Month long real-world usage of the Pre
After owning my Palm Pre, I have decided to do a followup review. Unfortunately it seems to be common practice of most company-based reviews to only use the product for a few days and then review it which really doesn’t paint a realistic view of what you can expect overall.
So here we go. This is the short, quick, easy monthlong usage review:
Good:
- True multitasking operating system that actually works. Performs well and only crashed it twice. (Hint: don’t read a 40 MB eBook with the built in PDF reader. 
)
- Phone is elegantly designed, with standards compliant connectors! 3.5MM headset/speaker jack means not having to buy adapter cables for your nice headphones when you are wanting to listen to music. Micro USB connector means standardized connection, no more having to find that (*#*&@ cable to charge your phone.
- Contacts Integration is a definite plus with the caveat that you must clean up your contacts list before you integrate.
- Good quality digital camera with flash makes taking pictures easy and integration makes sending as email, MMS and uploading to Facebook very simple.
- Pandora application for streaming music is great over EvDO and Wifi.
- GPS through Google Maps or the Sprint GPS application is very accurate.
- Optional Inductive charger available. (Device is called a Touchstone)
- Supports 802.11 b and g, WPA, WPA2 and WEP, and transitioning between EvDO and Wifi and back again is easy.
- Yes, this thing runs Linux, Yes I hacked mine.. 
Bad
- BATTERY LIFE!!! My phone can’t go 8 hours without needing a recharge when listening to music over EvDO. The processor supports dynamic speed control for battery life, but is not implemented.
- Weak app store. The application store for the Pre is severely limited, to only a handful of applications. More are supposed to come in now that the SDK has been released.
- Touch screen surface is plastic, not glass. Scratches are a certainty not a probability. Screen Protector recommended!
- Phone option doesn’t have a “1-Touch Dialing” like the phones of the prior generations had (like Favorites or Shortcuts of the Treo era)
- Touchscreen is hyper sensitive to location. It takes me several clicks to select a link on some resolutions.
- While charging the phone or talking for a long time, the phone gets very warm. Some users report theirs have gotten extremely hot.
- Phone can only be used as a Mass Storage Device/Media Sync if the phone functions are suspended.
- On the topic of storage. This phone only has 8GB with no way of expanding it. Was this a Palm developer oversight? I remember someone saying something a few years ago about how 500MB on a computer was more than plenty… Can’t remember the guy’s name.
The UGLY, or just plain WEIRD
- The Facebook Mobile website (m.facebook.com) works better than the Facebook Mobile application on the Pre.
- Weird bug in Facebook Mobile application and Gmail Mobile application, where “BACK” exits the application rather than taking you to the last screen you were on.
- From the Mojo SDK, there is not going to be socket based communication support for the WebOS for a while. (WTF, no SSH client or IRC client?)
- Multiple versions of Car chargers out there for the Pre. Make sure yours is rated for 1500ma otherwise your phone will take a long time to charge and may damage the car charger which could also destroy your phone. (Luckily I have never experienced this.)
- Bluetooth support only supports A2DP. Can’t send or receive files from the PC or other phones.
- Multiple reports of people at the Palm OS Dev forums reporting heat issues distorting the screen. Although they were all confirmed as initial release V1 phones, (mine’s a V2) this is still something UGLY and worth noting.
- Hard to install homebrew apps without the SDK, requires hacked phone.
- Can’t get rid of NASCAR or NFL logos.
So there you have it. Short, quick, to the point, and under 700 words too. Feel free to ask questions about it in the comments section. I actively monitor my comments and will respond. I will post photos soon, as soon as I figure out how.
Thanks for this post; it’s great to get some “real world” usage information from someone besides Palm. I am the owner of an original iPhone and over the past few weeks have become more and more disenchanted with it. I was originally going to switch to the Pre when it came out but then Apple released OS 3.0 for the iPhone and it pretty much fixed most of what I didn’t like about it (cut & paste, etc.) However, I am thinking about developing an app for my website (http://MynaStuff.com) and am seriously considering doing it for the Pre and not the iPhone. The Pre needs apps and my little contribution would get lost in the iTunes store.
Anyway, I’m still on the fence about switching to a Pre. Here is what I normally do on my iPhone, can the Pre keep up?
– I talk very little actually but the dialing / contact list is pretty good
– Massive amounts web surfing!
– Google mail, contacts, & calendar
– I use maps/geo-location/driving directions quite a bit. Can you easily search for something, get an address/phone number, and get directions or call them?
– Don’t really listen to music or watch videos so I don’t need much storage
– I keep it on the charger at work almost all day so battery life is not a big priority
– Don’t use a lot of 3rd party apps
Thanx!
Richard
Hello Richard! Welcome!
I have to admit, I was in the same boat you were in about the iPhone, but once the glamour/new fangled device thing wore off I was left with frustration more than anything. Add to that, AT&T’s draconian TOS and their horric pricing scheme, it was a dealbreaker for me.
- I think the contacts thing would work out for you as the contacts can be searched from anywhere except the URL bar on the browser of course. I can be in my music application, hit the “front” button and start typing the first name of the contact and actually get their “card” from the contacts. If I’m in gmail or the Email application, typing a person’s name will present the email accounts I have on file. Really tight integration on that aspect, sometimes tighter than actually thumbing through the contact list itself.
- You might be impressed then. I have had four cards with a site on each and can thumb through them with ease. The one thing I did notice is that if you hold the phone upside down, the browser (and camera pictures) will flip to match which I thought was a neat touch. I know the iPhone does landscape but am not sure if you put the top end down if it will flip to match. One big downer is that the browser does not have support for Flash applications (unlike the iPhone, I’m afraid they have the Pre beat in this one).
- The mapping software is pretty decent for a phone based application. It can lock to where you are, then plot a course based on your driving. I recommend the Google Maps version over the builtin Sprint version as Google had a lock within 4 minutes of coming out of a well-sheltered building and Sprint was still confused.
- If you ever need it, you can use it as a standalone USB drive. I have some recovery tools for that “just in case” day, but the fact that you have to kill all phone functionality may not work all that well.
- Something that I haven’t gotten my hands on but have heard rave reviews about is the “touchless” charger adapter called the Touchstone. It uses a magnetic coil and a pickup in the battery cover in the Pre to charge it via induction. Novel idea for those of us that know we’re going to leave it somewhere but don’t want to fumble with the USB cover. It’s a bit steep at $75 from my local Sprint store, but I’m sure pricing will come way down.
Thanks for your opinion, I’m always happy to have people interested in the articles that I post.
Matt
Pretty much my experience, although I’ve had mine for less time than you’ve had yours. The lack of an SSH client so far is the most frustrating; I haven’t fully rooted the device yet but I have installed two apps that required the phone to be in Dev Mode: DevMode Launcher (no need to enter the code, just push a button) and MyTether. I have blog posts (http://blog.ericdives.com/) regarding my recent experiences (look past the restaurant reviews – I blog about a lot of stuff), including why I ditched the new BlackBerry Tour (which had a better apps selection) for the Pre.
Hello Eric:
Thank you for taking the time to reply, I will definitely check out your blog about the Pre as I am interested in what other users have encountered from not just the hacking aspect of it, but the usability aspect as well. I have a few ideas on things I’d like to do, but haven’t had time to start working on it.
I wish I had more time and more detailed knowledge of Javascript and CSS as I’m not good with either.