I just recently got my new Palm Pre. I was previously an iPhone 3G user, but was drawn to the Pre due to what I thought was a very inefficient email experience of the iPhone. I use my mobile primarily for email / texting, then location-based apps, then voice. I found screen-based typing experience of the iPhone to be too difficult, even after a year of practice.
The Pre is still brand new (only 2 days old) but here are my first thoughts. First, what I see as the best aspects of the Pre:
Multitasking OS. By this I mean that unlike the iPhone, you can have multiple applications open and active at once. So you can be listening to Pandora while downloading an email attachment while surfing the web at once. It makes the experience feel much more like a normal computer experience (I’m addicted to multitasking - to the point where it’s probably counterproductive!). I was really tired of having to poke back and forth into one app at a time on the iPhone, especially when your connection is slow (which happened often with AT&T).
"Cards" and gestures. On the Pre, you can switch back and forth between applications on a cool interface that makes it feel like you’re shuffling playing cards left and right by swiping your finger back and forth. It’s similar to pressing "Alt-Tab" to switch between applications. The Cards interaction is very smooth - it feels good and is very quick. Again, it’s a nice improvement from the single-application lock in on the iPhone. The coolest part is how to close applications - you simply swipe the card in the up direction, and poof it’s intantly gone! Very cool (and efficient). You can easily rearrange the order of the Cards by holding down on one and dragging it left or right.
Keyboard and navigation. The Pre keyboard is on the small side (it’s not as large as the Blackberry Bold), but its very functional and I got used to it fairly quickly. It has a dedicated @ button and period (.) button, which makes it quick and easy to enter URL’s and email addresses. The keys are rubbery and slightly sticky, making for a nice feel. I find that the combination of touch screen navigation with a good keyboard makes navigating a mobile device extraordinarily fast and efficient. You can be in and out of email, reading the news, and looking up contacts like a breeze.
It has a "Back" button! There were many times on my iPhone I’d end up somewhere I didn’t want to be and would want to go back. Sometimes swiping back would work, other times not. On the Pre, there is an area below the screen which you can always swipe backward and forward to navigate either way. It’s nice and comforting to always have that available as you move around between applications.
Seamless sync with Gmail and Facebook. To sync your contacts, you just need to enter in your Gmail and Facebook accounts, and the rest is done for you. In fact, after syncing, I was surprised upon getting a call from a friend that his face popped up on my phone. Turns out the Pre picked up his Facebook profile pic and displayed it when he called. Very cool.
Network speed. This is more a Sprint vs. AT&T issue than a Pre vs. iPhone issue, but the Sprint network seems to be much faster. Files and videos download very quickly, seems to be far faster than my iPhone was.
Great camera image quality. The Pre has a 3 megapixel camera that takes excellent photos. The image quality, while still not up to par with a high quality digital camera, is getting pretty close, to the point where you have to wonder if it’s really worth it to pack an extra device to take pics. The camera also has a flash which works pretty well in dark places. Another big bonus - the Pre supports MMS, a big hole in the iPhone feature set. It’s nice to be able to send picture messages like SMS messages, and the Pre makes that very easy.
As you can tell, I’m a pretty big fan of my Palm Pre so far. As always, there are always ways to improve, here are what I see as the shortcomings of the Pre:
No email search. I thought for sure the Pre would have this critical feature. With the volume of emails we all get these days, it’s important to be able to quickly search for a find a specific email. But like the iPhone, this feature has been omited from the Pre.
Difficult to wake it up. When the Pre is sleeping, you have to press a button in the upper left corner, then (similar to the iPhone) drag a little icon upwards to wake it up. The problem is, the button in the corner is very difficult to push. While this is probably by design to prevent accidental turn-ons, I found the design to be very frustrating, it takes multiple attemps to get the button to respond. In this respect, the iPhone has a much nicer wake-up experience.
Build quality / device feel. While overall the device feels pretty good, it doesn’t feel nearly as sturdy and of high quality as the iPhone. The iPhone, with its glass and metallic build, is simply a great feeling device to hold in your hand. The Pre has a nice shape to it (reminiscent of a large flat pebble / stone), but its clearly made of plastic, which is not nearly as nice.
So there you have it - my first thoughts on the Palm Pre. I’ll definitely be learning more about what I like and dislike about and will post those thoughts here in the future. But overall, I give the Pre a big thumbs up - great device that is easy to use and is very efficient - while being fun at the same time.
