Aesthetically, the Palm Pre is a beautiful smartphone with rounded corners and a competitive 3.1-inch multitouch screen with a 320 x 480 resolution that provides crisp and attractive images. Additionally, the Palm Pre has an ergonomic curve that helps it fit in your hand and against your face when you’re talking on the phone much easier and allows for comfortable typing.
For many, the favorite part of the vertical slider with a full QWERTY will be the combination of the touchscreen, the gesture area, and the trackball—all of which makes navigating the Operating System (OS) as simple as jumping on the short bus to go to school. For others, their favorite aspect of the Palm Pre will be the Palm Web OS itself; along with iPhone-esque apps, Palm is making a software development kit (SDK) available (but it’ll require an approval process), an App Store, and Amazon Music Store.
Undressing the Palm Pre
While the Palm Pre has a 3-megapixel camera (with an LED flash), it lacks video capture, which, given the smartphone’s boasting web capabilities, is a major omission. Many potential users who would like the ability to upload instantly to YouTube will view this omission as reason enough not to purchase the phone. The user interface (UI) and the web browser are other features that are worth noticing. The UI runs smoothly with its swiping and gestures and “pinching” to zoom in and out. Scrolling through your apps is as easy, and just as familiar, as scanning your iPod music on the cover-flow mode.
The Palm Pre also features Synergy, which brings together all your e-mail accounts, contacts, and calendar information in one big Brady Bunch happy place. The Palm Pre’s browser displays websites just as they do on your PC, but Palm is reluctant to announce the Pre’s Flash capabilities. With 8GB of flash storage you’llmiss some capacity that the leaders in the market have, but the Palm Pre does come loaded with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 capabilities (including stereo Bluetooth), EV-DO Rev. A, GPS, USB 2.0, a wireless charger, and 3.5 mm headphone jack.
