Palm Pre Preview
Although we knew Palm was announcing something at CES, we had no idea it was going to be this big. With the announcement of the Pre, Palm has once again shown that it is one of the leaders of innovation.
While this is not a full review of the product (since it is yet to be released) we did manage to do a little “hands on” and here are our first impressions.
DESIGN
The Palm Pre is in a class by itself. The device is sleek, small and sexy and can easily be carried around in ones pocket without a problem. The phone features a 3.1-inch touchscreen that supports multi touch gestures like pinching and flicking etc many of which are available on the iPhone and some of which are original to the Pre.
The phone also features a vertical slide out QWERTY keyboard. One would expect this to add some serious bulk to the device; however, Palm was still able to keep the thickness of the phone to 0.67 inches. While we’re at it the height and width of the phone is 3.9 inches and 2.3 inches respectively. The device weighs a meager 4.76 ounces.
Bluetooth 2.0 with stereo support is standard as well as a 3.5mm headphones jack. MicroUSB 2.0 connector, ambient light and proximity sensor, accelerometer, 3 megapixel camera with LED flash and extended depth field all appear on the camera as will as integrated GPS.
As for the band of operation, the phone will be available exclusively on the Sprint network in the US supporting 3G EVDO Rev A. A GMS and UMTS friendly version of the phone is supposed to be announced some time in March.
PERFORMANCE
As we said before, this is just a preview since we didn’t get to give the phone a complete run down. So far our first impressions of the device were positive. Although this was just a pre build it still performed very nicely. The phones browser which is based off the WebKit (the same one used in the iPhone’s Safari and the Blackberry Storm’s browser) performed nicely. In fact the browsing experience even edged out that of the iPhone’s which to date has had the best browsing experience.
The phone’s highly talked about webOS platform is exactly how it sounds. The whole OS is integrated in the internet and even the development of apps for the phone will be done with HTML, JavaScript etc.
We found the touch response of the phone to be very responsive. Palm has included a beautiful card layout that allows you to easily switch between programs which makes multi tasking extremely easy, something the iPhone is lacking.
The phone also supports built in support for Microsoft Outlook with Microsoft Direct Push Technology. IM, SMS and MMS are all integrated very tightly in the phone.
The feature we were most fascinated with was the wireless charging feature that is done via Palm Touchstone charging dock. The phone comes with a removable battery which is identical to the one found in the G1, Centro and Treo 800w. As for unboard memory, you get 8GB and Bluetooth tethering is supported for phone as modem feature.
So far we were not able to test call quality or the speed of the 3G network but that is to come later.
CONCLUSION
Palm and Sprint have been pretty hushed about the price or release date of the Pre. So far both companies have confirmed that it will land in the first quarter of 2009. As for price, that is yet to be announced and both companies are still negotiating that. But seeing that this phone is taking a square aim at the iPhone, Instinct and Storm we would be surprised if this phone actually broke the $200 mark on contract.
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