My limited review of the Palm Pre

[JBundy]

Originally Posted by K & M Computers

As few of you might know, I work in tech support for Sprint. Today I got my training on the pre and got to spend about an hour playing with it. I must say, I am quite happy with it.

Things I liked

• One thing I was surprised by was how small it was. Its roughly the size of the HTC Touch and slighly smaller than the Treo Pro.That being said, it fit my hand perfectly.
• I liked how easy it was to launch applications. I loaded about 5 applications at once. They each took about 3 seconds to load(somewhat slower than other phones out there) but once they were loaded they worked flawlessly, since the pre uses a "card" feature for applications meaning each application is treated like a deck of cards that you can flip to it was easy to change between applications, a simple press of the button on the front of the phone and a flick left or right and it changed to the application.
• Closing apps were even easier, slide your finger from the bottom up and discard the card.
• I was also impressed with the 3 mega pixel camera included. It gave a nice full screen view when taking a picture. and it was easy to save on the phone.
• I especially loved the web browser on it, I had 3 sites open at one time and loved the fact i could zoom in and out using 2 fingers. in a pinch motion open and closed.
• I also loved the synergy concept(the phone incorporates all your contacts from facebook, gmail, aim, msn, yahoo, and other sources into one contact so that you can easily switch between methods of contact and keep it all organized) lets say you are talking to someone via aim, and they sign off, at that point you could continue your conversation with them by clicking the cell# next to the contact name and send them a text or email.
• The app store was very easy to use, however at the moment the apps are somewhat limited. Rumor is there should be over a thousand in the next month or so. I have also heard there will not be an app that is over 5.00.

Things I didn't like:
Well there were only 3 things i did not like about the phone.

• The slide for the qwerty keyboard was somewhat hard to open with one hand. I imagine over time it would open more easily as the spring is used and becomes less tight.
• Where the bottom of the keyboard slides out(bottom of phone) the edge is sharper than I would prefer. I think rounding over that edge would have made it perfect, if you use the keyboard too much I could only imagine your fingers being rubbed a little raw.
• No sd card slot. The phone has an onboard 8gig memory w/ aprox 7gigs available for the customer to use which acts as a usb mass storage. Me personally, I'd like to have the option to put a 16gb or larger card in it. Perhaps in future models they will add that functionality.

Thats all I have at the moment, As I get more time to play with it I might update some stuff on here.

I'd like to see what HTC or ________ (insert any relevant device maker here) does with webOS. Think Touch Pro2 (reconfigured with capacitive touch) with webOS running the show. They'd be poopin' on Palm. Pre feels ok but the more I reflect on the one hour I tricked on it, I feel like a wait is worth it to see if HTC (or ________) adds it to their OS portfolio (Android, Windows Mobile ...). If HTC buys a license, I'm buying and holding TSCE:2498 for the next year if I could learn a little Mandarin to communicate with someone in Taiwan. I don't use brokers. Anyways ...

[Donatom3]

Originally Posted by JBundy

I'd like to see what HTC or ________ (insert any relevant device maker here) does with webOS. Think Touch Pro2 (reconfigured with capacitive touch) with webOS running the show. They'd be poopin' on Palm. Pre feels ok but the more I reflect on the one hour I tricked on it, I feel like a wait is worth it to see if HTC (or ________) adds it to their OS portfolio (Android, Windows Mobile ...). If HTC buys a license, I'm buying and holding TSCE:2498 for the next year if I could learn a little Mandarin to communicate with someone in Taiwan. I don't use brokers. Anyways ...

I've never seen Palm license any of their OS's to any third party before, and I don't see that changing with WebOS. BTW HTC has acted as an ODM for Palm on other phones, not sure if HTC manufactured the PRE.

Oh wait I do remember a Samsung model running a Palm OS, but this was a while ago.

[jazzjc]

There's a lot of things I really like about this phone.

So far, everyone's ragging on the keyboard. This keyboard is perfect sized for my fingers, and I've texted about 150 times in the past 2 days. That's more than I ever do in a month with that piece of crap touch.

I love the fact that I can see what I have running. I don't have to download a 3rd party application to find that I have an IE window from 3 days ago still sucking up memory. It's all in front of you.

Sending something away to be closed is just a swipe away. God, I love that!

The display is so clear it almost looks fake. The phone is responsive, it's so easy to maneuver, and the few touch screen apps that it has are extremely accurate.


Dislike:
Not being able to sync directly with Outlook. Who in their right mind decided that AOL and Google should get the prize for syncing? I'm sorry, but that's the biggest downfall I can imagine.

Lack of apps. Please, please, please, give me back LiveSearch. Where is ok, but damn, when you live in a suburb of NY, it's frustrating when you get your choice of NY or nothing.

Lack of customization of notifications. Please, please give me back my ability to customize my voicemail notification. How else are my coworkers going to know that I just got a voicemail when I leave my phone at my desk? We have a contest to find the rudest ringers and notifications. Ringers are great, but text message received and vm notifications, oh where are thou custom notifications???

Main screen customization. I miss the Winterface app or Wisbar customizations of the home page. I want 1 click to the web, 1 click to email, 1 click to the weather to see if I am going to get rained on when I take the motorcycle into work.

[Success100]

Originally Posted by jazzjc

There's a lot of things I really like about this phone.

So far, everyone's ragging on the keyboard. This keyboard is perfect sized for my fingers, and I've texted about 150 times in the past 2 days. That's more than I ever do in a month with that piece of crap touch.

I love the fact that I can see what I have running. I don't have to download a 3rd party application to find that I have an IE window from 3 days ago still sucking up memory. It's all in front of you.

Sending something away to be closed is just a swipe away. God, I love that!

The display is so clear it almost looks fake. The phone is responsive, it's so easy to maneuver, and the few touch screen apps that it has are extremely accurate.


Dislike:
Not being able to sync directly with Outlook. Who in their right mind decided that AOL and Google should get the prize for syncing? I'm sorry, but that's the biggest downfall I can imagine.

Lack of apps. Please, please, please, give me back LiveSearch. Where is ok, but damn, when you live in a suburb of NY, it's frustrating when you get your choice of NY or nothing.

Lack of customization of notifications. Please, please give me back my ability to customize my voicemail notification. How else are my coworkers going to know that I just got a voicemail when I leave my phone at my desk? We have a contest to find the rudest ringers and notifications. Ringers are great, but text message received and vm notifications, oh where are thou custom notifications???

Main screen customization. I miss the Winterface app or Wisbar customizations of the home page. I want 1 click to the web, 1 click to email, 1 click to the weather to see if I am going to get rained on when I take the motorcycle into work.

remember: webOS is still in its infancy, things like this will come soon....

[josh90265]

I played with the Pre for a little bit at the sprint store the other day.( My Touch Pro's internet died and i was hoping for a replacement at the store.)

The only thing I have to say that bugged me was that there was only ONE hardware button on the face of the phone (the home button on the middle bottom). I guess I'm used to having that end button on the bottom right and my dedicated phone button on the bottom left.

-all in all, its not a phone. but i think i'll be stickin with the Touch Pro for now...

But with all things, im sure it just takes some getting used to