Palm Pré: A retraction, I really like it now

2010-01-11T00:00:00-08:00

So before I went on trip to Minnesota last month, I decided maybe I would give the Palm Pré another shot. After all, my parents have no internet access, so having the Pré... if I could overcome my issues, might be a welcome distraction.

Before I packed it, I updated to WebOS 1.3.x (a few days later I updated to 1.3.5) and I was blown away. The horsepower was increased by utilizing the GPU. The following problems were fixed:

* The device was no longer hot all the time
* Shutdown and startup were long, but not nearly as long as before.
* Render times were quicker
* All the elements usually rendered quickly in an app
* Network was fairly steady
* Phone calls also seemed fairly drop-free.

All these improvements helped me get over

* The tiny keyboard... not so bad in practice.
* No soft keyboard - I missed it, but I could deal without it.

Overall the device was great, it was fast enough to use, and most of the errors were annoying, but things I could deal with. Cut and paste could be improved, and I wish the USB connector was the same as the one for HTC devices (I can't keep micro or mini USB types straight).

So I love the device, and Murphy's Law dictates if work gives you a phone you don't like you get to keep it... until you start liking it again. So I sent the phone back into rotation for other people at Mozilla to try. Have at it.

Palm Pre: Always hot

2009-11-19T00:00:00-08:00

So I borrowed a Palm Pré that we had at Mozilla to see what it was like. I was at first very excited, I remember before the Pre was released there was a lot of talk about how awesome-fantastic it was going to be. The stories of awesomeness sort of died, and I had thought nothing of it.

Immediately upon using the Pre I figured out why. In short, it's a crappy phone. It makes a very good attempt to do a lot, but it does them with such piss-poor performance, that nothing good is noticed.

I am disappointed. It's not even in the same class as an iPhone - maybe a future generation of Palm devices will be, but not this one. I was hoping WebOS would be a good alternative to the iPhone. It looks like Google will be doing that, though their phones haven't impressed me much either. I am hoping that maybe this phone is just a dud.

Here's what I didn't like: * The Palm was always hot. * The first run experience is painfully slow. * The first run was an indicator of things to come, startup and shutdown are ridiculously slow. * Every application is slow to render. * Not all elements of an app render. * The keys are too small. Some people aren't migrating from a Treo and aren't used to mini keys. * No soft keyboard. * The palm website doesn't let you use plus-style addressing * Media Mode was not self explanatory - and forced the phone to not work. * Network would constantly drop out. Couldn't use a lot of the data features. * Phone calls didn't work so great. * Did I mention it was ass slow, even the dialing program was slow. * The battery dies quickly * I could only cut/paste when composing, but I couldn't cut a string of text from an email. * Felt too much like an old palm

Despite the sadness there were a few good things:

When it did fetch email, and other notices, it displayed them nicely
The unification of Facebook and Gmail was pretty cool - it also made me want to trim some of those friends from highschool off my facebook - I ain't ever gonna call em.
The Icons were pretty.
The card interface was interesting.
The travel charger could be modified to work in non US chargers fairly easily.

All in all, I'm glad that I had a chance to try out this device. It showed me, that user interfaces above all need to be very fast and responsive. Furthermore, everything you try to do should be done exceptionally well. I'm hopeful that software updates can alleviate some of the problem, but I think the root of the problem is slow hardware.

Dave Dash

Palm Pré: A retraction, I really like it now

Palm Pre: Always hot