Palm Pre (8 GB) Smartphone

There are lots of reviews of the Pre out there (but only one other on Epinions, so far). I will try and concentrate on the key facts rather than detailing ALL the information.To cut to the chase, I highly recommend the Pre. It has some limitations and flaws, but in concept and most of its' execution it is so much better than any other device out there (I include the iphone in that, but mostly because I hate touchscreen keyboards. I know my biases). This is a just-released phone, but so many things feel thoroughly polished and well-thought out. I can only imagine what this device will be like after a few software upgrades!That haveing been said, let me immediately start with a list of shortcomings so people can quickly decide to hold on before buying a Pre. Most of the items on this list will likely be addressed in software updates, but this is how the phone is right now (in June 09).

Who Shouldn't Buy the Palm Pre
Here are a few important facts to consider about the Palm Pre that make it not the right phone for you.
1. If you use voice-dial or auto-answer. Some people use these features a lot when they are driving. The Pre does not support them at all currently.
2. If you are in an area where Sprint's signal sucks. The Pre currently has some issues with holding a signal. Being in a weak area for Sprint will drive you crazy.
3. If you are looking for stand-alone GPS. The Pre uses Sprint's Tele-Nav which pulls maps and directions from Sprint's servers. If you don't have a data connection the GPS doesn't work.
4. If you have a huge music collection. The Pre doesn't have expandable memory. It comes with a large (8gb) fixed storage, like the iphone. If you have more than about 6 gb of music, you may want to wait or look elsewhere.
5. If you use your phone as a dictaphone, the Pre can't record sound, yet.
6. If you want a video camera, the Pre doesn't do that either.
I would suggest checking back in if any of these are a showstopper. Palm is betting the company on this product and they will likely be providing a lot of feature updates. Further, the WebOS software used on the Pre will be showing up on a lot of devices, not just the Pre. So you may find some other device that you like in a year.
Okay, with those people gone, let's talk about the Pre in a bit more detail. Why is it so good? Why are so many people excited? In summary, it's because the features that Palm did enable are done almost flawlessly. They really thought through the features they would use and put them together very well. In some key places they have done things that no one else has done. In other places they just did it very well. Let's hit a couple of key highlights on things done right.

The Screen
Oh, my god, it is gorgeous. It is bright. It is clear. It has wonderful resolution. It is simply the prettiest screen ever. I have stood outside on a brilliantly bright day in the direct sun with no clouds and I could still see everything crystal clear on the screen. There was no washout, no glare. I didn't even think about it until I was done. Prettiest screen ever (until sometime next year when someone beats it.) Along with that is the fonts that Palm commissioned. They made special fonts that really are very crisp and easy to read. I never have a problem using it.

Navigation
The Pre makes it's navigation very simple so you can quickly and intuitively move through it's system. It's a touch screen and you just touch on any item to use it. The touch mechanism works very well and there is a little ripple effect to show you where you touched which really helps. Going backwards is a standard backwards swipe underneath the screen (in the dedicated gesture bar area). 
Navigating on the Pre isn't just easy and intuitive, it is downright fun! To get rid of a program, you just flick the program upwards and off the screen. The Pre adds in a little woosh noise that just makes it pleasant to get rid of programs. In any list, you just slide an item off to the right with your finger to delete it. I actually prefer reviewing and deleting mail on my Pre over my desktop because of this gesture. This works in e-mail, task lists, and anywhere else there is a list.The unlock isn't a simple Slide. Instead, you have a little lock button that you can slide up the screen, but it doesn't run on a track. You can slide it anywhere on the screen as you slide it up. I find myself playing with that little button almost every time I unlock the screen. Who thought you could make unlocking a screen fun?? All of the navigation is that well-built and fun.

Contacts Management
The contacts function is incredibly simple to use and work with. There are a couple of concepts that just make this brilliant (and I'm saying this as a guy with about 1300+ contacts). First, the Pre allows you to sync multiple contact lists and stick them together. You can sync contacts from Microsoft Exchange, Facebook, and Google. The format allows Palm to add other providers later. 
The reason this works so well is that it seamlessly identifies similar contacts (it matches unique things like phone numbers and e-mail addresses) so that you end up with one record (though you can go in and manage individual records as well). At the same time, you get all of the info from these disparate sources in one place. Every contact that you have in Outlook which you have a Facebook record for, suddenly gets a picture. That alone is gold! Now you get your friends faces appearing on the phone without having to add in snaps all the time. 
This Facebook synch is very powerful in that it puts the onus of updating a friends' contact info on the friend rather than on you. If your brother changes his e-mail address, your phone automatically has that info. If your high school buddy moves, you have the new address without even knowing it. Sure, you had that info online if you wanted to look at it, but this way you have the new phone number of your golfing buddy when you are sitting on the tee wondering where he is and it's already on your phone to speed-dial.
A lot of people have expressed concern about not wanting to throw all of these contacts together. They think their contact list will grow to big. I think this is because these people are still used to manage a list of contacts as a list. The Pre wants you to never scroll through contacts. The second great thing that the Pre does to enable contacts is to enable a universal search that means you never have to open the phone app or the contact app again. Just pop open the keyboard and start typing the name. As soon as it narrows enough, click on the person you want to call on the screen. This just works very well. You also get the list of their phone numbers and an easy choice to call or SMS any of their numbers (or e-mail). The layout is perfect to understand.You can easily add phone numbers and e-mails to existing records too. There's a button on every unrecognized call and e-mail for doing this. You can add a speed-dial key (using any key on the keyboard, not just the numbers). Oh, and you can set a reminder for a specific contact. The next time you talk to them, the reminder will pop up. It just all makes a lot of sense and is very intuitive.

The Camera
The camera doesn't have a lot of detailed features. No, it can't do video (yet). It doesn't have a panorama mode like my previous smartphone. What it does do is take very clear pictures very quickly. In a first for any camera phone I've seen, the Pre writes the picture to memory in the background and multi-tasks the processor to give you back your viewfinder instantly. This means you can talk 5 or 6 pictures in a row with no delay. That's just great!The camera auto-focuses quite well and there is a real flash (not a light like many cameras). There are quite a few features I could see adding to the camera, but the most important basics are already there. Oh yeah, there's a huge mirror revealed when you slide down the keyboard. So if you are taking a picture of yourself, you don't have a tiny little thing to aim with. It's a nice inch wide mirror.

Web Browser
Let's just put it this way, I routinely use the web browser to view pages instead of pulling out my laptop. It is so easy and simple to use. The pages render well and Palm intelligently stole good ideas from others (like Apple's multi-touch zoom in and out). Even on pages not well-designed for mobil browsing, it is easy to touch a tiny link and go right to it. The browser is much faster than any of the Windows Mobile browsers I have used. It's just a joy to use the browser.Throw in the fact that you can easily have multiple cards with different websites open (and jump between them due to the multi-tasking nature of WebOS) and you have an experience that starts to rival the desktop. Palm also integrates the Universal Search option here. Just start typing from the main screen on the Pre and it will not only search applications and contacts, it will give you options to search Google, Wikipedia, and Google Maps. Hopefully, more options will be added later. This means you don't have to bother to launch the web browser many times.

Keyboard
I like physical keyboards and I hate touchscreens. I have tried typing on an iphone and it just doesn't work. A lot of reviewers I have read don't like the Pre keyboard. They say it is too small. I love the keyboard. I have never hit the wrong key with it. Sure, it is small, but the keys have a nice rubberized feel to them and there is ther right amount of space around each. There are dedicated keys for all of the key punctuations (that would be @ signs, period, and comma.) The period button makes me wonder why several people have complained about a lack of space bar macro for a period. There's a dedicated key for period, why would you need the macro? Sure, I would have loved a dedicated number pad, but the one on the Pre works pretty well. It is also great in that when you are in a field that must be digits (like a Zip code or phone number), the Pre just automatically switches on the number pad.

The Phone
At heart, the Pre should be a phone and it does this pretty well. The number pad that comes up is easy to use and the keys are nice and large. When you put the phone to your ear, the light and accelerometer sensors combine to turn the screen off (so you don't accidentally hit commands with your ear). 
The phone allows custom ringtones for each contact. It allows you to slide to answer when the phone is locked. You can silence the ring by hitting the down volume button. These are all obvious features. The Pre just does them well. It's a little more innovative in letting you switch between Bluetooth, speaker, and handset with one button (that opens a list). It also provides buttons for calling back a missed call immediately and conferencing in other callers. The phone also has the best call log I have seen on a phone with a separate tab for missed calls and the ability to jump right to a contact record from the log.

Navigation
When you can connect to it, Sprint's Tele-nav works quite well. It allows you to cleanly look up and get spoken turn by turn direction by looking up its' database, choosing from favorites, entering an address, or querying a contact record. The program finds addresses well. I take much less time trying to get somewhere than I did with my Tom Tom software on my Windows Mobile phone. It is also better than standalone units in that it looks up addresses in an online database (constantly updated) and it allows you to very simply query your existing contacts. Finding a location goes much faster.There are some issues with Navigation. First, it requires a GPS signal and a data connection to work. Without those, it fails. This can be a real problem as (I will mention again later) the Pre currently has an issue if it loses signal. It may not get your signal back without a reboot (from my experience). This can be a real pain. Especially when you need to be somewere. Hopefully, Sprint and Palm will get this fixed asap.

Multi-tasking
This phone really offers the ability to easily use multiple programs. The iphone kinda fakes it and several Windows Mobile devices do it badly, but the Pre focuses on doing this. Loading programs can take a few seconds, but you should have your most used programs running all the time. Switching between loaded programs is instant. You can listen to your music (or Pandora!) while browsing the web. The phone rings and you go right into your call. When you are done, you go back to your music. It all works well at the same time.
Now, the Pre is not a magical device. You can use up all of its' hardware resources so you can't have everything open all the time. Big intensive programs like navigation and music-playing eat up resources quickly. But it does let you run several programs at once. You may just have to choose between them.

Notifications
Having notifications for e-mails, SMS, calendar items, and other things is a travesty on Windows Mobile. Other phones really haven't figured it out either. They are either too subtle and hard to pull up, or they are too intrusive. The Pre really has solved this. It's notifications come up in a frame around the main screen. You can easily touch an item to get more details, or slide it off the screen to eliminate it. If you don't want to deal with it now, just touch inside the frame and the focus returns to the program you are in (though techically the focus never left). The reminders stay as tiny icons on the bottom and you can just touch them to bring the notification frame up.This same frame design is used for key programs running in the background. If you are playing music, then there is a music bug in the notification frame and you can use it to jump forward or back the play list or pause the song. Navigation also creates a notification bug that you can use to tap back into the nav window instantly.Calendar notifications let you open or dismiss the notification. But if you have multiple people attending, you can also e-mail them all with an update. There's a Contact attendees button in the notification (a very nice touch). On the whole, the notifications piece works very well and I think Palm has really solved this. It's been a pain for quite awhile, and I applaud them.
I meant to be less verbose, but I failed. There's just so many good things going on with the Pre. Considering it was just released last week, this is quite impressive. I will end with a list of items that aren't as good. I can live with these, but you want to be aware of them.

Issues List
1. The phone app can lag just a tiny bit. This can cause you to make a mistaken command (like hitting a key after dialing). It's a bit annoying, but it doesn't make the phone a nightmare to use (like the Windows Mobile app can be). A bit more polish is needed to fix this one. The Pre should be a perfect phone and the app could be a bit more responsive to make it work flawlessly.
2. I mentioned in the Navigation section, problems with losing signal and not getting it back without a reboot. This happens both with GPS lock and with getting a Sprint data connection. This can be critically problematic and I really hope that it is the number one priority on updates.
3. Battery life on the phone is not great. It's comparable to most Windows Mobile devices I use. I can get through 3/4 of a day without plugging it in, but I use my phone heavily for all functions. I generally find some place to plug it in (though Palm maintains you have to use a unique USB charger for the Pre, so I can't use my legion of chargers that I already have. Grumble)
4. Programs do take a few seconds to load. This isn't any longer than they do on other phones I have had or played with, it just seems slow in comparison to most of the rest of the responsiveness. If you have keep the most common programs loaded, it's not an issue.
5. The phone design is sleek and tiny and wonderful, but it has a couple of flaws. First, the symmetrical curves of the design mean that I try and use it upside down half the time. There isn't a clear up and down to me. The little metal bar at the top of the screen is supposed to help, but it doesn't. Second, the USB port is on the side of the phone instead of the bottom. This can be very annoying and I think it might be a ploy to sell the Touchstone charging units. And finally, the surface is so smooth and slippery you really can lose it like a bar of soap. But it looks so very pretty and tiny! So I forgive the Pre.
6. Lots has been made of Itunes integration, but the irony is that the Pre doesn't have Windows Media Player integration. It can't recognize or play WMA songs. You have to convert them to MP3. I guess Palm is going with the clear market leader in Apple, but I still find this ironic.
7. The apps catalog is limited and the SDK isn't released to the general development community. I am sure this will change, but Apple has such a huge lead in this area, it's a real concern. If Palm wants to compete, they need to make this happen soon.
All in all, I'm a huge fan. I think my review may be a bit biased because of it. I just enjoyed using the phone enough that I switched from Verizon to Sprint. That's a huge change and a sacrifice. Verizon has the better network there is not doubt. When Verizon releases the phone in a few months, the Pre will be an even bigger deal. Though, I do have to point out that my cell bill is going to drop by $50 a month due to Sprint's aggressive unlimited calling pricing. Verizon makes smartphone users pay an extra fee beyond their $99 "unlimited" plan which Sprint doesn't. That's going to pay for the phone in just a couple of months.
Update There are still some funky GPS connectivity issues. Driving along in MD or VA and the GPS just loses connection. Generally a reboot will fix this, but that's very inconvenient when driving. Only happened a couple of times, but important to note.Also, I didn't mention the headphones that come with the Pre. I'm not an audiophile so I can't comment on dynamic range and the like. They put out enough volume and seem very clear to me. I actually didn't notice fo awhile that the microphone on the cord has a headset button. This is used for standard headset controls. Pressing the button once pauses music, answers, or ends calls. It pressing the button twice advances to the next song in a music player. These are pretty standard features. The cool thing I discovered today is that these music player features work in the Pandora app! Great stuff. This may be nothing new, but it is just one more example of Palm's attempt to live up to Apple's high standard of usability.