Palm Pre Review
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What has propelled iPhone sales into the stratosphere is the App Store, and any modern smartphone must have an answer. Palm gives users the App Catalog, an elegant solution that allows for easy searching, previewing and downloading of apps. A huge bonus that the App Catalog has over the App Store is that every app is free for now, and Palm has said that in the future every app will have a trial version. At launch there were only about a dozen apps, but that number has already doubled and as Palm opens up the Mojo SDK that number will only grow.
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Some of the more useful apps we’ve mentioned in the review already (or will shortly) but we have to give a shoutout to AccuWeather, Sporting News Pro Baseball, Tweed, Flixster, FlightView, Express Stocks and many others. Classic is a Palm OS emulator that will allow users to run their old Palm apps on the Pre.
Thus far apps are very high quality, just as Palm wanted it. We’re sure that as it gets opened up more we’ll see plenty of the pointless applications that now overrun the App Store, but instead of wasting $0.99 to make a few fart sounds, the App Catalogue will allow you get your likely fill with a preview before you purchase.
The most important of the included software is the Google Maps we all know and love, complete with GPS capabilities. Sprint Navigation is also on board to provide audible turn by turn directions. Another important one is Docs to Go, which allows the user to read but not edit Office documents. Others include a .pdf viewer and Sprint’s NASCAR mobile app. Standard system tools such as a calculator and clock (for those who upgrade their firmware) are present as well.
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Multimedia:
There is no Sprint Music Store support in the Pre, which kind of surprised us. In its place is the Amazon MP3 store, a very worthy replacement. Amazon, with two major mobile operating systems now on board, seems to be making a big push into the mobile space. The user can download tracks OTA, but only over Wi-Fi, which is also surprising to us. The only reason we could come up with is that Music Store tracks are highly compressed, whereas Amazon gives you real, and larger, mp3 files. Still, especially over Sprint’s impressive 3G network a 3-5MB file isn’t very big. Users can queue downloads using cellular data and the Pre will download them automatically when it connects to Wi-Fi.
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There is no Sprint Music Store support in the Palm Pre | |
The music player itself is very polished, though fairly cliché. You can sort by Artist, Album, Song, Genre, or Playlist. It is very reminiscent of the iPod and BlackBerry interface function-wise, but with its own visual uniqueness. The player can of course be sent to the background, and from the notification area the user can control playback.
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Music player | |||
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YouTube app |
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Pandora |
Pandora is an amazing app, bringing streaming internet radio to the Pre. Much like the music player, it can be sent to the background and controlled via the notification area, to an extent. The user can rate the song, and pause it, but not skip forward to the next track, but a thumbs down rating is in effect a track forward button. Pandora may indeed prove to both a landmark and measuring stick app for the Pre; not only is it awesome, but the developers made a point to note that it took them six weeks to develop their iPhone app. It took them four days to develop for the Pre.
Palm surprised us all by announcing iTunes syncing for the Pre, though it doesn’t support earlier DRM iTunes content. The user can not only sync music, video and pictures with iTunes, but can purchase and download songs via the service as well. When in this Media Sync mode the Pre shows up as an iPod to iTunes. The Pre also has a Mass Storage mode, and when plugged in it allows the user to simply drag and drop files to and from the phone to your PC or Mac. It took us a 1:30 minute to transfer 117MB of files, which is rather good speed.
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The camera interface of Palm Pre |
The 3.2 megapixel camera is complimented by an LED flash. Unfortunately, like the iPhone and Android before it, the Pre does not offer video recording out of the box. Like Android before it, we expect to see an app that enables this very soon. The camera results were pretty good, all things considered. The camera interface is as simple as can be, the user simply has a flash option (Auto, On, Off,) the album icon and the shutter button. The picture album is simple; gestures like pinch, double tap and flick are in effect and it works just as you’d expect.
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Camera samples | ||||
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The picture album | ||
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45 Comments
1. AVCOC posted on 20 Oct 2010, 01:55 0 0
9.9!!!! thats too high,the palm pre is a good phone but not that good to be the highest rated one!
6. legionsreturn (unregistered) posted on 12 Jun 2009, 19:18 0 0
Well what do you expect when phonearena accepts cash for good reviews?
8. secondcor517 posted on 12 Jun 2009, 20:28 0 0
i was thinking the same thing legion.... how much did they make from this review.
10. mr. anderson posted on 12 Jun 2009, 21:19 0 0
first off, how stupid are you two? secondly, everyone knows sprint doesnt have the money to pay for anything much less reviews! im a vzw user, but have used my friends pre extensively. i assume you guys have not, because the score is well deserved. this is a game changer, plain and simple.
11. legionsreturn (unregistered) posted on 13 Jun 2009, 08:51 0 0
So how much did you charge for that score? Im just curious, it must have cost all of 20 bucks!
2. legionsreturn (unregistered) posted on 12 Jun 2009, 13:27 0 0
Oh come on! Reallly? Are you really that mallible in the face of corporate sponsorship? We already knew objectivity is a joke to you people but youve really outdone yourselves this time. Guess all you have to do to get a good review on phonearena is pay for it.
3. metalpoet posted on 12 Jun 2009, 15:13 0 0
as a representatitve of verizon i must admit that sprint and palm did a really good job with the release of the pre and i truly hope it shuts up the iphone users!
4. Kiltlifter posted on 12 Jun 2009, 16:35 0 0
I agree... iPhone users are the worst.. has anyone seen the South Park episode where Kyle's dad gets a "hybrid" and then moves to San Francisco and there is a "smug" storm? Everyone I know thinks they are superior and so incredibly hi-tech just because they own it, even though none of them use it for anything more than they would an ipod touch. Let's just hope that Pre users don't fall into the same line of "Smug"... otherwise George Clooney's speech from the Oscars could make a supercell that would wipe out all of what is left of sprint's network... (if you don't get this comment just watch the episode).
28. ser3nitynow posted on 16 Jun 2009, 20:35 0 0
HAHAHA so true... By the way that episode is hysterical.
30. legionsreturn (unregistered) posted on 17 Jun 2009, 01:07 0 0
Southpark is indeed enjoyable.
5. LGVX1993 posted on 12 Jun 2009, 17:17 0 0
Not trying to be an ass but if you average up the scores you get an 8.9. There probably is some different way of calculating the total score though.
13. McMillian posted on 13 Jun 2009, 10:57 0 0
Phone Arena is ignorant and they don't make any since. they obviously choose favorites when it comes to phones and their OS. Don't get me wrong I think the Pre looks like a great phone but I think Phone Arena completely over hyped the Pre in this review.
14. LGVX1993 posted on 13 Jun 2009, 11:43 0 0
After about a while theyll be wanting to change some of this stuff. Any phone that ive had I loved for about a month or two and i got tired of it. One more thing, wouldnt the Pre be a little complicated for the Average Joe?
15. legionsreturn (unregistered) posted on 13 Jun 2009, 15:15 0 0
I got a good laugh out of the average joe reccomendation, this was review obviously a foregone conclusion paid for by the corporate interests that birthed this phone.
23. martycota posted on 15 Jun 2009, 10:20 0 0
Wow, seriously, are you all iphone users bashing the review?! The phone has recieved generally positive reviews from all major reviewers and just because PhoneArena's is super high doesn't mean they were bought off?! Should I say that they were bought off by Apple for giving the Touch Pro a lower score then many sites just because they say that after the diamond it felt old?! And seriously, for average joe, this is probably the best smart phone out there. It offers an easy to use interface and is a smart phone unlike most smart phones that are blackberry or window which offer very little in user friendly handling.!!! Average Joe doesn't always have to be about having the dumbest phone out there, they obviously rated it based on how easy it is to use for a smart phone that offers just about everything, or will offer soon enough!!! Read the reviews before asking Steve Jobs what kind of demeaning comments you can post on the competition's reviews. Yes the iPhone might be a great phone, but it is in no way a smart phone and if you read the review you can see how the phone deserves quite a high rating on its own merits...
25. LGVX1993 posted on 15 Jun 2009, 14:29 0 0
i dont know about everyone else but im not an iphone user and never have been and probably never will be. As you can probably tell by my name im with Verizon. I read the review from here and other websites and i know this is a good phone. I was just saying that the unweighted average of scores is 8.94 to be exact not 9.9. And also WebOS looks a little too complicated to me so i don't think it would be for the average joe. I also never said that average joe had to have the most basic phone around. I just wouldn't see one with a smart phone.
26. mr. anderson posted on 15 Jun 2009, 19:51 0 0
if webos is too complicated for you i dont know what to tell you man. have you taken an iq test lately?
27. LGVX1993 posted on 16 Jun 2009, 05:16 0 0
no but im not stupid ciz i have 5 honors classes in school. The whole gesture bar is a little unnecessary to me.
38. sprntfanboi02 posted on 29 Jun 2009, 19:04 0 0
i was going to take your post seriously but then you used since instead of sense....really? are you serious?
