitely more accurate and less laggy than the touch pro in this department.
Keyboard: This is one of the things that had me worried about the switch to the pre at first. I love the onscreen keyboards on my diamond and the hardware keyboard on the pro is great, but the tiny keys and lack of soft keyboard on the pre concerned me until I got to test it out. The keys have a rubbery, tacky feel to them that makes for good grip when pressing. The spacing is not bad although if you are two thumb typing and you come to a word that two of the letters are right next to each other it will slow you down a bit. I have medium sized hands, for those of you with fat-finger syndrome, your mileage may vary.
The balance of the phone when the keyboard is out is also quite good. This makes the phone feel secure in your hand while typing and not like the phone will topple over at any time. This is also good for one handed typing, the only complaint here is that the keys at either edge of the keyboard are hard to hit when using one hand, mainly the right side, if you are right handed. (Public service announcement: Don’t text and drive!
) One other thing to note here, the bottom edge, as previously reported, is quite sharp! I’m not exactly sure how this one got by the design team but I really feel they should have dulled it, even just a bit.
Size: The size, for me, is perfect. The phone is about the same thickness as the diamond (slightly thicker with the touchstone charging back on it) but shorter and wider. See my comparison photos for a better idea of size. The rounded edges, however give the pre a very different in hand feel, almost more ergonomic. I think this was part of the idea when designing the hardware, rounded edges, curved slider and very balanced. The phone is as comfortable up to your ear as it is in your hand or in your pocket. Again, for me this makes the size perfect but this is subjective to your own likings.
Synergy: Another great feature is what palm is calling synergy. Social networking has boomed in recent years, but with so many sites to belong to and so updates to check, it can be consuming and sometimes redundant. The idea here is to consolidate all of your networks into one central device so all your information is available with the swipe of a finger. In theory this is great but I think it still has a ways to go. You can synchronize your calendars, contacts, etc. into one place. But be forewarned, if you have a lot of facebook friends they are all going to be placed in your contacts on your phone. Or, if you sync gmail, all addresses that are auto stored in your contact list will show up in your phone. Cleaning it up is not to bad, but it would be nice if there were an options page where we could choose what data we would like to sync.
Universal Search: A very basic function, but also very useful, universal search allows you to search for anything simply by typing. Bring yourself to the card view and start typing, be it a contact name, website, or search engine query, it is all found through the same place. I have used this more than I ever thought I would. It makes finding things on your phone quick and painless and is especially nice for navigating to web pages since you just type the address and press enter and it tikes you there. Side note: You can add a shortcut to any website to your launcher menu by going to web – page – add to launcher.
Faults: After over a full week of using the phone, here are some of my gripes. I will try to update as I use the phone more:
Contacts quick scroll – When pulling up contacts in various sections such as messaging there is no way to quickly scroll through the names like with random access. It would be nice to be able to quickly scroll to a letter and then find the name from there. Some places allow you to start typing the name but this requires you slide out the keyboard. It may sound minor but an extra step is always one to many.
No forwarding in messaging – there is currently no way to forward a text/mms to someone else. I don’t use this feature often but it seems like common sense to build it in. It is available in the email app and I cant imagine it being that much trouble to implement. Hopefully an OS update will fix this.
No led indicator for notifications – This one actually bugs me a lot. If you walk away from your phone and miss a call, text or email, there is no external indicator to alert you to this. You have to press the power button or slide the phone open to check for missed events. This seems pretty fundamental as well, the LEDs are there, hopefully this can also be fixed with an update.
Top end notifications – This one is personal preference. I think it would be nice if we could set the notifications to show up at the top, at least when the phone is locked if not always. When you slide to unlock it covers the notifications area, also this would be nice because if you are using the case that comes in the box, you could just slip the top of the phone out to check notifications rather than taking it all the way out.
Can’t customize notification sounds – This one has been discussed up and down already so I wont make you read about it again. I just hope that when/if they do implement this that we will at some point be able to control sounds for all the different kind of notifications.
No audible email notifications – Another notifications issue. I get a lot of email and like to be alerted when it comes in. This is something I hope gets implemented right away. -
Update 6-16-09: Found where to set this. In your email go to prefrences & accounts, click on the account and scroll down. There is a place to set notifications, vibrate and sound!
Alarm clock snooze – I use my phone as an alarm. It’s especially handy while traveling. When the alarm goes off and you have snooze enabled, the button for snooze is directly below the dismiss button. There is plenty of screen space it would just make more logical sense to have the snooze button in the center of the screen or at least separated from the dismiss button.
Sharp lower edge – This baffles me. How they allowed a product to be released with this sharp edge is beyond me. Maybe they thought since it isn’t a children’s toy, its not a problem. It is definitely sharp enough to cut you in the right circumstances; I even watched a video of someone slicing cheese with it! So far I have not had a problem, but it does cause some concern for the future.
No external memory slot – Ok, so there’s nothing that can be done about this so I wont go on and on, but I would have preferred to have the ability to add additional memory or some kind of removable media. This is one advantage the touch pro has, I like keeping all my files and pim backups on the card and being able to pop it out at a moments notice.
Wireless media sync – There is Missing Sync for Mac and Pocket Mirror for PC but they both only sync PIM data and only through wifi or USB. It would be great if we could also sync music and photos and other files wirelessly. It would be even better if we could set it up to go through evdo! This would make life so much easier; if you have the touchstone plus wireless sync there would be almost no reason to ever plug it in.