Palm Pre Plus Review

Introduction:

When we fist reviewed Sprint’s Palm Pre last year, we were impressed with its overall design and usability, as it featured Palm’s new webOS interface. Now it is Verizon’s turn with the Palm Pre Plus, where the “Plus” basically means it has twice the internal memory for user storage and 512MB of RAM for better multitasking. But other than that, the device remains mostly unchanged. The issue for Palm has to do with timing, as the world of Android has started a large following on Verizon, due to the Motorola DROID and HTC DROID ERIS. Because of this, the Pre Plus isn’t as hot of a device as it would have been last year. This by no means takes away from its features and software, but it will simply have a challenging time breaking into the smartphone crowd, where Windows Mobile and Android currently dominate.
Included in the retail package is the Palm Pre Plus phone, 1150mAh battery, wall charger with detachable microUSB cable, 3.5mm earbuds, carrying pouch, and user guide.

Design:

The Palm Pre Plus is very comfortable to hold in your hand, as its corners are smooth and curved, unlike the rectangle shape of the Motorola DROID with its more square-cut corners. The overall plastic construction of the Pre Plus is smooth and pleasing to the touch, with the soft-touch coating on the back that we’re always glad to see, though the heavier metal construction of the Motorola DROID feels more durable, almost like it could withstand a beating.




You can compare the Palm Pre Plus with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The front display remains at 3.1-inch diagonal with 320x480 resolution and 16.7 million color support. Images look good with bright and saturated colors, even in direct sunlight. We like that the display blends in well with the surrounding black bezel, instead of looking like a separate piece. Using the capacitive touch-sensitive display on the Palm Pre Plus is a joy, as it supports multitouch in several apps (such as the web browser and photo viewer) and has a gesture-based area located at the bottom. All of this works well together, including the small wave-effect light that flows with your finger’s movement.



The 4-row QWERTY keyboard is by no means the best keyboard that we’ve used on a phone, nor is it the worst. The buttons are large enough to use with your finger-tips or nails, but people with larger hands will have the most difficulty getting used to it. The buttons are raised from the surrounding plastic with a rubbery feel to them, but don’t provide much feedback when pressed. After a day of use though, we did become better at using the keyboard and had fewer mistakes. As a whole, we can say the QWERTY keyboard is more than usable, considering the compact dimensions of the Palm Pre Plus.



Along the side of the device are the volume rocker, power/lock button, 3.5mm headset jack, microUSB port, and a sliding lever that acts to silence the phone’s ringer and alerts. Located on the back is the 3MP camera with LED flash and speaker. The battery cover includes the ability to work with the optional touchstone charging dock (sold separately). There is also 16GB of internal memory available to the user, which is twice the amount of the original Pam Pre.