talkingDigital

Today, I put the Palm Pre through its heaviest use yet. I downloaded more apps, surfed the web, added a few contacts, sent some texts, did some twitter, took some pictures, and played with the interface. I had several clients with computers that needed Norton Antivirus removed, so there was a lot of sitting and waiting.

Palm has done a wonderful job at offering some the the best aspects of the iPhone. A wonderful GPS, easy to install apps, and exciting user experience. It is simply fun to use and play with.

That said, there are a variety of practical aspects that I miss. I have been a heavy Palm user for nearly 10 years. I shortcuts and menu options to get around more than I use the actually icons and stylus. I am happy to say that the Pre keeps a lot of these aspects intact. There are shortcuts, for example, if you want to go to the web app, you just type “web” and the web app icon shows up on the screen. Press the return key and you are taken to the web app. That is very nice. It enables you to use the device with one hand and you don’t have to hunt through menu screens to find what you want.

That said, there are several traditional Palm features I would have liked to see.

Themed launcher screens –

The Palm Pre is modeled after the iPhone launcher, you can arrange the order of the icons, but you may have to gesture through several screens before you find the icon that you want. Searching for the app is easy, as long as you remember what it’s called.

It would have been nice, if Palm would have kept the old interface concept here. Rather than having page after page of apps in that must be dragged to a screen or location on the screen, it would have been nice, if Palm created screens with names such as games, entertainment, utilities, etc. In my opinion, Palm has taken a step backward with its launcher app. It works, but it is too much like the iPhone and ignores one of the slicker features of the Palm OS.

Keyboard shortcuts –

The traditional Palm OS supported them all, copy (C), paste (V), cut (X), undo (Z), all (A). Now WebOS only offers cut, copy and paste. The selection feature is so horrible. Selecting text on the Palm was easier than selecting text with a mouse on the computer, this is a giant step backwards for Palm as the OS goes.

Not enough customization –

The old Palm OS allowed you to customize almost everything. Fonts, colors, themes, keyboard shortcuts, default programs, etc. And that was just the OS. Nearly every program offered many customization options as well. The more time I spend with the Pre, the more I realize how amazing the original Palm OS was. It may have been simple and plain, but it really offered some amazing customization options. The pre much of that. There are certain theme elements and features that can be changed, such as the wallpaper, but Palm has gone to great lengths to make sure you don’t mess up the Pre look and feel. Palm is at least as protective of the Pre aesthetic as Apple is about the iPhone’s.

Get anywhere in 3 taps or less – Palm OS was simple. I could get nearly anywhere with less that three taps of the stylus. the Pre is a little more complex than that. While it isnot difficult to use by any stretch of the imagination, I do miss the uniform nature of the Palm OS. Compare the simplicity of Windows 3.1 (if you remember it) with the complexity of Windows 7. One is very pretty and powerful on features, but the other does what it needs to do quickly and efficiently.

In many ways, Windows 98 was my favorite version of Windows. The most recent version of the Palm OS (non-webOS) had this feel to it. It may hot have supported multimedia, pretty web pages, multi-touch or accelerometer and GPS, but it did a wonderful job at getting work done as a PDA/phone.

I have mentioned in almost all of the previous reviews that my complaints are almost all about the software. Not that WebOS isn’t amazing – it is. I am in love with the Pre, but I also am keenly aware of its faults as I have been a heavy smartphone user since 2001 I know what I expect in a smartphone. I hope that Palm will release at least a couple major OS updates over the next year that will add some of these features.

In the end, I still believe that the Pre leaps and bounds better than iPhone was at its launch. Its advertised features are also more ready for primetime than any version of the iPhone has been at its launch. Remember MobileMe? Remember that iPhone 1.0 didn’t even support third party apps? Remember how bad the GPS was? Considering that Apple had very little negative press between the original iPod launch and the release of the iPhone, some may consider the iPhone to not only be one of Apples greatest successes, but also one of its biggest black marks.

The Pre is not an iPhone killer, I am glad it’s not because I don’t want an iPhone. I want a Palm that will work in the modern age of cloud computing, multimedia, social networking, GPS, digital photography and Google. I am hoping that the Pre will be the Blackberry killer or the Windows Mobile killer. Keep the iPhone out there and doing all the things it does best. Competition is healthy.

The title of this review is a little misleading. While I am celebrating my second full day of Pre ownership, I have not used the Pre exclusively for those two days. I am using both my Centro and the Pre. I am in the process of selling my business and the buyer is going to continue using the Centro and Agendus setup that I have been using for the past eight years until he gets a grasp of how the business runs, at which point he will likely change phones and scheduling systems.

So, I  am using the Centro for business but the Pre for personal, church and other professional projects I continue to work on.

While I haven’t used the Pre exclusively, I have had a lot of time to play with it and try to understand how to use it as a tool which is what I bought it for.

I believe that I made it clear all along that I did not expect the Pre to be an iPhone, nor did I want it to be an iPhone. I wanted a smartphone that had a practical edge and a slick interface. I have played with the Storm, the Instinct and the HTC Touch models and they all are very good at trying to look like iPhones in the marketing but failing miserably in reality. I would almost consider them bait and switch phones.

The Pre had attracted me from the beginning because it pays homage to the iPhone. But it also pays homage to the Blackberry and Palm.

Today I noticed the Pres imperfections but I also realized what may be its greatest strength.

Let’s discuss the Cons first…

CONS:

Web browsing is a little quirky -Pages do load fast and render very nicely. However, I do miss the iPhone’s ability to automatically zoom in on a given portion of a website. You do a lot of multi-touch pinching and sliding to get navigate through the page. It seems that you either zoom in or out too far. I think this is partly due to the smaller screen size.

The rendering of iGoogle and talkingDigital is pretty much horrible. The page is rendered into tall, thin columns. They can be read, but the pages are not pretty at all.

Copy and Paste exists on the Pre, but it needs a lot of fine tuning. It does not work at all in web browsing and holding the shift key while dragging feels odd. Remember the first time you tried to drag your mouse across text to select it and it seemed like you just couldn’t get it right? Remember that frustration? I feel that way when I try to copy and paste on the Pre.

That said, there is a lot to be said about having a tactile keyboard. Copy and pasting long URLs is one thing, but the main reason people needed copy and paste on the iPhone was because typing even a short sentence on the horid onscreen keyboard is a five minute task. With the Pre, retyping a few words is no big deal. I can type entire sentences without looking at the keyboard.

I miss the D-Pad – The touchscreen is great but how much harder would it have been to add a small trackball or D-pad to move the cursor around? Correcting typing mistakes is a little annoying when you can’t move the cursor back one character at a time. Even if it could be done using gestures, it would be better than trying to drag your finger to the exact spot. Typically, I drag the cursor within a couple spaces of where I make the mistake, then backspace a few characters and retype.

I would also like an undo option in the edit system. I don’t remember the exact reasons, but I have run into two situations where a CTRL+Z would be helpful.

The Pre powers off after the allotted amount of time to save power. The only way to wake it up is to tap the power button in the upper right corner, or tap the space bar on the keyboard. It would be nice if tapping twice on the “center button” would wake the device.

Now for my biggest gripe – the app catalog. Actually, the catalog itself is very nice. It shows a lot of promise as it is arranged nicely and every app offers the ability to try before you buy. Installing the apps also happens seamlessly and quickly. I think that the app catalog is a easy to use as the iTunes app store. BUT!!!! There are no prices listed anywhere. You have no idea whether an app is free or $1000. Currently the app catalog is in beta, but the lack of prices makes me extremely nervous to tap the download button.

The first thing you do when you setup the Pre is create a Palm account. Does this account tie you to a place where any apps will be billed to your Sprint account? There isn’t anywhere on the Palm or Sprint website or on the Pre itself to log into your Palm account to see what the Palm account settings are all about. It is very mysterious.

It may seem like I have nothing but gripes, but remember, that was the CONS.

Now for the pros…

PROS:

Background processes are beautiful – Go ahead, play halfway through a game, log into the forums on a website, create half a memo, Google how to spell something before you send it in a text message. You can keep as many apps open and running as you want. Today, I was monitoring Twitter via an app called Spaz, looking for answers on the absence of prices on the app catalog in the forums at Precentral.net and watching my Facebook. I think at one point, I noticed that I had five apps open and I was using them in the exact manner that I use the taskbar in Windows.

At this point I sent out a mini review on twitter, “The Pre’s ability to run background processes makes the iPhone feel like a palm.”

I had to laugh when I watched the video on Apple’s website about the new iPhone 3Gs. After just a day of enjoying the background apps, the iPhone video actually looked clunky as the demonstration showed that you had to hit the home key (button) in between each step. Background processing itself really is the Pre’s killer app.

My daughter beth with her new baby cousin - taken with Palm Pre and flash. Click on the image for full resolution shot.

The camera is also better than average – There are a lot of complaints about the quality of the camera. True, the camera is not that great, however the flash makes all the difference. Some people pick on it, but anyone who is expecting Speedlite performance from an LED flash will always be disappointed. I feel that, when compared to the iPhone 3Gs, I would rather have a flash than auto focus.

Over the next few days, I hope to learn a few more tips and tricks. I have read the manuals and watched the training videos on the features. So far, it is such a simple device to use, it appears that there isn’t much more to learn.

I will try to add some media files. We did watch some YouTube yesterday and that worked as well as it does on the iPhone.

I did have a problem reading a PDF attachment someone sent me, so I will try a few more similar tasks to see what the Pre’s current limits are, but overall it is better than I expected for a first generation phone.

When compared to the iPhone 1.o or the G1, the Pre shows that Palm has learned from their competitors’ mistakes. The Pre generally feels like a 1.7 device. It has its limitations, but every major problem I have (such as navigation,  the app catalog prices and selecting text) can easily be addressed with future software and firmware updates.

I expect big things from the Pre. Not just because I want Palm to succeed, but because the Pre is proving itself to be serious smartphone sweetness right out of the gate. I consider it equally as revolutionary to the future of smartphones as the Treo 600 was at its launch.

Well I was the first person in all  of Grand Junction, CO to own a Palm Pre. I have had a crazy day and very little time to actually work with the Pre, but I didn’t want the day to go by without a summary of my first day’s impressions.

Keep in mind that I have not discovered all of the Palm Pre settings and features, so some of these things may already be addressed, I just haven’t discovered them yet.

As the day has gone by I have felt more and more like this is an iCentro. A very nice combination of iPhone and Palm Centro. Most of the advantages of each device are incorporated. It may pretend to be an iPhone, but it has the soul of a Palm.

It feels very first gen both in hardware and software. That doesn’t in any way mean that it is a poor device. As you use it, you just keep thinking, “I wonder what they will add with the next update or the next model.”

Let’s go down the line and I will discuss a few of the feelings I had about it today.

Unboxing: I was dead tired from only sleeping about 2 hours in 15 minute increments most of the night. When I got home, I was ready to just put the box on the desk and go to bed for a few hours. However, my wife and kids all met me at the door and begged to see it. So, we unboxed it as a family bonding experience.

Two words describe the unboxing… orange, Apple. It is so obvious that Palm wanted the unboxing to be as Apple-like as possible. Clear plastic dividers, instructions that were dogeared and wrapped with orange paper bands, corrugated inserts that separated all of the pieces. Layer after layer of packing, plastic trays, weird pieces of clear styrene… It felt just like I was opening a next-gen iPhone with orange and white packaging. I was impressed and felt as good as Palm wanted me to as I unboxed it.

Charging: I have heard that the battery life is pretty poor, I am anxious for Palm to release replacement batteries. I did not buy the touchstone or other accessories yet as I really want to spend some time with the phone. I got a little flustered and actually had to pull out the instructions to figure out how to charge the phone.

As it turns out, the USB port is concealed under a little door that will break off at some point. You can’t open the door without sliding out the keyboard. Not a big deal, but a little weird. It seemed pretty obvious that Palm is tired of dirt getting up inside the charging port of the Centro and Treos and this must be to address that issue.

Keyboard: I will talk more about the interface, gesturing, OS, etc. once I get to know it more. For now, I will address the keyboard. Most reviews have reported that the keyboard is a little jammed. I am used to the Centro keyboard and, to me, the spacing of the keys actually made the keyboard feel larger than the Centro. Many reviews have pointed out that your thumbs hit the bottom of the screen as you type. That is a good observation, but it is still much faster than typing on an iPhone keyboard.

Pros: I love the screen. I really love it. Sometimes the transition hangs between opening apps, but nothing worse than any other phone out there. The hangs last only about a second at most and I don’t complain about one second hangs when my Centro and iPod Touch often take longer than that when they hang between apps.

The camera is really good. Some people will pick on me for saying this. Perhaps I should say, the camera is not as good as that of most point and shoots, but this is a phone – with a flash! I think that the complaints about the phone come from a simple formula that Apple lovers use when they review devices… If it is a feature not offered by the iPhone, find something negative to point out about it. 3MP and flash, beautiful colors, better than average low light exposure, I can’t complain.

I love the calendar and notification system. It will take some getting used to, but I really like it so far. I use two separate Google calendars and two Gmail addresses. No problem, they are all managed in a way that keeps them separate, yet easy to manage in one email home screen. It even brings across my Gmail filters and settings.

SMS, alarms, IM and other notifications are all done in a very small sliver at the bottom of the screen. Tap on the area that tells you that you have messages and it opens up to a cool area dividing all of the forms of alerts where you can tap on the alerts you want to give attention to first.

Cons: The contact system is weird. There are three ways that the Pre is setup to sync contacts, Outlook Exchange, Gmail contacts, or Facebook. If you just want to sync contacts off your standard outlook or old Palm desktop, you must first import them into your Gmail address book if you want them to sync. Rumor has it that there are apps in the works that will fix this, but they may not be free.

If you do sync with your Gmail contacts, make sure that Gmail isn’t adding every person you reply or send an email to into your contacts automatically.

I am disappointed that Palm went to so much work to integrate with Facebook, but there is no Facebook app available. I communicate heavily via Facebook. I make comments, upload pictures and video and send direct messages. Currently the Pre is setup so that I can recieve notifications from my Facebook contacts, but I have to interact with them from within the Pre. I would prefer a standalone Facebook app.

The Twitter app is good, but far more limited than most of the offerings for the iPhone. The app store is pretty disappointing by all accounts but that is a problem that the Pre is designed to address. It may be frustrating to think that there are only a handful of apps available for the Pre at launch, but the fact that it supports any apps makes it superior to the first generation iPhone at launch.

So far, I think that the Pre is a major win for Palm. I think that it ensures their presence in the smartphone market for at least another five years, even if iPhone comes to all major carriers within that time. It feels like a Palm with iPhone features and, as a 10-year Palm user, that is a very good thing. I think this phone will be less than impressive to most iPhone users, but Blackberry users may wet their pants when they see the Pre in action.