My Palm Pre Review

I bought a Palm Pre as I want to investigate if we should create an app for this new hot phone thinking that I would probably cool but... it would be a sub iPhone. After a few hours it feels as an awesome and very usable device that may well end up becoming my main mobile device. I have been carrying for about a year now two phones: an iPhone mostly for mobile browsing and sharing pics and a blackberry for emailing as I am much faster with a keyboard. The Palm Pre has great browsing and a good keyboard, even though much smaller than the blackberry, so it feels like a fantastic combination of both.

Here is a quick review.

The design

It feels much better than an iPhone or a blackberry in your pocket, it's like a little egg. It is not flat and is much more pretty. I wish they would have put a hook to attach a necklace to it, sometimes I like to have my phone this way, like when I host LeWeb, but it slides well and does not feel clunky. The keyboard is much better than on the iPhone's touch keyboard but not as good than the blackberry as it is much smaller. The keys feel very small to my big fingers but I am hoping I can type almost as fast as on the blackberry with some practice. I type super slow on an iPhone and will never fix it, I know, I am getting old but that is just a fact.

UI & UIX

It is extraordinary. You can multitask super easily and I love the move up the card with your finger gesture to delete a window you do not need. It is not as intuitive as the iPhone but as you learn it it feels great if not better sometimes. There are some little lags from now and then which are not too disturbing, and you get those on the iPhone 3G as well, the iPhone 3GS will probably be faster.

Email

You can say what you want about a smartphone, email is still my primary application. It is just amazing on the Palm Pre, as expected. Deleting is super cool with a finger move to the right, it's fast. I love it. The Palm Pre immediately synched with my gmail and gmail apps accounts, I felt home in 2 minutes. It is not "push email" the way the blackberry does, the phone goes and checks for emails for you, they do not arrive in real time, but that's ok, even if not as good as the BB's main reason to buy.

Browsing

That is the main drawback of any Blackberry. Despite all RIM's efforts their browsers just aren't very good. I do not know why they cannot fix the browser, but I never got the iPhone feeling for browsing on a Blackberry. I love it on the Palm Pre, it just renders any page very fast like the iPhone and works in both portrait and landscape mode, the Pre rotates the same way the iPhone does.

Calling and voice quality

I have no idea, I rarely call anyone and rarely get called by anyone. My voice mail says "please leave me an email" so this does not count much for me.

Contacts

If you use the Gmail or Gmail apps suites, it imports all your contacts immediately, as well as your calendar. Works great except one main issue which is a real pain for me, it imports ALL your gmail contacts not only the ones in your address book, everything gmail ever collected for you. For me it's like 4,000 contacts most of which I never interact with and there is no way to import just the ones you added to YOUR contacts, unless I did not find it. That is a real problem for me and I would love any tip to solve that, I guess I will have to delete them from Gmail so that my phone's address book isn't a mess. There are some weird characters also created by gmail in the address book that I have seen on other phones so it does not look like a Palm specific issue.

IM & SMS

Works great, imports your gtalk and aim accounts. I miss Skype chat as this is what we use internally in the company. SMS show in a very similar way than on the iPhone but not as nice, it shows a conversation type view that we became very fast familiar with.

Photo and Video

Very disappointed not to find a click and shoot button in case you see something cool you want to save very fast, I feel there are too many gestures to access the camera recorder. Unsure about the quality will have to try more but it seems better than both iPhone 3G and Blackberry as you try your first pictures. I could not find a way to record a video either I am dumb or they did not release it yet.

App Store

Of course that is where the iPhone wins without even comparing. Thousands of great iPhone apps and very few for the time being available for the Pre, which is normal as it just launched. I have no doubt many developers will build cool apps for it but that may be the reason why the Pre never really grows, as the number of cool apps available is becoming the number one reason to buy for many people. Like my kids, for example, who only talk about the games available on the iPhone.

Goodies

It comes standard with a great GPS navigation software that feels like Tom-Tom with 3D and live directions, better than the iPhone. It also has live and streaming TV services from Sprint which are in great quality but I will never use, unless I am so bored at an airport I will check the news on TV... That happens but is rare.

Social Networking

There was a huge buzz on how fantastic the Pre was for integrating the social software everywhere, in the address book etc. I was quite disappointed by this as I was really expecting to have a WOW effect somewhere. It did not happen. Yes, there is a browser based Facebook which is nice, but that is not that extraordinary. I may have missed things, will play more.

What? It only works in the US?

THAT is terrible. Horrible. I hear it is only Sprint CDMA or something? Won't work in Europe or Asia? Fortunately I have a traveller friendly Orange sim card on my French iPhone that I will use for international roaming data. But come on, seriously? In 2,009 how can you guys release a phone that only works in the US and Canada? Total disappointment here.

Battery time

Not sure, I have only played with it for a few hours, it felt more robust than the iPhone which would have had half battery with that much browsing, but I need to verify that.

Music

No idea, it does not obviously seem to sync with itunes but it's not a big deal for me, I guess it will be for many people.

My conclusion

After a few hours, I am in love with it and already transferred my main phone line from the Blackberry to the Pre. I always kept the Blackberry as my main line, even the iPhone did not manage to become my main phone as I really want a keyboard. The international lack of support is a big problem but I will survive during my trips just with the iPhone. I will keep the iPhone as secondary as we are very excited to create our Seesmic iPhone application and very excited with the iPhone platform that will for sure remain much bigger. The Pre just became my primary today, let's see if it remains this way! Blackberry's chance is their market share but they'd better improve their browser fast...