Palm Phone unboxing & first impressions: Yeah, it's that tiny!

Palm is back! However, it’s a totally brand-new Palm we’re talking about here. And just recently, the Palm Phone was just dropped by our office, so you can imagine about some of or curiosities that are behind it. If you don’t know, the Palm Phone is intended to act more like a companion device to your smartphone – one that’s meant to be complementary to your smartphone. Think of it more like a cellular connected smartwatch, something that has the basic essentials to keep you connected, and more importantly, it would aim to minimize distractions that tend to accompany using our smartphones (like social media, heavy multimedia consumption, productivity, and etc).

The packaging for the Palm Phone is a minimalist, as it should be given its status as being a companion device. On the front and sides, we have images showing off the Palm Phone, which are surprisingly enough scaled to size! And that leads us to the most fascinating thing about the Palm Phone, which is none other than its diminutive size. Seeing it for the first time is shocking, seeing that we weren’t honestly expecting it to be so tiny! Not only is it half the size of today’s phones, but it’s remarkably lightweight and skinny.

Then again, we instantly take notice of where its design draws its inspiration from, as it looks very much like an iPhone X/XS with its glass meets metal trim construction. It looks almost exactly like it, especially with how the 12MP camera in the rear is arranged. Still, it’s an adorable design that not only looks premium, but feels like it as well! There’s a 3.3-inch LCD display 720p display that’s usable enough to read things out on screen, a single power button that can be programmed for different functions, a USB Type-C port, front-facing 8MP camera, and a nano-SIM slot.

Getting it set up is a breeze, and once it’s all done, we’re thrown into the homescreen. It’s running a customized Android 8.1 Oreo experience, which is evident with the arrangement of scrollable icons that are there. Typing initially seemed like a chore, considering the miniscule display, but we found using Gboard’s swiping method quite effective. What’s interesting, though, is that it’s meant to be a companion device, which is can be based on your habits. However, you can still download all of your favorite apps on the phone, like Facebook, Instagram, and Slack, so it’s very much a full-featured smartphone. On top of that, we were able to get it connected with Google’s Project-Fi, which was somewhat surprising because we thought it was locked to Verizon.

In any event, the Palm Phone is available right now for purchase through Verizon Wireless for the price of $349.99. What do you think of the Palm Phone so far?