1. Home
2. Reviews
3. Phones
4. Mobile Phones
5. UK Palm Pre Review

UK Palm Pre review

Posted by Katherine Hannaford on Wed 7 Oct 2009

After flying to San Francisco in June to buy and review the US Pre, what do we think of the UK device?

Four months after the Pre went on sale in the US, customers in the UK will see Palm’s first webOS-powered mobile phone go on sale, exclusive to O2. It marks nine months since the Pre was first unveiled, which is like dog years in the mobile industry. Can the Pre stand up as a worthy contender amongst the iPhone 3GS, HTC HD2 and wealth of Android devices on the market, such as the Hero? It’s a surprising answer, but yes, the Pre is a solid enough device to want to own a year after it was first announced.

- Read our review of the US Pre here

- 360 review of the US Pre here

- See where Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein came on the T3 Tech 100 list

Heralded not only as Palm’s first phone to use the fresh-feeling webOS software, but also as the product that can give the once market-leading company a fighting chance again, the Pre feels great in your hand. With softly-rounded edges and a reassuring weight, the glossy all-black casing feels premium, even expensive. Slide the screen up however, and four rows of ugly tic tac keys appear. They’re gummy to the touch, and are far too small for comfortable typing.

That’s not the only fault with the hardware. The edging along the bottom of the device, around the keypad, is sharp and in severe contrast to the polished nature of the rest of the phone. Flipping the Pre will reveal a silver back for the screen, which mirrors your reflection however not without some funfair-type distortion.

True, we may have a few gripes about the hardware, but once the Pre is turned on you can forgive it for not having spent enough time on the drawing board. Set-up is amongst the easiest we’ve ever experience for a mobile phone, with only the iPhone and assorted Android phones matching it for ease of use straight from the box. Type in an email address and password, and off you go. No worries about synching contacts’ mobile numbers with email addresses, the Pre will match names and even avatars if they’re Gmail users. This is what Palm calls Synergy – something we could go on about for thousands of words, but due to limited space we’ll sum up as being hugely useful in matching contacts to email addresses and Facebook data.

All of the magic happens on the homescreen, with the Pre throwing the rulebook out of the window and allowing easy multi-tasking amongst its various programs and even web pages. Click the lone button on the front of the Pre, and you’ll be transported back to the homescreen, where you can flick around between the App Store, text messages, emails, contacts, T3.com and Twitter. If you suddenly want to close Twitter, an upwards swipe on the Twitter page will make it disappear. The touchscreen on the Pre is superb - nicely responsive, the concentric circles which appear at your fingertip reassure you that the Pre received your command. It's one of the best touchscreens we've ever used.

When browsing, tap on the web page and the site will grow to fit the full size of the screen, if you’re holding the Pre landscape-way. Pinch in with two fingers, or double-tap, and you can zoom in. Pinch out or double-tap again, and zoom out. Opening links can be done by pressing on the link or double-tapping.

Web browsing is fast, if you happen to be in a strong reception area. Thanks to the numerous letdowns of the O2 network, the Pre’s browsing was a real let-down on occasions. We couldn’t access any O2 reception in our home, however in the office it was fine. On the train or walking around town was very hit and miss.

Normal actions usually undertaken when browsing, for example copying and pasting, or adding bookmarks, is possible and very straight-forward thanks to the obvious ‘web’ tab that appears when the Pre is held in portrait mode. We do wish such actions could be made when in landscape as well, however it does make sense, we’ll admit, that a user would be more likely to add a bookmark in portrait mode anyway, if you wanted to amend the name of the bookmark for example.

If you’d like to go to a new site, simply start typing in the address, for example ‘Facebook’, and you can choose to google that word, search for it on Wikipedia, or go to the actual website.

Going backwards to the previously-viewed page can be done by swiping a finger from middle to left, below the screen, thanks to the touch-sensitive casing. This gesture can be applied to all of the Pre’s programs, if you’re wanting to go back a screen, and has a single light flash up next to the button, showing the action was received.

The phone is fast when making such gestures, however admittedly it could be faster when juggling programs and applications. The more windows we had open, the sluggier it got – and whilst it’s not as bad as the G1, it’s still noticeable. If you’re wanting the speed of the instantly-opening programs of the iPhone 3GS however, you may be disappointed.

We used Gmail with the Pre’s email program, however you can use any account you’d like – and as many. Emails rendered fairly well, with images showing up, however html-heavy emails were problematic. Emails received are contained under headlines saying ‘Today’, ‘Yesterday’, or ‘Older’ – if only Gmail’s webmail would take a leaf out of the Pre’s book.

Replying to an email or sending a new one opens a new window in the Pre, once again allowing for multi-tasking amongst applications. Sending an email doesn’t necessarily have to start in the contacts list or email application, just type the person’s name into the homescreen, and a list of forms of communication appears. Click their email address, and send an email or talk to them on instant messenger. Attach an image, video, music file or document, or simply type words of wisdom.

As there’s no button on the hardware for quick-launching the camera, thanks to the multi-tasking you can just keep the camera open on the homescreen, and click on it when it’s needed. Ideal if a celebrity is lurking, but you also need to send a quick email before snapping a pic. The photo quality is great, one of the best we’ve seen, with the flash proving very bright. Click the photo gallery icon on the screen, and view the photos you’ve taken. If you’d like to email it to a contact, there’s an action for that – which will also allow you to upload to a website, share via MMS, set as a wallpaper or assign to a contact.

The Pre is ripe for multimedia users. From taking and uploading photos, to listening to music or watching videos, the crisp screen is friendly to the eyes, even on long train journeys. The ongoing public airing of Palm and Apple’s dirty laundry, concerning the iTunes syncing, is frustrating for consumers wishing to upload their songs via iTunes, but is capable of turning customers away from purchasing the device. Nonetheless, we enjoyed listening to music on the Pre and watching the TV shows we loaded onto the generous 8GB of internal storage. The speaker is surprisingly loud, otherwise there’s the 3mm jack if you don’t want to disturb those in close proximity.

Corporate users will be surprised with the amount of work-related functions available on the Pre. From emailing (you can even set up an Exchange account), to the creation of memos which can be emailed to a contact, and even the calendar, Palm’s worked hard behind the scenes, ensuring each program works well. You get the feeling, as with the multi-tasking element, that Palm ripped up the mobile operating system rulebook with the Pre, and designed programs exactly how they should be used. Take the calendar – it syncs with your email address, so if you use Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar, everything will be added to the Pre calendar. Even Facebook dates – whether that’s a blessing or curse, we’ll leave up to you.

Palm’s Apps Store is well organised, well designed, but lacking in one crucial element: apps. Sure, there’s around a hundred apps available now, but that’s small fry compared to the iPhone’s huge 85,000. That’s not necessarily Palm’s fault, more a lack of interest from developers or lack of devices in the market, but it’s still not quite at the level you’d hope, four months from the US launch. We do like the addition of the app tag cloud however, which arranges keywords for the apps in a ‘cloud’, for easy choosing. Click ‘calculator’ for example, and all the calculator apps appear. There’s five, if you’re curious. Sort them by alphabetical order, the amount of star ratings they’ve been given, whether they’re paid-for or not, or by the chronological order in which they launched.

There’s advantages and disadvantages with the App Store, however we’re confident Palm will attract more apps the longer the Pre is on the market, especially now that they’ve announced their webOS developer program is launching in December.

The Pre is a very recommendable device. Little has changed between the US model, which we reviewed back in June, and the new UK one. It’s still the same innovative, intuitive mobile which will appeal to smart consumers wanting more from their phones than a few novelty apps. It actually makes you more efficient due to the multi-tasking and Universal Search, and will ensure you’re not typecast as just another iPhone or Android bandwagon-jumper. Having said that, there are issues with it being exclusive to the O2 network. Before buying, make sure you actually get reception in your area, and are comfortable with the slow loading times you're sometimes faced with. Whilst call quality was decent, it was the lack of reception which bugged us more than anything else on the Pre.

Link: Palm Pre
 

T3's Hot 100 for 2009

Filtering through the wheat from the tech chaff here is our hottest gadgets on the planet.

- Click now to enter T3's Hot 100

Related links:

• T3's Palm Pre profile
• Video of the Palm Pre

• Share this:
• 
• 
• 
• 

User Comments

By pageidea

26|11|2009 15:29

In the UK the Palm Pre has done an exclusive deal with mobile phone operator O2. Well I guess I have to wait a little longer to get one for myself.

I am an Orange UK customer and I have still five month left on my contract until then I can only dream of owning one.

source: http://payasyougomobilephones.mobi

Report this

By pageidea

26|11|2009 15:28

In the UK the Palm Pre has done an exclusive deal with mobile phone operator O2. Well I guess I have to wait a little longer to get one for myself.

I am an Orange UK customer and I have still five month left on my contract until then I can only dream of owning one.

source:
http://www.payasyougomobilephones.mobi

Report this

By freeiphones4u

19|10|2009 19:45

The Free iPhone Guide

To get yourself a free iPhone, iPod Touch, or the latest Macbook Air all you have to do is follow the 3 easy steps:

Step 1 : Sign up for a free Gift
Sign up at the link below to get your free gift. We recommend this free gift site because it's been TRIED and TESTED to work.

http://Gifts.real-incentives.com/2992 (copy and paste into address bar)

You can choose other prizes like free Laptops from this site too! Make sure you use a real email address. Use your real details when you sign up so that the company knows where to send your gift! Remember that they have been proven legitimate, so will send you your free gift if you do everything legitimately!

Step 2 : Try an advertiser's offer
Basically all you need to do in this step is complete one of the offers, this is where the freebie site make their money, if you complete an offer then the freebie site will recieve commission for it. So if you complete Coral which will only cost you £5 to complete, the freebie site gets £25 from Coral. The two best offers are Lovefilm Free DVD rental (a no obligation free DVD trial) and Coral (bet £5 on a sport). I would reccommend you do Coral as it credits in an hour and is really simple to do, Lovefilm however can become complicated and takes up to 4 weeks to credit! You can also try one of the other offers, most are gambling offers. Don't skip this step! You must complete this step to get your free gift!

Step 3 : Refer some friends

This part is a lot easier than it seems, especially now with free gift sites getting so popular. There's lots of people online who want a free iPhone, Touch or macbook too, so start referring them! You only need to get a few signups before you'll be finished. You can ask your friends or your online buddies. I already got a free iPhone without even having to ask my friends for help - there's lots of people online who want a free iPhone like you! One of the easiest ways to get a referral is to do a favour for a friend and ask them to sign up in return. That way, you both can get a free gift!

Basic rules
Don't break these rules! This is the only reason that you won't get your free gift, so make sure you follow these rules!

- One account per household - don't use a public computer to sign up!
- Use real information - this is a proven legitimate site and they will not give out your information.
- Only complete each offer once! You cannot complete the same offer again, even for different freebies.
- Don't try to cheat the system. This site has been proven legitimate, and they will catch you if you try to cheat. If you do everything legitimately, by following this guide, you will get a free gift!

Report this

READ ALL 4 COMMENTS

You need to Login or Register in order to post comments