So, here I am 2 days shy of a full month's usage of my Palm Pre on Sprint.  If you read my iPhone review, you know how disappointed I was with it (and that was almost a year ago).  I understand a lot has changed, but not enough to warrant my return.  Today, I want to discuss the Palm Pre, my experiences, and why you should seriously consider adding this device to your short list.  Once again, I will avoid specs other than how they relate to my review as those are all over the 'net.  You're all here to make decisions on whether or not to buy and I want to share my experience to help with that.  Let's get to it, shall we?

Form Factor
After the iPhone, I went with the Blackberry Storm.  The Palm Pre is physically smaller than both of its competitors in height and width, however, it's a tad thicker (by mere millimeters) than the iPhone and on par with the Storm. The rounded pebble-like shape to the phone makes it a breeze to slide in and out of your pocket.  I am NOT one to place a phone in my pocket due to how they look, but this was very comfortable and I'm still doing so to this day.  The iPhone in my pocket really did feel big, although not as deep and the Storm made me feel like I was carry a deck of cards shy about a dozen face cards.

In my hands, which aren't big by any measure, the phone fits comfortably.  It's got a 'just right' feel to it and it feels solid.  This is where I have my first slight issue.  It feels solid, but like most slider phones where you have to move-able pieces, there is a bit of play.  Mind you, I've had it for a month, so I can't report on how much worse it can actually get, but don't get me wrong.  I still consider it to be reliable and sturdy.  When you extend the phone to expose the keyboard, you don't feel as much play.  In this form, it is a tad longer than the iPhone and the Storm, but what I like here is that due to the uniquely curved design, the phone is now a bit curved and makes talking on the phone feel a bit more traditional.  Not that you have to have the phone extended to talk, but just trying to get you to picture what it looks like in this position.  It's a neat touch.

What I don't like here is that you lose that smooth rounded feeling when it's open.  The bottom portion, much more so than the top back portion, is rather sharp.  It feels like rubbing against a dull knife edge.  It really does catch you off guard.  Where this comes into play is when you are typing texts/emails.  It took me a little bit to get used to, but I would prefer that it felt more like the top of the phone does when extended.  A little smoother would have helped in maintaining the overall sleek feeling of this neat little device.

Battery Life
Let's get this out of the way since battery life is always a hot button when it comes to a smart phone.  From my iPhone review, some of you may already know that I'm a slave to my bluetooth earpiece and I need my corporate email as it arrives.  I keep wi-fi off when I leave the house and don't use IM, so with that being said, and around average use during a day, I can get MOST of a day's use out of it. 
While not as bad as the iPhone, it isn't as good as the Storm.  Granted, with the software updates that Palm has been graciously putting out rather frequently, the battery has improved and I think will improve even more.  Plus, I do really use it heavily during the day, so I'm partially to blame, but mind you, this isn't a complaint.  Just giving you the facts on what I'm experiencing. 

Features
This is where this phone really does shine, but has some failures as well. Until the iPhone, most operating systems on smart phones were pretty standard and had a 'stodgy' feel to them.  Mind you, Windows Mobile OS has much you can do to it, but I don't want to hack my phone to get it to do what I want and the crashing/locking up like a pc isn't fun either.  With the Blackberry, RIM is moving to OS 5.0 on most current and upcoming devices, however, no real surprises there.  The iPhone has a slick interface, but you still are stuck with one application at a time. With the Pre, you get a fantastically slick OS with an interface that is fresh and functional.  Palm takes some of the features that we all think are slick and fun (swiping and pinch to shrink and vice verse) and combines it with an OS that welcomes multi tasking.  All I can say is WOW!

I love being on a call and able to refer back to emails for data (which I do a lot of when I'm taking a conference call on my Pre).  Then, I can end that call, go into email, click a link that opens a web browser and view the link.  Minimize those screens into 'cards' that I can swipe back and forth to get from one application to another and then open other apps like music and/or messaging.  Notice I said and/or because you can have them all open. There was a little lag when having multiple apps open, but after this last update (1.04), that all but disappeared.

Some other notable features include the threaded texts, which Palm has done for years.  MMS (hear that Apple?), a music player  (more on that in a second) and a really FAST camera.  Let me tell ya....for a camera that doesn't offer a zoom (yet), video recording (yet), or auto focus, it takes super fast snap shots and the quality of the 3.2 megapixel sensor is really good for a phone cam.  I stated (yet) on the two above items as you can add digital zoom via a software update and video recording is rumoured to be coming.  This past weekend at a family event, I sat next to a friend of mine and managed to snap 5 pictures in the time that it took his iPhone 3G to barely snap 1.5 pics in the same time frame.  My pictures were in focus and looked much better.  The Storm was super slow to load the picture application and pictures were average if that for a 3.2 megapixel device.

I mentioned the music player.  It's decent for a basic player, but it has its' drawbacks.  I think the biggest complaint I hear is there is no progress bar to slide to a point within a song.  All depends on how you like to play your music I guess. Not a drawback here.  Loads quickly and plays well. The speaker indeed could be a touch louder, but it's clear and isn't as 'tinny' as some phones I've heard.

I'll wrap up this section with some of the 'fun' items that I like and some drawbacks.  Up until the most recent version, you could sync with iTunes, but did you really think Apple would allow that to continue?  Still, I have Media Monkey and I use that. It mounts as a hard drive, so drag and drop in ANY music application is fairly quick and easy.  No big loss there.   I really do like the cards.  Makes it easy to go from program to program.  The swiping up and down to open and close the installed applications is cool.  You also get a dedicated swiping area on the bottom section of the phone right above the 'back' button.  This is neat because it gives you additional real estate in which to operate your phone.  There are many possibilities I can think of for additional features for this area (like scrolling through a song maybe), but we'll see.  This is the first generation and through the software updates, anything is possible at this point.

The Apps In General
Here's a neat idea that once it picks up steam, there's no stopping it.  Palm had apps way ahead of Apple and while the iPhone and their abundance of applications is well known, I really do think that people forget about all of the legacy apps for the Palm OS (that will work in an emulator mode) and the capabilities of the new Palm OS.  There's a whole new world waiting and wait, did I forget to mention that Flash is in development as well? I think we'll see some major competition in this arena once things get going.

The current App Catalog is extremely thin, but I'll be honest, the ones there are also very useful.  When I had the iPhone, I really did find a lot of crap that I thought was useless and had to wade through it to find the good stuff (and for me, there wasn't a lot).  Why do I want a farting application?  A light saber app?  And then there's the whole beer thing.  Sure, there's always apps that you won't use in a store, but the ones that are in the current Palm Pre App Catalog all have definitive usefulness, are FREE and make sense. Is that too much to ask?  As a matter of fact, the only app that I can really say I find a waste is the one included on the Pre itself (the Nascar Application). I like to drive fast, but I'm not a Nascar fan.

You have the built in Google Maps, Sprint Navigation by Telenav, a YouTube app, PDF view, and Amazon MP3 among a few others. I use them all.  No ability to uninstall them though to gain more space. Some complain over the lack of storage space.  I do agree that the inclusion of a microSD card slot would have been a nice addition, but with the music and 2 movies I've installed, I still have over 3 GB of space left.  I think it's good (for now).

Email
This was a sore spot for me on the iPhone and the Storm.  The iPhone had nice Exchange and MSN mail handling (which I use both extensively), but I have to back out of one mailbox and go into another repeatedly to check mail.  On the Pre, they show up in one interface AND I can go into a unified mailbox. Very nice!  On a Blackberry, unless you're using a Blackberry Exchange Server, then you need to use a work around in order to get Exchange email OR pay for 3rd party programs that don't work as well to get your mail for you.  And then the problems it had with MSN email didn't make it any better.  I was basically deleting emails in 2 locations.  See, you could delete MSN emails on the Storm and they would delete on the server, but if you are on the PC and delete your MSN emails, they would still be on the phone.  Weird, right?  If I had to complain about the email capability of the Palm Pre, it would be that I can't delete multiple emails at once nor can I swipe within an open email to the next or previous email.  Not huge detractors, but they are nice to have (and can be corrected through software updates).

EV-DO
You may or may not have seen the speed tests on the web from CNET or PCWorld comparing the Storm, iPhone, and Palm Pre.  I will just say it's fast. The browser is great and downloads are quick.  Attachments in emails download speedily, and pages load pictures quickly.  This is going to really be determined by where you're located, but the network is really solid from a data aspect. Plus, when you don't want to use it, you can always revert to wi-fi (where available).

Making Calls
Finally, sometimes you just want to make a phone call.  The Pre does this very well.  No dropped calls like I had with the iPhone (unless I'm truly out of coverage, which is hard to do here in central Florida). Seriously, no complaints.  Callers sound great and they say I do as well.  Some complain about the volume of the earpiece.  I can't really comment since once again, I'm a slave to bluetooth and have no issue with call quality at all.  One thing I did find out which I hope is rectified soon is that there is no voice dialing available.  This was a big drawback for me on the iPhone and it is here too.  You would think this was a basic necessity these days, but with the rate that Palm keeps providing updates, I'd like to see this soon.

Wrap Up
I could probably drone on about features and what not with this phone, but I wanted to hit some of the highlights. The point I want to get across though is that this is a first gen phone. If we think back to the iPhone when it launched, it was far from perfect. I still think it has a ways to go before I would consider trying it again (READ: On another network that isn't AT&T), but that's a different story.  This device has the makings of a really great phone. There are certainly some concerns that are valid such as build quality and battery life, but we'll have to see how this device fares.  I can't wait to see what future versions may hold and how the comparisons to the iPhone or new Blackberry offerings hold up.  I, for one, am sold. Solid email experience, Sprint's Everything Plan which truly cannot be beaten HANDS DOWN.  The customer service is improving and I'm saving some money. 

Isn't that what we all want these days?  A lot for a little?  I'm getting that with the Pre.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 299
Recommended for: Adventurous Technophiles - Tough and Durable