It's about time, right?! For the geeksugar Palm Pre review, that is. Better late than never in my opinion, so without further adieu, let's get the Pre party started.
I've had the past week to use and abuse this device and if you were anti-Palm before, it's safe to say they've come a long way since the Centro. The Pre is flashy, sexy, and perfectly fit in the palm of my hand. With its nice glossy black exterior, it tends to be fingerprint-prone, but if you switch the back plate with the plain black touchstone compatible back, you should be good to go.
The flip out QWERTY keyboard comes in handy for typing emails and texting (the Pre has copy and paste!), but keys are somewhat small so I tended to use my fingernails for precision. When the keyboard is flipped out, you'll find a nice mirror on the back of the Pre — a mirror that's big enough for quick food in the teeth checks or makeup touch-ups. The Pre's 3.2-megapixel built-in camera takes crystal clear pics, and with the big bright flash, you can take night shots no problem. Also, with Palm's stellar image processing, you can take photos continuously (like a regular camera) since there isn't a shutter lag.
To check out more photos of the Palm Pre, to see what else I thought and to watch a video of it in action read more.
The screen on the Pre is comparable to the T-Mobile G1's, the iPhone's and the BlackBerry Bold's screen. Color is vibrant and video viewing is impeccable. As you'll see in my video after the jump, scrolling through applications with webOS is similar to the iPhone, but the touchscreen sensitivity isn't always 100 percent accurate. Sometimes it would take me two or three tries before I could launch an app, but it wasn't something that happened every time. What I absolutely loved was the ability to use a slow swipe for the cool Quick Launcher and you can scroll up to discard windows when you were finished with them. No fiddling with small x boxes to close something, just swipe up and it's gone (again, something you'll see me using a lot in the video!). Left swiping acts as your "back" button and web pages, tools, and apps are easily draggable and droppable. Features like texting, placing calls, emailing, etc., were similar to the iPhone. Overall, applications were fairly intuitive, if not easier to use than those on the iPhone. Now for my gripes.
The Cons:
- I happened to drop the Palm Pre outside (on cement) and my heart stopped when it was unresponsive. Fortunately, a quick touch of the power button and it was back in action. But, this occurred again (I'm a klutz!) and the same thing happened. Whenever I drop my BlackBerry or iPhone, although a little banged up, they never shut off (or need to be restarted). Also, I noticed that the track for the keyboard was a little off when I tried to flip it out. The phone still works, but on a durability level, I don't know how long it would sustain a few too many falls.
- The new iPhone 3G S has video functionality, the Pre sadly does not.
- Apple just announced that they might put their foot down on Palm Media Sync, which transfers pics, videos, and tunes to your Pre from iTunes. This would be a major thumbs down for Pre owners.
- One Pre accessory I was really excited about using was the touchstone charging device. Except when I got my hands on it, I was saddened to see that it wasn't wireless. And the Pre needed to be placed on it in a very precise manner to actually pick up a charge. Not as sexy as I originally thought, that is for sure.
I'm just skimming the surface on this one, but overall this smartphone deserves four stars for design, sleek interface, ease of use, and camera quality. Hopefully a software upgrade will fix some of my issues with the phone.
Juicy Couture
Browns Fashion
Austin Reed
had this phone for less then a week and the screen cracked just by being in my pocket and its not just me this happened to it seems like a lot of people are now having this problem http://forums.precentral.net/hardware-use-trouble-shooting/183524-cracke...
1Got this phone the day it came out had it for less then a week before the screen cracked just by being in my pocket looked it up online and it seems to be becoming a problem
2theres a thread on it other then that i loved the phone but i didnt want it to happen again so i just returned it untill they make some changes
use the pouch
3you didn't mention multitasking! that's one of the functions it has above the iphones, blackberry's and g1's of the world.
I'm hoping that it's just carelessness on the part of the owners and clumsiness that the screen cracks.
I read that there's an update coming up that includes video recording. I hope it's true!! *fingers crossed*
I love the keyboard. I find it much more comfortable texting with my fingernails. I even text with my fingernails on my sister's bb curve 8900.
overall , good review!
4My internal LCD screen cracked radiating from the lower center tasking button. This appears to be a design, material or manufacturing problem and Sprint more or less has acknowledged there are some issues. It has also been reported that the phone over heats during charging and I experienced that as well before the screen cracked on it's own.
I think the phone's operating system is very good and the multi-tasking is excellent. As a phone the Palm Pre rates as no better than average and it is not the easiest phone to operate. The keyboard although small is very functional and the raised pads for the letters make it just as easy as the iPhone's on screen key pad which I don't like.
Overall I am very suspect of the phone's durability and I worry about a design that allowed a major issue like internal LCD screen cracking and that has been reported by many people so it is not a fluke. At best it's a manufacturing problem and then it's shame on Palm for not having better quality control. I am also concerned about the plastic key board that slides out; it's a bit on the flimsy side and I question it's durability as well.
I look forward to version 3 of the Palm Pre, I suspect they will address a lot of these issues but that has to be a long way off. Good luck to all.
5Post New Comment
Please share your opinion with our community, but make sure it is on topic and follows our Community Rules. We moderate comments and prohibit personal attacks, threats, spam, lewd images, or the promotion of your personal website.