Palm Pre

The following review is published by CNET.com in the US. Information about network capabilities and some phone features are specific to North America and are not available down under. Palm intends to release the Pre in Australia towards the end of the year with local pricing to be announced.

Design

The Palm Pre's design is unlike that of any smartphone we've seen to date, but if we had to give a point of comparison, we'd say it somewhat resembles the HTC Touch. It's a bit like a pebble, with its smooth, black, lacquered finish and rounded edges. And, like the iPhone, Palm keeps it simple by keeping external controls to a minimum.

The face of the device only has one control: a centre button that will take you back to the Deck of Card view. The centre key is a bit deceiving in that it looks similar to a trackball navigator, so there were times where, out of habit, we would try to navigate a page by trying to scroll up and down using the centre key, but you can only press it like a button. On top of the unit, there's a power button, a silent ringer switch, and a 3.5 millimetre headphone jack, which we're always happy to see. The left side features a volume rocker, while the micro USB port is on the right. Finally, on the back, you'll find the camera, flash, speaker and removable battery.

In its closed state, the Pre is slim and lightweight — it fits nicely in the palm of your hand and is certainly more pocket-friendly than the iPhone. Some have worried about the durability of the phone, since it's made of plastic. We didn't throw it off a building or anything, but we thought it felt quite solid, not cheap or toy-like. The only negative things we'd note are that the phone is a smudge/fingerprint magnet and the slider design can feel a bit rickety at times.

The sliding mechanism is smooth, however, and the screen clicks securely into place when pushed up. There's a bit of a curve to the phone in its open state, and we preferred keeping it that way when talking on the phone, since it felt more comfortable against our cheek. The slider also, obviously, houses the Pre's full mechanical QWERTY keyboard.

The lack of a physical keyboard was a big reason why some people chose not to buy the iPhone. There will be those who argue that the iPhone's on-screen keyboard is fine and just needs some getting used to, which is fair enough. I was still able to type faster using the Pre's keyboard than the iPhone's, but I also have small hands so it was easier for me to punch the keys. However, I can definitely see people with larger thumbs having problems and, unfortunately, there's no on-screen keyboard option at this point.

Touchscreen

We have to say the Pre's display is one of the main highlights of the phone. It measures 3.1 inches diagonally, so it's smaller than the iPhone's and some other touchscreen devices, such as the T-Mobile G1 and the Samsung Omnia, but what it lacks in size, the Pre makes up for in quality.

The 24-bit colour HVGA display is vibrant and sharp with its 320x480-pixel resolution. Images, text and web pages all looked amazing. We'd say it's on par with, if not just slightly crisper looking than, the iPhone's screen. The Pre's display has a built-in accelerometer so the screen orientation will automatically change from portrait to landscape mode when viewing photos, videos and web pages. The accelerometer is fast and changes pages without any lag. There's also a proximity sensor, which will automatically turn off the display when you lift the smartphone to your ear for a phone call.

The capacitive (meaning it responds to the touch of a finger) touchscreen is pretty responsive. There's no haptic feedback, but white rings will appear around an icon or menu item to let you know that the screen has registered your touch. To scroll through lists, you can drag your finger along the screen or give it a quick flick to get through longer lists. The on-screen dial pad is simple, with large buttons, and it includes shortcuts to your voicemail and call log.

The Pre's screen is multi-touch, which is a fairly big deal since the iPhone has long stood in a class of its own with this functionality — but not anymore. Like the iPhone, the Pre allows you to zoom in and out of pages by pinching your fingers apart or close together; double-tapping the screen will also achieve the same task. In addition, swiping left to right on an item, such as an email or call log number, will give you the option to delete it.

User interface and navigation

We'll say it outright: the Palm Pre isn't the most intuitive device to use, at least at first. When you fire up the smartphone for the first time, there's a brief animated tutorial to familiarise you with the various gestures, such as swiping right to left in the gesture area to return to the previous page. The gestures are also illustrated in the quick start guide, but even so, it takes some time to learn all the various commands.

The home screen looks easy enough to understand, with a simple tray along the bottom that includes shortcuts to the on-screen dialler, contacts, email, calendar, and the main menu (aka Launcher). Pressing the Launcher icon will bring you to all your applications and settings. It consists of three panels that you can swipe from left to right (and vice versa), and each panel is dedicated to a more general category. The user interface, in general, is very sleek and fresh, and provided smooth transitions.

The beauty of the Palm Pre is the multitasking capabilities, so you can simply launch another program without having to exit out of the current one. To do this, drag your finger from the gesture area up to the screen and you'll see the home screen tray appear in a cool little wave; from there, you can move your finger to one of the dedicated shortcuts or open the Launcher for a full list. If you want to return to any running apps, a press of the centre button will bring you to your Deck of Cards view where you can simply select the card you want.

Phone features and contacts

While the Palm Pre does a ton of stuff, let's remember that it's a phone first and would only be a glorified PDA without the voice features. While the Pre offers the standard range of voice-calling options, unfortunately the initial version of webOS does not support voice dialling and there is no support for visual voicemail at this time.

The contacts list is only limited by the amount of available memory (about 7GB) and includes fields for multiple numbers, email and IM addresses, street addresses, birthdays, and more. With Palm's Synergy feature, the Pre can pull a contact's information from various sources — Facebook, Outlook, Gmail, and so forth — and automatically fill all the fields in a single contact sheet, so you don't have to go through the hassle of manually entering all the data.

Messaging and calendar

The Palm Pre supports multiple email accounts, including POP/IMAP and Microsoft Exchange. We synced several email accounts to the Pre, including Gmail, Yahoo and Exchange. The set-up for all three was a breeze — often requiring only a username and password to set-up.

All accounts are housed under the Email card, from where you can access your various inboxes. Synergy also allows you to view messages from all accounts under one view, though we think most would prefer to keep personal and work email separate. Email delivery was almost instant and an action, such as deleting a message or moving an email to a folder, is reflected on both sides whether you do it from the Pre or your computer.

There is a separate messaging app that houses all your instant, text and multimedia messages. In this folder, you'll be able to see all conversations with a contact in a single, threaded view in chronological order, regardless of message type.

With the email set up, all relevant Calendars will also be synced to the Pre and brought into one calendar view via Synergy. Appointments are colour-coded to help you differentiate between the different accounts. Alternatively, there is a drop-down menu from where you can view each calendar separately. Again, like email, the synchronisation of our Outlook and Google calendars was seamless. We also created new events from the device, which automatically synced back to our Outlook and Google calendars.

Universal search

With all the data that the Pre can handle, searching for items could be a cumbersome and tedious task, but universal search takes care of that problem. From anywhere on the phone, you can start entering a search term and the Pre will look through your contacts, applications, the web, Google Maps, and Twitter. The feature worked well when we searched for contacts, businesses, and more general terms, but it's not quite as robust as the iPhone's search in that it doesn't search email headers, calendar, notes or the music library.

Multitasking and notifications

If there's one area where the Palm Pre holds the edge over the current iPhone, G1 and other smartphones, it's in its multitasking and notification capabilities. The much-talked-about Deck of Card feature works well, allowing you to keep multiple applications open and running in the background while working in another. Like on a computer, you can minimise and maximise tasks by using the centre button and swiping through the various cards. In addition, the aforementioned quick-launch bar makes menu access and launching new apps a snap.

The notifications bar also seamlessly alerts you to incoming/missed calls, new messages, appointments, and so forth. The notifications are unobtrusive. Email subject headers and a single-line preview of text messages and IMs will appear in the bar. If a call comes in while you're working in an app, you get an alert along the lower third of the screen and you can accept or ignore the call without having the incoming-call screen overtake the app.

With so many apps going at once, you're probably wondering how it affects performance, and we have to say that the Pre surprised us. There was a slight lag when launching applications but the smartphone was still very responsive and didn't show any signs of freaking out, which was very impressive.

Connectivity

The Palm Pre is outfitted with all the wireless options you could need. It works on Sprint's EV-DO Rev. A network, which promises average download speeds of 600Kbps to 1.4Mbps and peak rates of up to 3.1Mbps, and average upload speeds of 350Kbps to 500Kbps, peaking at 1.8Mbps. Alternatively, you can get online using the Pre's integrated Wi-Fi.

Bluetooth 2.1 is also on-board and supports a number of profiles, including stereo Bluetooth, hands-free kits, personal area networking, phone book access, and audio/video remote control. The Pre also includes a built-in GPS-receiver.

Web browser

The Pre's browser is quite good. Based on WebKit, it renders sites on-screen as you would see them on your desktop, and pretty quickly at that. Thanks to the multi-touch screen, you easily zoom in/out on pages with a double tap or by pinching your finger together or apart (as with the iPhone) and you pan pages by touching a point on the screen and dragging your finger in any direction. To enter a web address, simply start typing the URL and an address bar will appear.

Overall, we were happy with the Pre's browser in terms of navigation and functionality, but there were a couple of misses. One was the lack of an on-screen keyboard. Without it, you can't type URLs or enter any text into relevant fields when you're viewing sites in landscape mode, so you'll need to switch back to portrait mode, which is annoying.

Multimedia

The Palm Pre has got a solid set of multimedia features. The built-in media player supports a number of formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, WAV and AMR music files and MPEG-4, H263 and H264 video formats. The music player offers basic functions: play/pause, track forward/back, and shuffle and repeat modes. In addition to the standard forward/back buttons, you can swipe the album covers to proceed through songs. It's not quite as slick as the iPhone's Cover Flow feature, but it works.

The 8GB memory cap really became an issue when we were transferring our music library. We watched nervously as our storage diminished, so people with large libraries are probably going to have to cull their selections. A microSD expansion slot would really alleviate the problem, but Palm said it didn't fit with the design they were going for.

Video was a mixed bag. YouTube and MPEG-4 clips played back smoothly, and we were quite impressed by the clarity of YouTube videos.

The Pre's music sound quality was quite good. Needless to say, we're happy that Palm included a standard headphone jack. We tested the phone with a pair of Radius Atomic Bass Earphones and Bose On-Ear Headphones, and while there are no audio settings or EQ presets, we thought songs sounded rich and we noticed a good amount of bass. Music is muted for any incoming calls or if you're using Sprint Navigation and it's currently providing audible directions.

Camera

The Pre comes equipped with a 3-megapixel camera and an LED flash. The camera functions are about as basic as you can get. Flash options include on, off or auto. To take a photo, you can either press the green on-screen button or use the space bar. That's it; no effects, various image sizes, resolutions or options to choose from. Also, there is no video recording at launch, but Palm has alluded to adding this feature in the future, which can be done through an over-the-air update. However, with the integrated GPS, the Pre can geotag photos.

Picture quality was quite impressive. It takes a few seconds for pictures to render on screen, so immediately after taking pictures the photos looked extremely blurry. In reality, they were extremely sharp and colours were vibrant and rich, without any weird orange or greyish tones. Also, there was barely any lag from the time we pressed the capture button to the moment the photo was taken.

Applications

Due to the success of the iPhone and the iTunes App Store, applications are quickly becoming just as important as the hardware and operating system when choosing a smartphone. Google Android, BlackBerry, Nokia and Windows Mobile have followed suit by launching their own app store fronts, and now so has Palm.

The Palm Pre App Catalog is still in beta and will only have about a dozen titles at launch. These include some of the programs we saw demoed at CTIA 2009, such as Pandora and Fandango, and some new ones like CitySearch, LinkedIn, and Connect 4.

We easily downloaded several apps over Sprint's 3G network and were impressed with the integration and functionality of each of them. Pandora, for example, has many of the features of the desktop client, including the capability to like and dislike a song, bookmark tracks and artists, and buy songs/albums via the Amazon MP3 Store.

Performance

We tested the dual-band (CDMA 850/1900; EV-DO Rev A) Palm Pre in San Francisco using Sprint service and call quality was good. On our end, the audio was clear, with very little background noise. Voices sounded rich, not tinny or digitised as on some mobile phones. Our friends also reported good results and more than once, we got an "I'm impressed" comment about the audio quality. We didn't experience any dropped calls during our review period, and we had no problem checking on a flight's status using an airline's voice-automated system.

Armed with a dual-band MSM6801a processor and a TI OMAP 3430 processor, the Pre's general performance was a bit of a mixed bag. Navigating through the menus and deck of cards was always swift, but at times there would be a brief lag when launching applications. We wouldn't say it's any worse than a Windows Mobile smartphone, but it's something you will notice. That said, the webOS was stable throughout our testing period. We didn't experience any crashes or freezes, and again, we can't say enough about the multitasking and notifications system.

Battery life is an issue and probably one of our biggest concerns. The Pre comes with a user-removable 1150mAh Lithium-ion battery with a rated talk time of five hours and up to 12 days of standby time. While CNET Labs is currently conducting its series of battery drain tests on the Pre, we managed to get in one talk time test and the Pre met the claimed five hours. However, in general use, we noticed during our review period that by the end of the day we were often in the yellow or red battery zones (usually around 12 per cent or lower, starting from 100 per cent). Granted, compared with an average user, we might have been putting more demand on the device, since we were trying to test out all the features.

Overall

We've spent the past few days poring over every detail of the device and we're prepared to answer the all-important question: does it live up to all the hype? There are some hardware and performance issues and we're concerned about a few missing features, but we walked away impressed with Palm's webOS.

The tiny QWERTY keyboard isn't going to draw any praise, nor is the lack of an expansion slot. We're also disappointed that the Pre lacks some basic functions, such as video recording and voice dialling, though Palm has said these features can be added later through an over-the-air update. Battery life is also a concern, as the smartphone only lasted about a day on a single charge, which, in all fairness, is about the same as the iPhone. The Pre's "Deck of Cards" multitasking functionality and notification system are what make it special and they are the areas where the Pre beats the iPhone or any smartphone on the market right now. In addition, personal-information management is completely changed (in a good way) with the Synergy feature.

The Pre has given us something to be excited about, but it won't please everyone. Early adopters, gadget lovers and consumers who crave more functionality from their phone will be well-served by the Pre, but the battery life and that slight bit of sluggishness may turn away business users or road warriors.

Starting from the ground up, Palm has really made a solid and smart platform and one that doesn't just match the capabilities of its competitors but offers something more. Palm might not have completely knocked it out of the park with the Palm Pre, but at least it's back in the game, and we look forward to more webOS devices in the future.

Specifications

(Back to top)

Video

(Back to top)