For those of you living under a rock, the Pre is Palm’s latest new smartphone.  It represents an entirely new approach by Palm, and some say their last attempt at staying relavent and alive as a company.  Purchasing the phone last week, I have to say Palm definately has proven themselves to be relavent again.  I’m not going to go into “is the Pre the iPhone killer” debate.  I’ve found there are some features iPhone users may dislike and others they might enjoy.  Being a former iPhone user myself I’ll touch on a few fo those things.

Hardware

The Pre is made of plastic with a slide-out keyboard.  This essentially cuts the unit in half and so it doesn’t feel as solid in the hand as the iPhone (which of course has no moving parts and literally is “solid”), but the Pre does have a great feel.  It’s slightly smaller than the iPhone and has an “egg-shape” to it.

The slide-out keyboard is a full QWERTY keyboard.  Some find it too small to type on, but many find that it just takes some getting used to.  I personally have found myself to be able to type much faster and more accurately than I could with my iPhone.  The keys are backlit and have a rubbery coating that makes them easier to press.

It has controls for the volume, power on/off, silent mode, and a home button.  Their is a 3 megapixel camera on the back along with LED flash (yes the phone has a built-in flash for pictures).  At the top of the phone there is a standard headphone jack (just like on the iPhone).

On the right side there is what looks like a button but it actually is a door for the MicroUSB port.  Opening the door is cumbersome, it requires a good-sized fingernail to pry open.  It seems that they designed it with the assumption you’ll use the Touchstone to charge the phone.  (The Touchstone charges the phone using magnetic induction rather than a physical cable – so no wires required!)  Using MicroUSB means no propritary adapters needed to charge it, which is nice.

Plugged into a PC the Pre can either:  sync media (including iTunes), act as USB drive, or simply charge.

The Pre’s screen is made of plastic and scratches very easily (compared to the glass screen of the iPhone).  Do get a screen protector day one when you get the phone, or very soon after.  My iPhone  in over 2 years has zero scratches on the touchscreen itself, with random scratches elsewhere.  The plastic screen is a little disappointing, although bright and vibrant, scratches will show up easily against a white background (the pixels cause a rainbow effect as they’re magnified by even the thinest scratch).

The OEM battery (which can be replaced by the owner), is a standard Li-ion 1150 mAh power cell.  You can buy 3rd party, after-market replacement batteries with a little more juice (up to 1350 mAh) that is the same size as the OEM battery.  Some manufactures are producing larger 2400 mAh batteries, but they require you change out your back-plate to accomodate the larger size.  (Personally I’ll stick with the 1350 mAh, because I’m vain like that.)  Under normal operation you can expect anywhere between 5 to 8 hours between charging (with the OEM battery), so many might consider getting an after-market extended battery.

Software

The Pre uses an operating system called webOS.  WebOS is built on Linux and provides the best experience I’ve seen to date on a smartphone.  It allows for true multi-tasking and centers on HTML 5, JavaScript and CSS as its core technologies.  It uses various APIs to extend JavaScript to access the hardware features.  Later in the summer of 2009 Palm will be releasing the SDK for webOS – Mojo.  This could make developing apps for the phone very natural for seasoned web developers – however the SDK is still not available to the public at large.

The user can switch between running applications using a card deck metaphor.  You also are delivered unobtrusive notifications at the bottom of the screen that update you as to what’s going on with other applications.  This was one of the features that got me to switching.  I can be typing an e-mail and get an SMS message, which shows at the bottom of the screen.  I can tap it, reply and jump back into my email right where I was.  Or I can choose to ignore the message and just finish my e-mail.

Software updates are delivered automatically to your phone over the air by Palm.  You get to decide when to actually install the updates, but it’s nice not having to update your iTunes, then update your iPhone at your home PC.

The only big complaint I have about webOS is the start-up time.  The phone takes nearly 2-3 full minutes to boot-up from being turned off.  (Granted you rarely turn a phone off, but leaving a movie theatre it’ll be a while before you can be back in the game.)  The iPhone start-up is nearly half that time.

Webkit

The Pre uses a WebKit layout engine and supports streaming video in RTSP, H.263 and H.264 formats.  Adobe announced a Flash Player for webOS (although I haven’t seen anything on the phone as yet).

Now while WebKit is the same technology that Safari uses, I have noticed that the webOS browser gets a 1/100 on the ACID 3 test, while the iPhone Safari scores 97/100.  I have to imagine this means Palm has not fully implemented WebKit or has crippled it for some reason (maybe to save on power/processing)?  In any regard, the web experience on the phone is very similiar to the iPhone.  You can zoom in, pinch, flick, etc.

Synergy

This was the killer feature (well one of them) that made me switch from iPhone.  Palm’s Synergy aggregates all that disparate information you have floating around the Internets [sic].  You know all those contacts  you have on Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.  Lets say your friend Bob Smith is on Gmail, Facebook and Yahoo Mail.  Instead of syncing and storing 3 separate records Synergy is smarter and recognizes all the contacts belong to Bob Smith and aggregates them for you in a single profile.  Updating these contacts will also auto-magically update and sync back to the proper service.  It is an amazing feature and really offers a breath of fresh air for our information-overloaded lives.

Misc Software

Pre comes with the standard fare in terms of applications, including:  Phone, Contacts, Email, Calendar, Messaging (SMS/AIM/Jabber), Web (webkit browser), Camera, Twitter (via Tweed), Google Maps, Photos, Pandora, Tasks, AccuWeather, Clock (with Alarm), Music Player, Video Player, Memos, FlightView, Fandango, LinkedIn, Express Stocks, mCraig (Craig’s List), GoodFood (food reviews), YouTube, Sprint Navigation (turn-by-turn GPS navigation), DocView, and PDF Viewer.

The Email application can support multiple e-mail accounts (including Exchange EAS).  I get mailed pushed to my phone by both Google and my company’s corporate email.  The calendar application also supports multiple calendars (thanks to Synergy) all in a single view.  One thing that frustrated me about the iPhone is you could only sync to a single Google calendar, but this isn’t so with the Pre.

Given that the Mojo SDK is still not released the amount of applications for the Pre is pretty dismal.  This will hopefully change over time as the SDK is released and the phone attracts JavaScript developers.

Sprint

Like the iPhone, the Pre has an exclusive carrier – Sprint.  I’ve used Sprint before and haven’t had any issues with them.  They have much nicer priced plans than AT&T (which is frankly overpriced and loves to nickle and dime you to no end — big reason I left iPhone).

For $70 bucks a month you get:

• Unlimited data
• Unlimited texting (pictures and video too)
• Unlimited mobile to mobile
• Free nights and weekends (starting at 7pm to 7am)
• 450 Anytime minutes (per month)

You can upgrade to bigger plans if you want more minutes ($89 bucks for 900 anytime minutes or $99 bucks for unlimited everything).  I rarely use 100 minutes of talk time a month (I am a text junkie) so the 450 plan was fine with me.

Over a two year contract that’ll save me close to $1,200 vs. AT&T.  That’s a new laptop or iMac.  The one big thing I really miss about the iPhone that the Pre doesn’t offer is visual voicemail – but for $1,200 bucks, I’ll survive.

Summary

Pros:

• webOS (best smartphone experience)
• multitasking
• Synergy
• support for multiple Exchange accounts
• physical keyboard

Cons:

• no visual voicemail
• sub-par battery life
• plastic scratch-prone screen
• few apps (at the moment)
• 2 minute start-up time

iPhone users who also heavily use their device as an iPod (for music or movie playback) you probably will not be as happy with the Pre.  However, if you primarily use your phone for texting (Twitter, SMS, or instant chat), or have multiple e-mail accounts or have a lot of contacts, you might enjoy the Pre more than the iPhone.

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