Palm Pre Reviewed By iPhone Fan

The Palm Pre is an all-new smartphone designed from the ground-up to work with the web. It’s currently a Sprint-exclusive priced at $199 after mail-in rebate. It runs an all-new operating system called “webOS” that is based on linux and sports innovative features like Synergy for syncing and multitasking “cards” to quickly switch between tasks.
Comparisons with the iPhone are inevitable, and in some ways people are more impressed with the Pre, which costs $200 after a mail-in rebate with a two-year Sprint plan. Despite some missing features and performance issues that make it less than ideal for on-the-go professionals, the Palm Pre offers gadget lovers and consumers well-integrated features and unparalleled multitasking capabilities.

webOS: webOS is based on linux, but unlike the linux-based Android operating system, webOS feel much more polished overall. Although it’s based on a linux core, the heart and soul of webOS is the web (as you might suspect from the name). It uses web-based technologies like HTML5, AJAX, and Javascript for nearly all of its applications. The reason this is important is that it means 3rd party developers can quickly and easily create a wide range of applications. It also means that apps can resize as necessary when notifications come in (more on that in a little bit). Each application in the Pre gets run in its own ‘card’ that acts much like a window would on your desktop. Since the webOS multitasks, you are able to have many cards open at once including multiple cards for web browsing, email, email drafts, music, navigation, and so on. Cards stay fully live in the background so you don’t need to wait for web pages to refresh when you go back to them.

Hardware: Although the Pre is made of glossy plastic, it does not feel especially cheap or plasticky. The Pre’s plastic both on the back and the screen do indeed show fingerprints, but not as egregiously as the iPhone’s screen seems to. The plastic is also tough as nails. I didn’t go so far as to take steel wool to the device, but I’ve been awfully cavalier about throwing it in my pocket with keys and skittering it around my desk and there’s nary a scratch to be found. In addition, the screen module slides to reveal a full qwerty keyboard. The glossy-black Pre has a uniquely curved slider body that’s dominated by its 3.1-inch, 320-by-480-pixel capacitive touch display. While I appreciated having a physical keyboard, I disliked the design. The vertical slide-out QWERTY keyboard looks and feels much like that on the Palm Centro; here, the keys are glossy black with orange-hued lettering and different colors to designate the embedded keypad. The keys are slightly recessed, however, and I found that the bezel lip on the sides and bottom often interfered with my typing.

Camera: The 3.2 megapixel camera takes pictures very quickly, especially if you use the spacebar as a shutter button instead of the on-screen button. Photo options are basically nil you can set the flash to Auto, On, or Off, and that’s about it. Coming from a Treo Pro, however, it’s night and day. This is the best camera Palm has ever put in a phone. Unfortunately the camera cannot record video and this is a serious drawback. But since the OS is open source, a video-recording app could be forthcoming. In my snaps, the LED flash did a good job; dimly lit indoor environments had sharp details and fairly accurate color. My outdoor shots looked ever better, with excellent color saturation and little image noise or distortion.

Web Browsing: Like the iPhone, the T-Mobile G1, and various Nokia smartphones, the Pre’s browser is based on the Webkit rendering engine. What this means to you is that it renders full web pages quickly and accurately. The Palm Pre beats out both the iPhone and the G1 in download and rendering time. Part of its speed seems to come from really great javascript — often on smartphones pages will load and then hang when it comes time to process all the scripts on a given page.

Social Networking: One of the most important components of webOS is its ability to synchronize, and synthesize, information from various sources into one seamless, integrated view. Palm calls this concept “Synergy,” and it is incorporated into the contacts, e-mail, and messaging applications. Users can sync the Pre to your Google, Facebook, and Microsoft Exchange accounts; it will grab your contacts from those accounts, and all of them will appear in the Pre’s Contacts app. The Pre comes loaded with a few other apps: YouTube, Google Maps, the Amazon MP3 store, a PDF viewer, a document viewer, a calculator, a task list, and a memo board (which looks like a corkboard). You can also access the Palm App Catalog to buy more. Sprint apps, such as Sprint TV and Sprint’s NASCAR program, are preinstalled on the phone as well.

Multimedia: The Palm Pre supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, WAV, and AMR files. Music through the included earbuds sounded clear with no noise or static, but it lacked bass. Pre users will have access to Amazon’s Mobile Music Store, also seen on the Google Android-based T-Mobile G1. The store makes downloading DRM-free tracks directly to the phone simple. You can load your music via iTunes or do it manually with an easy drag-and-drop. The media player is pretty standard: You can view your music library by artist, album, songs, or genre, see album art, and create playlists. And, of course, you can run the music app in the background. Video quality was also quite good on the Pre’s gorgeous display. The Pre has a dedicated video player that supports MPEG-4, H.263, and H.264. The YouTube app, which comes preloaded on the device, delivers video in high-quality H.264 format regardless of whether you’re on Wi-Fi or on Sprint’s EvDO network.

Related posts

• TomTom iPhone Navigation Applications Will Make GPS Device Obsolete (0)
• Tom Tom $99 GPS App For iPhone Review (3)
• Square From Jack Dorsey The Peer 2 Peer Payment System For Smartphones (0)
• Shadow Complex Game Review: Side Scrolling Fun Factor (0)
• Samsung TL220 And TL225 Cameras: Advantages Of Dual LCD (4)