Palm Pre: First Impressions
June 7th, 2009, 2:38am by JakeLast night, I spent 3 hours trying to sync the old Centro w/ the Mac Address Book without success. My master plan was to sync the Centro, then somehow sync that w/ my Yahoo! contacts, then finally export the whole mess to Google. I ad-libbed instead, in the process discovering that iSync has the built-in ability to sync with both Yahoo! and GMail. The second discovery was realizing I could just send all my Centro contacts (via Bluetooth) to the MacBook Pro. From there, I imported them into Address Book, synced up with Yahoo! (10.4 doesn’t support GMail), then went to the Power Mac to sync Yahoo! & GMail w/ the Mac’s address book. Got all that? Bottom line, I got all 3 address books synced up and sent to the 4th service that I needed.
So I journeyed down to the local Sprint Store this morning to get the Pre. I was ready to leave at 8:45, but spent 10 minutes furiously searching for my keys. Got them, and made it in 5 minutes flat, enough time to catch the line just before they opened the doors. Of course I took a few photos of the Sprint Store waiting for the Pre to go on sale and then buying it. After about 1.5 hours in line I got in. After another 20-30 minutes, I had a Pre in hand and was on my way home. Review follows.
I’ve been tweeting about the Pre all day, but here’s the bottom line: the Palm Pre is fantastic, and lives up to and perhaps even exceeds the hype in many ways. First, as everyone has noted, it feels great in the hand. It took about 2 minutes to set it up, just put in my GMail account information and BOOM! Contacts. Put in my Facebook ifnormation, and BOOM! Contacts. Integrated as advertised, no hitches. Then I went to set up Yahoo! Mail, and it downloaded all my folders. Pretty cool, making it easier than ever to organize my email. Apparently Palm/Yahoo! have worked together to enable IMAP.
Web browser– works very well. Well enough that I may just have to ditch the iPod Touch… what do I need that for now? Downloaded a few Twitter apps, of course, and while bother Tweed and Spaz show promise, both have a few quirks that are keeping them from being uber Twitter clients. Oh, and I tested the turn-by-turn directions and they worked quite well. I definitely won’t be bringing the GPS on the road anymore, the Pre is perfectly fine. Downside is that I couldn’t set up hands-free w/ the car. I’ll have time to troubleshoot that later.
Next, I used Media Sync to add tunes. It worked completely seamlessly, added several hundred songs and dozens of podcasts with no problem. Brought the Pre to the gym, and it sounded very good using my standard $10 Sony headphones. But I know that wouldn’t last… So I wandered over to Best Buy and bought a pair of Bluetooth headphones, the Motorola Rokr S9-HD. Charged them up, worked perfect, even had a very noticeable bass boost. Haven’t tested the call quality yet, but will soon enough. I figure these will be perfect for cycling, where I can just stick the Pre in a backpack or bag and enjoy the tunes. The Nano might be one good armband from being sent packing.
Downloaded a few apps already, not many available. FlightView seems like a good flight tracker, and Pandora is REAL nice. Classic is fun, just to see how well the simulate the crappy PalmOS fonts. The NY Times app is useless, might as well just use the webpage.
What else, what else? Amazon MP3 store seemed good in the store demo, haven’t tried it yet. No problem getting WiFi working. The card metaphor is very intuitive, haven’t cracked open the manual yet and I think I’ve got it figure out. All too simple to use any song as a ringtone. Now, a lot of this stuff I could have been using the Centro for, and in the past I did use some features. But it was always a project. Nothing on the Pre feels like a project. Very intuitive, easy, etc. The camera seems decent enough based on a couple snaps. More time for that later.
I do think it’s a little sneaky that, and very Big Brother, that the Pre asks for permission to provide “anonymous” GPS data to Google– letting them track the owner’s movements. And really, there’s no way to anonymize location data. But that’s a whole ‘nother can of beans. Another minor quibble is the LCD screen light leak, which may or may not lead to me making a return trip to get a replacement. I like the keyboard, but it’s not quite as easy to type one handed as on the Centro, since it’s so thin when the keyboard is extended. But I’m getting used to it.
This wasn’t much of a review. So I’ll just close with my favorite Tweet of the day. “The Pre is great. It’s everything that it was cracked to be & has exceeded my expectations in many ways. Not perfect. Outstanding.”
June 7th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Awesome, sounds like a real winner. I’m excited to play with a demo sometime.
Do you have any way to integrate the Pre’s music with your car stereo? I can’t remember if you have an iPod hookup, aux line-in, or FM transmitter — can the Pre do any of those methods anyway? Would be cool if tour stereo could accept stereo vluetooth onput (can it?) As I wrote recently, I really like Pandora (and streaming my home iTunes library) while driving.
How’s the battery life in your limited testing?
June 7th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Also, what finally happened with your family plan?
June 7th, 2009 at 10:53 am
I’ve always loved the design of the S9’s– no idea what the HD version adds. I saw the stereo bluetooth-iPod adapter I got for $9.99 at a Sprint store last week (that’s the one that accepts stereo bluetooth signals and converts them to iPod speaker friendly signals). You could use that for the car.
Re: sending GPS data to Google, that’s always been the case with Google Maps, and in fact, that’s how Google enabled the My Location feature, which associates cell tower triagulation with location data gleaned from users.
Anyway, Pre sounds great. I’ll be getting mine soon, I imagine.
June 7th, 2009 at 11:03 am
Sprint had been gradually stripping away discounts as our contracts expired, to the point where our plan was only slightly better than the plans currently offered. So we’re going to switch to those Pre-friendly plans. For $150, we used to get 2500 minutes shared between 5 phones (up from the $110 we used to pay with all discounts in effect). Now with the current plans, we could pay $160 to share 1500 minutes between 5 phones. Obviously not as good a deal, but as it turns out, we’ve never used more than 1500 minutes anyway (and what might help additionally is that the new plan has Unlimited Nights starting at 7 instead of 8).
June 7th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Hey Mike, I was reading that Daring Fireball link you twittered about, and I agree with his point that the only people who want a physical QWERTY keyboard are people who have used one. To anyone else, a soft keyboard is so much better than the 10-key that it’s good enough. That’s what I’ve always said about TiVo. For most people, the geneic DVR is so better than a VCR that they don’t know or care what they are missing.
As for other Twitter discussion points, disappointing that podcasts are not bookmarked, but I guess it doesn’t matter that much if you never quit your media player.
June 7th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Oh yeah, it can play music through my stereo, but not very effectively. I have to hook it up to the USB port on my car stereo and then I can play iTunes music. But, that disables all phone functionality. I’ll definitely head out to buy the iPod-Bluetooth adapter.
More on the iPod compatibility front… it turns out that the Pre fits very snugly inside my iPod Nano armband, although I get the sense it may permanently stretch it. While the headphones would be easy enough to hook up, pretty sure I’ll be giving the Bluetooth headphones a workout today on my bike ride. How long do you think the Pre can last streaming Pandora to wireless headphones?
June 7th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
A Flickr employee left some interesting comments on his photo in response to a remark I made. See what he had to say here. Short version: he likes the camera.
June 7th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
By the way, I’m serious about selling the iPod Touch. So if anyone in the Pyslent extended family wants it, let me know & we’ll work it out. I’ll probably put the funds toward buying a 16GB Nano, and then sell the old 2GB Nano I have now.
June 8th, 2009 at 1:04 am
Dammit. All sorts of WiFi AND MacBook craziness just conspired to destroy my long comment. Grrrr..
Short version: Touchstone only $50 at PreCentral.net. Cheap cables at Monoprice, I’ll need at least 4. Headphones have controls that work w/ both Pre music player and Pandora. I’ll probably spring for an extra $40 battery, too. And 1-2 iPod Bluetooth adapters, pending some more in-car GPS troubleshooting.
Also, I have to say that if I used a handheld GPS, I’d be tempted to sell that w/ the Touch. This thing is converging convergence.
June 8th, 2009 at 5:36 am
I’m trying to reconcile your “Evil Empire” comment with the fact that you own multiple Macs and iPods, you plan to buy more, and you hold Apple stock.
Or do you just like your new phone? Is having the public appearance of hating Apple required for owning a Pre? 😉
June 8th, 2009 at 11:29 am
I have a highly overdeveloped sense of irony.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Round 2 of S9-HD testing went well. Listened to Pandora on the wireless headset on the 2nd half of my bike ride home. Controls worked fine. Sound quality was good, and the music never skipped until I got to a spot w/ really bad service, then it stopped for ~5 minutes. When I got back into range, it picked up right away.
Now what this really needs is a killer Twitter app. Tweed is good, but the part that should really be its strong point (background & notifications) either don’t work well or aren’t implemented yet. But I think it’s already on par w/ Tweetie, so still good.
June 9th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Glad you found the controls on your headphones. Now that you’ve had the Pre for a few days, any niggles?
Yesterday, the Buzz Out Loud crew pulled some shenanigans and released 2 podcast episodes, only the last of which got into my iTunes feed and on to my iPod. It was the WWDC wrap up, but I was more interested in the first episode, where they discussed the Pre release. So I downloaded it to my phone and started listening in the car; would I be able to do the same on the Pre? If not, I assume that the Pre can stream mp3s, right?
June 9th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Right now there’s no way to download podcasts over-the-air, but I think that will change soon, I’ve heard reports of streaming mp3s, so that should work.
No major niggles. I’m getting used to the keyboard. Oh, the signal aeems to be not quite as good as the Centro and I need the return of any key. Also, auto capitalize is a little too aggressive.
June 9th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
What’s “any key?”
I played with a Pre yesterday at Sprint (no stock for sale, but they claimed a waiting list of 100 people). What do you think of the mixed keyboard/touchscreen input? I think I’m really going to miss a 5-way nav. Just logging into Twitter and having to take my hands off the keypad to tap the screen to switch text boxes was annoying. Maybe it will become second nature after a while, but fundamentally, I guess I just don’t like the idea of having to switch input modes: I’d prefer either all touchscreen, all keyboard/arrow key, or all stylus (grafiti). Sure, I have a touchscreen laptop, but it’s either/or, never both. Maybe a key is all Pre needs…
June 9th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I typed “tab” between brackets in that last sentence, but it got html’ed apparently. What I said was “maybe a tab key is all Pre needs.”
Oh, and I didn’t mean to be overly negative… the phone is pretty damn nice, and I had no problem with the keyboard. I was struck by how sharp the ridge on the bottom segment was. Reminds me of the front edge of the Macbook– cuts right into the palm of my hand whenever I use the trackpad.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:25 am
You can load any firmware you want onto the Pre. Curious to see how this will play out.
For hackers, unquestionably this is a good thing. It opens the door to all sorts of fun hacks, from changing the UI to bypassing activation codes and potentially unlocking.
For smart users, the ability to load up firmware with interesting new features.
For dumb users, the ability to load up broken or malicious firmware (but you’d have to simultaneously be pretty smart — to load it — and pretty dumb — to not understand what flashing your firmware means).
More info at engadget and gizmodo, among other places, I’m sure.
July 10th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
I’ve had a chance to play with a co-worker’s 3GS this past week, and I thought I’d post some thoughts.
The iPhone’s app ecosystem obviously, is to drool for. Most apps are cleaner looking and have nicer transactions than their Pre equivalents.
Diagonal scrolling in the iPhone browser is much more smooth than in the Pre. Pre for some reason starts off on either a veritical or horizontal track, and you have to be really persistent to get it to scroll diagonally. It’s a little jarring– I actually didn’t know at first that it allowed it. This is not true in the photo viewer or the google maps app, leading me to believe that it’s an intentional design choice. DoYou guys scroll diagonally in your browser?
Speaking of the photo viewer, it’s so slow in the Pre that it’s embarrassing. Takes about 1 second to render each pic (starts off horribly pixelated).
Much prefer the physical keyboard, but not because it’s faster, more because it’s more satisfying.
Call me superficial, but I really like the ability to customize the wallpaper. 3GS only allows a wallpaper on the phone app. Who ever uses the phone app :). It’s so Windows 7 Starter edition :).
Interestingly, the iPhone has the untouted ability to synergize separate calendars/contacts from Exchange and iTunes (local PC sync).
We’ve been discussing a camera shoot off, but that hasn’t materialized yet. Tappable autofocus is fun, though.
August 2nd, 2009 at 11:11 pm
My 2-month review, soon appearing on Amazon.com:
I’ve had the Palm Pre nearly 2 months now, and overall I have to say that I am very, very pleased. The ability to multitask has made it all too simple to quickly flip between web pages, Twitter, music and email. The card system is the simplest multitasking paradigm I’ve seen on any platform, handheld or desktop. The notification system for incoming phone calls, new emails, text messages and calendar events is best in class, as you’re able to deal with these other tasks on your schedule, not according to the dictates of the phone. And it’s fun to use, too. While there are not thousands of third-party applications yet, the ones available are of uniformly high quality and are always useful.
The turn-by-turn directions (free with every Sprint plan available) are dead-on accurate and have me wondering if I really need that fancy GPS that’s integrated in my car. As a phone, it’s much better than expected. While the signal strength is a bit worse than the Palm Centro it replaced, it’s rarely an issue since free roaming (voice & data) is included. The speakerphone has gotten rave reviews from folks on the other end of the call, apparently it works quite well. I especially like it paired with the Touchstone, as the speakerphone automatically activates when placed on the dock, and it switches back to regular mode when picked up. Cool.
I’ve got this working with 3 Bluetooth devices so far… an inexpensive headset, an Eclipse AVN-2210p in-car GPS and the Motorola ROKR S9-HD headphones. The headphones work for music and voice calls, and the controls work great for music. Speaking of which, the Palm media player works well, as it easily syncs with iTunes to update Podcasts, music & playlists automatically. In fact, it’s so good as an MP3 player that I’ve sold an iPod Touch and I haven’t used the Nano since purchasing it!
The web browser works very well, able to navigate to any web page (except for crappy Flash-based sites) and works seamlessly on iPhone-optimized websites. The screen is a little on the small sign, but laser sharp. If the text gets too small, I just flip to landscape mode and then reading is a breeze. Using gestures to navigate websites and to launch new cards (applications) takes about 5 seconds to learn and then quickly becomes second nature.
And of course, it has a very usable thumbboard, making it easy for anyone to tap out text messages (unlimited on the Sprint plan), send email or even write new blog posts. From card view, you can start typing and the Pre automatically finds email addresses, phone numbers and bookmarks that fit the characters. Or you can immediately search Google or Wikipedia to find the information you need.
The camera is very good, great for emailing pics and the colors are very nice. The flash makes it usable in a pinch even in the lowest light, and with the right lighting conditions (just before sunset, in the fog) the photos could easily be mistaken for something taken by a point & shoot camera or even an SLR.
Overall I’m very happy. To recap the positives:
– Great voice quality
– Exceptional speakerphone
– Touchstone integration is very nice
– Music player has replaced 2 iPods
– Best-in-class web browser
– Easy multi-tasking
– Very good camera
– Physical keyboard
– Universal search
– GPS-based turn-by-turn directions
– Great applications out of the box (YouTube, Google Maps, Sprint NFL)
– 3rd-party applications are universally great (Tweed, Pandora & Accuweather are among my faves)
– Awesome alert system
– Replaceable battery
– Charges over standard micro-USB connector
– Can be used as USB thumb drive
– Good Bluetooth support
– Battery life is good even under moderate-to-heavy usage
– The slider means that the phone slips easily & unobtrusively into any pocket
Things that should be improved soon
– More applications in the App Catalog
– Better signal strength
Really, that’s it. All the Spring plans included unlimited data, unlimited texting, GPS directions and Sprint TV. Honestly, it’s the best new gadget I’ve ever had.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:18 am
More thoughts on the Pre– It’s got a steep learning curve. I once read that the iPhone wasn’t exactly intuitive, but it’s “discoverable.” Spend a few minutes with one, and you will learn the rules. With the Pre, I don’t feel that’s the case. There are important parts of it’s interface that I don’t think you could ever learn on your own, without help from instructions, forums, or a guru of some sort. Things like the back gesture, universal search, how to move the cursor, even the delete swipe (for emails, notifications, other list items). I feel like everytime I let someone play with the phone, I feel compelled to give them a 3 minute mini-tutorial. Do you feel the same way, Jake?
September 1st, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Yeah, definitely. Half the time I dial the phone for them, and had to add the phone app back to the main taskbar this week for that reason. I think that’s why they have the in-store walk-through. What Palm needs is a 5-minute video to demonstrate functions, maybe even interactive demos.
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:40 am
So I think if you are committed to learning it, there are lots of ways to learn about and master the interface, including the onboard help and video clips. The trouble is that the device is/can be intimidating to new users. In my experience the barrier to entry is high and makes it a tough sell. It just doesn’t demo well.
I would never remove the phone app from the wave bar. I want someone who picks up my phone in an emergency to have the best chance to figure out how to call 911.
BTw, my latest discovery is using shift+backspace to delete whole words. Saves me a lot of time.
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:16 am
Joanie and I had the same conversation recently about dialing 911 from the iPhone, after taking an infant CPR class. We realized that there’s virtually no way that we could even give somebody our phones and have them dial 911 easily. I don’t have the phone app on my dock, and even if I did, clicking it shows my favorites, not the dialpad.
I guess you just have to hope that if you need someone to dial 911, they know how to do it on their phone.
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:46 pm
@Mike Do you not have a passcode set on your iPhone? If you did, you’d see an “Emergency Call” button in the lower left that takes you directly to the dialpad. The passcode is a little cumbersome at times, but I have banking apps on my phone so I like the little bit of extra security that it affords.
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Funny, I had been thinking that having a passcode might be a good idea, but the emergency call option may be the best reason!
OK, it’s done. I feel better already!