Palm Pre

Palm Pre

The Palm Pre will not kill the iPhone, but it will give it a good dose of competition. It is a solidly built cell phone with a great, written-from-the-ground-up operating system. I fell in love with webOS, Palm’s new operating system. Although it is not always intuitive, this new operating system is easy to use. I can’t believe that I am advocating an operating system that is not intuitive, but I am. Here’s the reason.

If someone hands you a Pre and tells you to use it, you will most probably be baffled as to how it actually functions. It looks like a touch screen phone and it is, but it also has a slide out keyboard. In fact, it has three different input and control areas: the screen itself, the keyboard, and the small area below the screen which is called the Gesture area.

It this combination is what make the Pre so functional, but you may not be able to use it without any knowledge of how it works. However, that said, just have someone show you a few things or check out the Quick Start guide, and it won’t take you more than five or ten minutes to get going.

If you like to multi-task, this is the phone for you. It lets you fully  and easily control which applications are open and which you want to close. To give you an example of what I call “non-intuitive, but easy”, to close an application, you simply take your finger and swipe it in an upward motion to throw it off the screen. You might not be able to figure that out at first, but once you get it, it is very easy. As a matter of fact, it is also fun. The Pre has the same functionality as the iPhone with similar ways to expand and contract text, a screen that can be viewed either vertically or horizontally, but for some reason, it seems like more fun to use.

The Pre is easy to set up and uses an online system called Palm Profile to sync information, so you will spend less time with it tethered to your computer. It handles email beautifully and has all the other normal options like a camera, sms, mms, and cut & paste. It even has turn-by-turn navigation.

The Pre is perfect for information junkies and busy people. It has an excellent universal search. It also has a system called Synergy that congregates information from various areas and puts it all together for you. So if you have a contact in Facebook, and the same contact in Gmail and in your POP email, you won’t see him or her three times on your Pre. The Pre is smart enough to put all the info that you have on that person on one contact screen.

In fact, the Pre is one smart cookie. Although I think the keyboard needs improvement, this is still one to look at.

Here are my pros and cons:

Pros

• Excellent crisp and responsive touch screen
• Excellent webOS operating system
• Handles multitasking applications beautifully
• Synergy consolidates information very well
• Very good universal search
• Excellent email support
• Slide-out keyboard
• iTunes sync
• Palm Profile for online backups

Cons

• Keyboard slightly cramped and plasticy
• Difficult to navigate through the Apps
• Lack of Apps and App Store
• Apps do not readily show their price

Right now the Pre is available only from Sprint, but Verizon will also carry it in a few months. My full review with pictures is at HardwareSecrets.com.