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.
