Palm Pre (8 GB) Smartphone
- Screen Size (Diagonal): 3.1 inch
- Installed Memory: 8 GB
- Operating System: Palm OS webOS
- Connectivity: Bluetooth, USB, WLAN, WiFi
- Performance: Tri Band
- Design: Mobile
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Pre versus iPhone
Pros
Superior multitasking, slick software overall.
Cons
Awful keyboard, less carefully designed than iPhone, dismal Sprint service
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
Excellent multitasking features marred by a terrible keyboard and questionable Sprint coverage.
iPhone v Pre
What is a Pre?
You would have to have been hiding in a cave to not know about iPhone, but how about the Pre?
Pre is Palm's belated response to the iPhone juggernaut. It adds long overdue features like multitasking to iPhone's one progam at a time user interface. It also adds a much-hyped hardware keyboard instead of Apple's often-derided software version.
My standing as a reviewer
I am a software developer who writes phone applications. I started writing software for iPhone, but as that market has gotten more and more crowded, it has seemed prudent to branch out to a new device. Thus the Pre and its near-empty App store beckoned.
In my specific situation, there is no way the Pre could replace iPhone, since I still build software for iPhone. But this also means that I am uniquely qualified to write a comparison of the two devices, because I use both of them, heavily, every day. Thus this review.
Setup
Setup was flawless. Best Buy did it for me and the process was easy and straightforward.
Spint forces you to sit through a lengthly introductory phone call as they tell you everything your salesperson has already told you about the service you just ordered. One thing I did like is that they presented estimates of the first bill (about $125) and a typical bill (about $77) with all taxes. So you knew what to expect when you get that unfriendly envelope in the mail. I suspect the real reason for this call is that sometimes their salespeople are untrustworthy and don't explain things properly, but it is very dull to sit through. I did feel the rep was pleasant and easy to understand, even if most of what she actually said was boilerplate.
You have to reboot your phone after the introductory call or you will keep on being routed to the Sprint call center!
Call quality was good in the rare times I have had functioning service.
The Device
The Pre is designed to look somewhat like a smooth pebble. It is different from iPhone in that the outside does not appear to have a screen at all when the display is inactive.
Pre is significantly smaller than iPhone. This makes text somewhat harder to read, but some people think it fits more neatly in your palm. However, I normally turn it on by sliding out the keyboard, and that negates that advantage, making the device significantly taller than iPhone.
The keyboard slides out under the device, making it thicker than iPhone, and taller when extended. I preferred iPhone's thinner feel, and the Pre's slider looked somewhat flimsy and easily damaged. Reports about durability have been mixed, while reports have noted that little short of a nuclear explosion or a dip in the bathtub have managed to damage iPhones.
Performance
Pre has a quicker processor than the iPhone 3G; it's the same or very similar to the one the iPhone 3G S uses. The only time I've really noticed the speed difference between Pre and 3G is when I tilt the phone and the accelerometer changes screen orientation. This happens instantly on the Pre but is often laggy on iPhone.
Scrolling feels a bit laggy on the Pre and not as perfectly smooth as it is on iPhone.
The display is not as bright as iPhone's. It is smaller and the same resolution, meaning pixels are squeezed more tightly together, making the typography look more like print. This is very attractive. Unfortunately, the text is also harder to read because it's smaller than iPhone's. I also noticed some odd font rendering glitches which iPhone never seems to have. Overall, I'd probably still give the iPhone's display the edge, but this is a close contest.
Keyboard
There is no word for the Pre keyboard but horrible. The tiny, closely spaced keys take a firm mashing to press, probably to avoid typos. And once you are used to iPhone's typo fighting prowness, a keyboard devoid of those features feels dead, inert, unfriendly. (Pre actually has the features, but the dictionary is pitfully small and so short of correcting "i" to "I", I never saw its correction features working.)
Typing numbers requires you to press a special shift key. For each digit. Typing phone numbers using this mechanism will really bring home how good iphone's onscreen keyboard really is.
The hardware keyboard has one huge advantage: it does not take up space on the screen. The full size of the display is always available. And the keyboard is always available, so it's possible to type even when typed input is not expected. So if you are at the main screen, you can type portions of contact names and they will come up.
Pre is smaller than iPhone, and that's a major reason why the keyboard is abysmal. A larger successor model, with a wider keyboard and an iPhone sized screen, would really have helped the product.
Multitasking
This is the signature feature of the Pre and it works beautifully. Each application is presented as one or more cards. You can flip through cards by pressing the center button (similar to iPhone's) and flicking the cards to the left or right. You can also press the Pre interface's Start button equivalent to get a menu of programs to start. This all works with exceptional smoothness and was truly a joy to use.
If you want to consult your task list, calendar, notes and play a game, all at the same time, switching between the applications as needed, you will just love the Pre.
If you have an iPhone and want to see a preview of this, try opening several web pages in different browser windows and hit the bottom right page switching button. Then you can flick side by side to select a browser window, and press on it to make it active. That works exactly the same as the Pre's multitasking, but the Pre expands it to all applications, not just browser windows.
Gesture Interface
The Pre relies on established gestures to run its user interface. A gesture is defined as a flick of the finger back and forth or up and down. This makes it easy for experienced users but difficult for those new to the device to get used to it.
This is a very different philosophy from iPhone, which shows prompts on the screen at all times. So when you use iPhone's web browser, you see the URL and controls on the screen at all times. The Pre hides the URL and shows only minimal controls, relying on gestures you have to memorize to control what happens.
For example, iPhone has a "Back" button to go to the previous page in the interface. Pre has no back button; you are expected to know the swipe back gesture to return to the previous screen. Many times I sat on a screen I was finished with, unsure what to do, and then had to reach into memory to realize what was needed. Unfortunately, the back gesture, on the black area between the bottom of the screen and the button, is somewhat difficult to execute and it consistently took me a couple of tries to get it right.
Palm was obviously aware of this problem since they included a tutorial that runs as soon as you start up the device. Pay close attention to this and you'll do better than I.
The back gesture was difficult for me to remember or execute successfully, but the flick up gesture to exit an application was easy for me to remember and I never had any difficulty with it. So some aspects of the gesture interface were significantly more successful than others. You should try the unit in the store to make sure you can get comfortable with these gestures before purchasing the product. On the whole, I liked iPhone's hand-holding approach better.
Battery Charging
Pre includes support for a wonderful feature: an inductive charger. Put Pre on its little round stand and it will stick magnetically and start charging.
This is great, but it also costs an alarming $69. For mere mortals, the regular charging outlet is one of those annoying plastic flaps that you have to pull out to access the charging port. This is awkward to do and ruins the smooth look of the phone to boot.
Software developers must still load their creations via USB, so even if I blew the big bucks for this feature I would still wind up using the badly designed mini-USB port.
iPhone, of course, uses an iPod-style adapter that's easy to plug in and does not interfere with device aesthetics. One might think Palm is trying a bit too hard to sell the fancy charger.
Since I didn't use the device for phone calls, because the service was terrible, and because I didn't use the device much for web surfing, because the service was terrible, I can't comment on battery life at all. My Pre has spent most of its life to date either resting or tethered to my computer.
Software features.
Texting. The text feature is very similar to iPhone's, but not as visually slick. Since all Sprint plans come with unlimited texts, the integration of texts and IMs may not be as useful as it would have been otherwise. My friends are texting fiends and seem to have forgotten about IM entirely.
The overall look and feel of the application is not as attractive as Apple's and a recurring theme of this review will be how much more attractive, refined and usable iPhone is. iPhone took over 2 1/2 years to develop, and that shows as a fine polish on all the features.
Notes: iPhone is just a list, pre looks like a real corkboard. But the iPhone approach works better since the note listing is far easier to read, and you can search the notes easily.
Contacts: Palm has an interesting approach, called Synergy, where your contacts are taken from Outlook and/or the Internet, via Google or Facebook. f you are in ready contact with your Facebook friends, Synergy loooks great. But if you are like me and have many friends who barely use a computer, the spiffy new approach won't impress you much. My much-loved girlfriend has no Facebook account and I had to enter her by hand. My business partner has one but no phone number. Problems like this make me long for an automatic conversion from my Apple address book, which, alas, is not there.
Of course this might not seem so bad, but remember, the keyboard is pure agony to use.
Photos and Camera: Photos are pretty much a direct ripoff of how the iPhone does them. If you've seen photos in iPhone, you've seen them on the Pre. The camera is a three megapixel unit, which makes it the equivalent to the newest iPhones. But picture quality is nothing to write home about.
Third Party Support: It's coming for the Pre, but it will be a very long time, if ever, before it acquires the 65,000-odd apps iPhone has. Arcade games are likely to be much cruder than on iPhone because the software development kit does not include support for direct hardware access. If you want a gaming machine, iPhone's your best choice.
Puzzling Pre Omissions
There is no stopwatch or count down timer, despite excellent built-in ones for iPhone, even in version 1.0!
Sprint Service
Devices, however fancy, do not exist in a vacuum. A phone needs service. And, at least in metro Pittsburgh, Sprint fell flat on its face.
At first, I wanted to use the Pre as my primary phone, at least for a little while, so I could get used to the interface and build better applications. I texted my text-loving girlfriend, and tried to make a few calls to her. The texts worked, albiet often with long delays, but the phone calls were pure comedy - in my service area, most of the time we could simply not complete a call at all, and when one was completed it was hopelessly garbled. In the mean time, while on iPhone my AT&T service came in loud and clear.
In my area, I rarely got data service at all - I was stuck in the "voice only" gulag and so it was rarely possible to even try the data service. Even Route 51, a major artery comparable to Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, or A1A on the Florida coast, had no data service for large portions of the route.
In short, Sprint service was so awful that there was no way that I could actually use my Pre as a phone in lieu of my existing iPhone. Be sure to check Sprint service in your area before even beginning to seriously consider a Pre.
However, it needs to be emphasized that this has nothing to do with the Palm Pre. My girlfriend's company provides her with an ordinary Sprint phone, and it didn't work either.
The Sprint people I talked to were nice and competent, and the terms of my contract were fair - better and cheaper than AT&T's. But even the best service terms are useless if the service doesn't work. I would certainly not discourage people from using Sprint if its coverage is good in their area.
In short, expect spotty coverage and check maps carefully before getting the Pre. This is not Palm's fault, but dismal coverage definitely would have forced me to return the Pre if I was actually using it as a day to day use phone instead of a software development device.
Conclusion
On the whole, I really enjoy using both iPhone and Pre. iPhone has been developed and refined over a very long period, polished to a super-smooth gloss. Pre has not had the time, or the meticulousness of Steve Jobs, and it shows. But if you want a phone that multitasks beautifully, letting you do what you need to do when you need to do it, Pre could be ideal. Just watch for that keyboard and Sprint service. I hope it's better in your area than it was in mind.
What is a Pre?
You would have to have been hiding in a cave to not know about iPhone, but how about the Pre?
Pre is Palm's belated response to the iPhone juggernaut. It adds long overdue features like multitasking to iPhone's one progam at a time user interface. It also adds a much-hyped hardware keyboard instead of Apple's often-derided software version.
My standing as a reviewer
I am a software developer who writes phone applications. I started writing software for iPhone, but as that market has gotten more and more crowded, it has seemed prudent to branch out to a new device. Thus the Pre and its near-empty App store beckoned.
In my specific situation, there is no way the Pre could replace iPhone, since I still build software for iPhone. But this also means that I am uniquely qualified to write a comparison of the two devices, because I use both of them, heavily, every day. Thus this review.
Setup
Setup was flawless. Best Buy did it for me and the process was easy and straightforward.
Spint forces you to sit through a lengthly introductory phone call as they tell you everything your salesperson has already told you about the service you just ordered. One thing I did like is that they presented estimates of the first bill (about $125) and a typical bill (about $77) with all taxes. So you knew what to expect when you get that unfriendly envelope in the mail. I suspect the real reason for this call is that sometimes their salespeople are untrustworthy and don't explain things properly, but it is very dull to sit through. I did feel the rep was pleasant and easy to understand, even if most of what she actually said was boilerplate.
You have to reboot your phone after the introductory call or you will keep on being routed to the Sprint call center!
Call quality was good in the rare times I have had functioning service.
The Device
The Pre is designed to look somewhat like a smooth pebble. It is different from iPhone in that the outside does not appear to have a screen at all when the display is inactive.
Pre is significantly smaller than iPhone. This makes text somewhat harder to read, but some people think it fits more neatly in your palm. However, I normally turn it on by sliding out the keyboard, and that negates that advantage, making the device significantly taller than iPhone.
The keyboard slides out under the device, making it thicker than iPhone, and taller when extended. I preferred iPhone's thinner feel, and the Pre's slider looked somewhat flimsy and easily damaged. Reports about durability have been mixed, while reports have noted that little short of a nuclear explosion or a dip in the bathtub have managed to damage iPhones.
Performance
Pre has a quicker processor than the iPhone 3G; it's the same or very similar to the one the iPhone 3G S uses. The only time I've really noticed the speed difference between Pre and 3G is when I tilt the phone and the accelerometer changes screen orientation. This happens instantly on the Pre but is often laggy on iPhone.
Scrolling feels a bit laggy on the Pre and not as perfectly smooth as it is on iPhone.
The display is not as bright as iPhone's. It is smaller and the same resolution, meaning pixels are squeezed more tightly together, making the typography look more like print. This is very attractive. Unfortunately, the text is also harder to read because it's smaller than iPhone's. I also noticed some odd font rendering glitches which iPhone never seems to have. Overall, I'd probably still give the iPhone's display the edge, but this is a close contest.
Keyboard
There is no word for the Pre keyboard but horrible. The tiny, closely spaced keys take a firm mashing to press, probably to avoid typos. And once you are used to iPhone's typo fighting prowness, a keyboard devoid of those features feels dead, inert, unfriendly. (Pre actually has the features, but the dictionary is pitfully small and so short of correcting "i" to "I", I never saw its correction features working.)
Typing numbers requires you to press a special shift key. For each digit. Typing phone numbers using this mechanism will really bring home how good iphone's onscreen keyboard really is.
The hardware keyboard has one huge advantage: it does not take up space on the screen. The full size of the display is always available. And the keyboard is always available, so it's possible to type even when typed input is not expected. So if you are at the main screen, you can type portions of contact names and they will come up.
Pre is smaller than iPhone, and that's a major reason why the keyboard is abysmal. A larger successor model, with a wider keyboard and an iPhone sized screen, would really have helped the product.
Multitasking
This is the signature feature of the Pre and it works beautifully. Each application is presented as one or more cards. You can flip through cards by pressing the center button (similar to iPhone's) and flicking the cards to the left or right. You can also press the Pre interface's Start button equivalent to get a menu of programs to start. This all works with exceptional smoothness and was truly a joy to use.
If you want to consult your task list, calendar, notes and play a game, all at the same time, switching between the applications as needed, you will just love the Pre.
If you have an iPhone and want to see a preview of this, try opening several web pages in different browser windows and hit the bottom right page switching button. Then you can flick side by side to select a browser window, and press on it to make it active. That works exactly the same as the Pre's multitasking, but the Pre expands it to all applications, not just browser windows.
Gesture Interface
The Pre relies on established gestures to run its user interface. A gesture is defined as a flick of the finger back and forth or up and down. This makes it easy for experienced users but difficult for those new to the device to get used to it.
This is a very different philosophy from iPhone, which shows prompts on the screen at all times. So when you use iPhone's web browser, you see the URL and controls on the screen at all times. The Pre hides the URL and shows only minimal controls, relying on gestures you have to memorize to control what happens.
For example, iPhone has a "Back" button to go to the previous page in the interface. Pre has no back button; you are expected to know the swipe back gesture to return to the previous screen. Many times I sat on a screen I was finished with, unsure what to do, and then had to reach into memory to realize what was needed. Unfortunately, the back gesture, on the black area between the bottom of the screen and the button, is somewhat difficult to execute and it consistently took me a couple of tries to get it right.
Palm was obviously aware of this problem since they included a tutorial that runs as soon as you start up the device. Pay close attention to this and you'll do better than I.
The back gesture was difficult for me to remember or execute successfully, but the flick up gesture to exit an application was easy for me to remember and I never had any difficulty with it. So some aspects of the gesture interface were significantly more successful than others. You should try the unit in the store to make sure you can get comfortable with these gestures before purchasing the product. On the whole, I liked iPhone's hand-holding approach better.
Battery Charging
Pre includes support for a wonderful feature: an inductive charger. Put Pre on its little round stand and it will stick magnetically and start charging.
This is great, but it also costs an alarming $69. For mere mortals, the regular charging outlet is one of those annoying plastic flaps that you have to pull out to access the charging port. This is awkward to do and ruins the smooth look of the phone to boot.
Software developers must still load their creations via USB, so even if I blew the big bucks for this feature I would still wind up using the badly designed mini-USB port.
iPhone, of course, uses an iPod-style adapter that's easy to plug in and does not interfere with device aesthetics. One might think Palm is trying a bit too hard to sell the fancy charger.
Since I didn't use the device for phone calls, because the service was terrible, and because I didn't use the device much for web surfing, because the service was terrible, I can't comment on battery life at all. My Pre has spent most of its life to date either resting or tethered to my computer.
Software features.
Texting. The text feature is very similar to iPhone's, but not as visually slick. Since all Sprint plans come with unlimited texts, the integration of texts and IMs may not be as useful as it would have been otherwise. My friends are texting fiends and seem to have forgotten about IM entirely.
The overall look and feel of the application is not as attractive as Apple's and a recurring theme of this review will be how much more attractive, refined and usable iPhone is. iPhone took over 2 1/2 years to develop, and that shows as a fine polish on all the features.
Notes: iPhone is just a list, pre looks like a real corkboard. But the iPhone approach works better since the note listing is far easier to read, and you can search the notes easily.
Contacts: Palm has an interesting approach, called Synergy, where your contacts are taken from Outlook and/or the Internet, via Google or Facebook. f you are in ready contact with your Facebook friends, Synergy loooks great. But if you are like me and have many friends who barely use a computer, the spiffy new approach won't impress you much. My much-loved girlfriend has no Facebook account and I had to enter her by hand. My business partner has one but no phone number. Problems like this make me long for an automatic conversion from my Apple address book, which, alas, is not there.
Of course this might not seem so bad, but remember, the keyboard is pure agony to use.
Photos and Camera: Photos are pretty much a direct ripoff of how the iPhone does them. If you've seen photos in iPhone, you've seen them on the Pre. The camera is a three megapixel unit, which makes it the equivalent to the newest iPhones. But picture quality is nothing to write home about.
Third Party Support: It's coming for the Pre, but it will be a very long time, if ever, before it acquires the 65,000-odd apps iPhone has. Arcade games are likely to be much cruder than on iPhone because the software development kit does not include support for direct hardware access. If you want a gaming machine, iPhone's your best choice.
Puzzling Pre Omissions
There is no stopwatch or count down timer, despite excellent built-in ones for iPhone, even in version 1.0!
Sprint Service
Devices, however fancy, do not exist in a vacuum. A phone needs service. And, at least in metro Pittsburgh, Sprint fell flat on its face.
At first, I wanted to use the Pre as my primary phone, at least for a little while, so I could get used to the interface and build better applications. I texted my text-loving girlfriend, and tried to make a few calls to her. The texts worked, albiet often with long delays, but the phone calls were pure comedy - in my service area, most of the time we could simply not complete a call at all, and when one was completed it was hopelessly garbled. In the mean time, while on iPhone my AT&T service came in loud and clear.
In my area, I rarely got data service at all - I was stuck in the "voice only" gulag and so it was rarely possible to even try the data service. Even Route 51, a major artery comparable to Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, or A1A on the Florida coast, had no data service for large portions of the route.
In short, Sprint service was so awful that there was no way that I could actually use my Pre as a phone in lieu of my existing iPhone. Be sure to check Sprint service in your area before even beginning to seriously consider a Pre.
However, it needs to be emphasized that this has nothing to do with the Palm Pre. My girlfriend's company provides her with an ordinary Sprint phone, and it didn't work either.
The Sprint people I talked to were nice and competent, and the terms of my contract were fair - better and cheaper than AT&T's. But even the best service terms are useless if the service doesn't work. I would certainly not discourage people from using Sprint if its coverage is good in their area.
In short, expect spotty coverage and check maps carefully before getting the Pre. This is not Palm's fault, but dismal coverage definitely would have forced me to return the Pre if I was actually using it as a day to day use phone instead of a software development device.
Conclusion
On the whole, I really enjoy using both iPhone and Pre. iPhone has been developed and refined over a very long period, polished to a super-smooth gloss. Pre has not had the time, or the meticulousness of Steve Jobs, and it shows. But if you want a phone that multitasks beautifully, letting you do what you need to do when you need to do it, Pre could be ideal. Just watch for that keyboard and Sprint service. I hope it's better in your area than it was in mind.
