Last week I made the jump from a T-Mobile MDA (aka a HTC Wizard) to a Palm Pre from Sprint. I loved my MDA and had been a loyal T-Mobile customer since 2003 (When I got my first SmartPhone a Color SideKick), however, their selection of phones was quite lacking so I decided to jump ship. When asking around, everyone said “Apple iPhone” almost instantly and while I did give it a hard look, I tested a 3G last year for work and was decidedly unimpressed with it’s soft keyboard and battery life. With the iPhone out of the running I looked around, decided to suck it up and deal with Sprint, and went with a Palm Pre. Since in the course of my research I didn’t find a lot of “hands on” reviews besides the “It sucks!” or “It is amazing!” ones, I decided to toss a someone independent review of the device overall.
Hardware: B-, Sleek, great size, and a nice form factor. However, the device can feel rather flimsy at times. I am afraid that the device will fall with the keyboard open and my Pre will do some kind of morbid Oreo Twist to itself. Also, when shut, the device has some give where the two halves meet. In addition to this, Palm: MicroUSB port? Come on. Doesn’t every geek have a ton of accessories for Mini USB connectors? Are we seeing the connector conspiracy rear it’s ugly head again? Finally, the little gasket over the connector is annoying to get off, makes charging it annoying.
Battery Life: C+, I’m pleased how long it lasts, but considering my MDA could last about 2 days under fairly heavy use and how I can blow through about 1/5th my Pre battery in an hour under similar conditions? Not good. I think a car charger and a MicroUSB cable for USB charging are required accessories for any Pre user.
WebOS: A-, Wow. WebOS is nice. That’s not to say it has some very rough spots: Want to have one notification sound for an SMS message and another for an e-Mail? Tough noogies. Navigate to a specific spot in a text field? We may be here for a while. However, all the rough spots can be buffed out in future updates. Overall, it’s zippy, the app store is filling up with goodies regularly, and the UI is great. Multitasking is awesome too, the lack of which is one of the things that turned me off about the iPhone. Overall, you can tell that WebOS is still a 1.X operating system, but with a little work by Palm it can easily take over the iPhone OS.
Network coverage: D, In a word: Bleh. THIS is the one drawback to the device: Sprint ‘Now” network. I think the “now” means that “You’ll be checking if you have coverage now.” I’ve heard mixed reports that it’s a Pre problem versus that it’s a Sprint problem, but I have seen it fluctuate between 1 and 5 bars in specific spots while staying stationary. I also seem to flip over to “roaming” (thankfully, free) at random spots, which means while I can still get voice, I can’t get a data connection. While T-Mobile was not without dead spots, I seemed to get better coverage with them. I’m hoping this is more of a problem with WebOS then Sprint as I can probably wait for Palm to work the kinks out of it’s transceiver rather then wait for Sprint to add additional cell sites.
Accessories: C, Come on, no holster? Just a stupid pouch? Geez. Also, the fact that the USB cable also doubles as the charging cable by plugging into the wall adapter? Lame. Palm, come on, give me two cables so I can keep one around in case I need to do an emergency charge off a USB port. It can’t be that expensive. As a side not, while I make no endorsement of it, the web store over at Treonauts seems to have lower prices for Pre accessories then Sprint.
Overall: B/B-, I am pleased and the Pre is a great device. I keep finding myself pleasantly surprised that it does something with ease that my old Windows Mobile device couldn’t (Like… say… delete e-mail messages from my mail server! Amazing!). That’s not to say that there are some chinks in its armor, but I think it’s a worthy competitor to the iPhone. It’s still very much a 1st generation device and has the issues thereof, however if you’re looking for an iPhone alternative, I’d recommend giving the Pre more then a casual look.
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I’ve known people with Sprint in my area and they say the same thing about the coverage, but for what they get price vs. features they claim it is worth it. Personally I stick with AT&T, but I know T-Mobile and Verizon customers that say the same thing.
Anyway, the point I wanted to comment about is the MicroUSB charger port. I agree with you in that everything I have uses MiniUSB. I’m currently an AT&T Tilt (HTC Kaiser) user, which uses the modified MiniUSB. My Cingular 2125 (HTC Faraday) I used prior to this also used it, as did my wife’s Blackberry (don’t even get me started on those pieces of junk.) When I got my new phones, before I’d decided on which one, I had determined I will stick with MiniUSB.
That being said, I remember reading an article a while back about the handset manufacturers agreeing to the MicroUSB as a standard going forward. While it may inconvenience some of us in the short term, if they do in fact adhere to that standard it will be a big advantage in the long run. Sure we may have to replace all our accessories, but in theory it should be the last time.
Environmentally it is a very sound plan too, it will no longer be necessary to ship chargers with every phone as when upgrading your old charger(s) will continue to work. This saves not only the cost of the charger, but the cost for additional packaging, shipping weight, and landfill space. Carriers could still provide a “free” charger when you sign up for a new plan (or upgrade from a non-MicroUSB phone) and if you do buy an extra or two or three, you’ll be assured you won’t be throwing it away a year from now when you upgrade phones again. I still run across old random cell chargers when I go through old boxes in my storage unit.
Personally I like the MiniUSB connector better, it just seems to be more rugged and has better retention strength, and I wish they would have used it for the standard instead. But regardless, I don’t care if they use some weird DIN style connector with a magnet in it, if they all use the same one, I’m all for it.
Jeremy (KB7QOA, jjhall on Twitter)
Posted by Jeremy on August 19th, 2009.