Palm Pre from Sprint
I have had for 3 weeks now the best smart cell phone I have ever used. It’s not perfect but it’s pretty much perfect and it has the most amazing charging solution that doesn’t involve physically plugging it in at all. The Palm Pre has a slideout keyboard which took a few days to get used to but ultimately it works even though I would move the numbers to the right hand side of the keyboard. It has the most amazingly sharp, bright and sexy screen you have ever seen on a mobile device. The screen is super punchy and at full brightness would light up a dark room with no problem. It displays colors beautifully and makes the device an absolute pleasure to use.
The use of this phone has finally forced me off Microsoft Live/Hotmail which I was really loving. Microsoft had finally got it right with the integration of contact, calendar and mail but alas their proprietariness meant I could not without a lot of major hassle synch it all up with my phone.
So I already had a gmail account and decided to port everything to Google Calendar, Mail, Contacts the lot. It’s wonderful. No more synching with cables as the phone now seamlessly integrates my mail, calendar and contacts so they are always up to date. I can update my contacts via a web browser and they are automatically updated on my phone as it all happens in the cloud. Simply wonderful.
The camra is a 3Megapixel camera which does a pretty good job and it has a flash. It would be a bit better if it had image stabilisation but hey it’s a phone right. It’s just nice to have something on me so that I can take the odd snap for this blog. And capture that moment.
I spent several hours adding photos to all my Gmail Contacts so now when anyone phones me their picture comes up. What a wonderful function. My Gmail Calendar sends me, at the beginning of each day, a list of my appointments for the day and my mail is just well available. This to me is heaven.
A lot of people have complained about battery life which can be a problem. I have turned off automatic mail pulling, i.e. where the phone automatically keeps your inbox up to date with mail as they come in. This is a waste of battery life to be honest and I have made my battery last 2-3 times longer by just having the mail update and show me new mail when I press the update button. No big deal. It also has built in unlimited turn by turn navigation which does work but the phone needs a much louder speaker for it to be any use in a car.
The only down side is that you can wait a couple of seconds for an application to start which does start to irritate after a while If you are in doors or in a WIFI area the phone is faster. It has full WIFI capabilities and blue tooth so in doors it’s mega fast. However, I have popped into the Verizon, Nokia and AT&T shops and I do not think anything touches it. The new Nokia N900 which I wanted to love I didn’t. Too clunky still and the Pre is useable with one hand. It’s swipe and flick mechanisms are so intuitive and primal. TO kill and application you just press a little button and flick the application window off the top of the screen. very brutal. Plus you can do multiple things at once such which is so useful. I mean really really usefull.
I have had an iPhone and always found it horrible to use as a phone. Too flat, thin and clunky. Plus it’s now looking very dated as it hasn’t changed in 3 years. They need to bring out a smaller one, it always was far too big for me to use as a phone.
I also download a few videos onto it of our new house in the UK plus some photos on the 8Gb space on the phone. The videos worked perfectly first time and look great. I think they will be updating the phone soon with the ability to take videos. That I would appreciate so bring it on.
