Palm Pre

The Palm Pre is an interesting phone and offers what I believe to be the best operating system on a phone. It takes inspiration from apple's iphone but adds extra levels to the UI. I love the flick to close function and the way the phone allows you to easily run multiple programs at the same time.

Having used Palm phones for the last couple of years, I thought they where good and did what I wanted, job done. However the Palm Pre, that an upgrade and a half. A touch phone with a keyboard, you would think why butI find it better than the compertition. Good looking, Easy to use, and a damed good phone. OK I'll admit it doesn't have all the apps that iPhone has, I don't need all those apps, I just want to call people, text now and again, and get my e-mail, and that what it does, and does it well. I like this phone despite its bad press and bad timing on launch, ity does what it says on the tin, and thats what I want.

I have had this unit for three months, and generally it is a really sound PDA. As already mentioned, the OS is easy to use with good, fluid movements needed to make it work. Speaking of the OS, it is a new one from Palm (WebOS) and they have done themselves proud with this. Everything about is is logical, from how to open apps and programs and how to close them. The touch-screen is very responsive (and very high pixel count makes it very sharp) and has a funky little bonus that when you do touch the screen a small 'ripple' appears to show that the touch has been recognised.

Talking of the screen, annoying trivia no 1: The pixel count is the same as the iPhone, but as the screen is slightly smaller it makes it much sharper as there are more pixels per square centimeter...

The App store is growing rapidly with the Pre, although a lot of the apps are total cack (spin the bottle, spin the hottie, that kind of thing). This has been mentioned to Palm on a number of occasions from a number of people; if the Palm Pre is such a good business tool (and it is...) why put out such total bundage in the app store???

There are some bad points with this phone though. The battery life (in mine anyway) is abysmal. I have to charge it every 24 hours, sometimes, if I use it heavily in the day it will be dead by 20:00, so this is something that Palm do need to improve (although there is a little part in the programming that lets you change the battery when the push the 'shutdown' button - maybe this will keep the phone going for a few seconds when the first battery is dying. I have not used this yet as I do not own a second battery. Also, the instruction manual that comes with the phone is awful. I was expecting a small booklet explaining how to do most things. But all I received in the box was a small (10cm by 3cm) folded up piece of card 'explaining' the few main operative motions, and on the back saying use the inbuilt electronic manual for all other operative things, but no explanation of where you an find this electronic manual. So for three days I did not know there are three screens available to you when you open the menu by sliding the screen left or right. But that could be just me...

Also, another down side to this is the contact list. As soon as you put an email in someone's contact that is a google based address, you cannot delete ot change that email address (unless I am missing something...). For some reason my wifes contact reverted to her maiden name (we have only been married 10 years so no idea where that came from) and as her email is a googlemail, I cannot change her name to fer correct one. Not the end of the world but still blooming annoying...

Setting the phone up to receive emails was really easy, as is setting it up to join any wireless network you may be in. So the two main reasons for buying this phone are easy as pie to complete, which is nice...

All in all this is a funky little unit and I would recommend it to all. It is so much better (and more serious) that the iPhone, and as long as Palm tweak it to make a few improvements it will be the iPhone killer that everyone is talking about.

when i first got the pre, i couldn't figure out how to close app windows. but after viewing the online pdf op manual i became a pro. there is one gesture that is used often, the back gesture. it's nice because it becomes habit, and almost common sense. there is a button for home and it also lights up when actions are performed. also i noticed two little lights on either side of the button witch seems to indicate the gesture was read from one side to the other. what i found nice was a period for those dot com entries as well as the at symbol for emails. other people have already mentioned about lack of keyboarding in landscape mode, but that doesn't bother me. what i didn't like is that the settings are mixed together with actual apps. If they had a generalized tab or section for those. it can get a bit confusing. overall i think its palm best thing. it can beet out the iphone if they fine tune a few things and get more apps. and thats something else. palm needs to keep most or all of their apps free. this is palm we're talking about. they'll come out ahead. look at apple. they got scared they might lose out, so they are going to be offering the iphone to any provider that uses sim chips. try again apple. you're taking on palm. they created the pilot and now the pre.