Palm Pre First Impressions Review

While on travel to Chicago, I came across a Sprint store and spotted a banner for the new Palm Pre, so I thought I'd seize the opportunity to pop in and get my first hands-on look of the Pre.

I have been following the release of the Pre since it was first announced months ago, and had already read plenty of reviews, so I felt as if I'd already used the device even though I hadn't ever touched it.

For some context here, I was in the store for about 10 minutes, so this is literally a "first impression" and "quick glance" type of review and is not meant to be an exhaustive opinion of the device. I'm still on AT&T using my HTC 8525/Hermes Windows smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.0 (6.1 upgrade is not officially available for the 8525).

Very First Visual Impression
The Pre is smaller than I thought -- not in a bad way, but definitely smaller. Visually, I was seriously amazed at the screen's brightness and clarity. Have you ever seen cell phones on display when they have those fake card-like screens instead of the real, usable phone? The Pre's screen looked so vibrant that I thought it was fake -- in a good way. The stock background image looked amazing.

Very First Touch of the Device
The phone has a very nice, clean design. The screen is not inset like a lot of phones but is sort of just part of the phone. Somewhat hard to explain. The touchable surface of the phone extends below the screen itself to the gesture area (down to where the center bottom button is). Prior reviews that had cited the device as "cheap feeling" are totally off their mark in my opinion. The Pre is fairly lightweight but didn't feel cheap to me at all.

The sensitivity of the touch screen is great and sliding and doing gestures was very natural and worked well without any noticeable lag.

Slide-Down Keyboard
The keyboard slides down with good resistance. I would agree that the edge exposed by the bottom of the device when the keyboard is out is a bit "sharp" but not dangerous ;) I think it's a bit of tradeoff to get the device how they want it when it's closed.

Applications Quick Review
I won't go into the various applications it has, as you can find that info on the Sprint or Palm site with ease. I will say that it comes with what you really need. There has been lots of talk about how the iPhone has "thousands of applications" in their app store whereas the Pre does not -- but in the end of the day, do you NEED a fart application for the Pre? I think the Pre comes pre-loaded (no pun intended) with what you really need -- excellent contact & calendar mangement, multimedia video/audio playing ability, good web browsing, etc. The browser on the Pre looks great -- sites load fine and zooming in/out works great and the page re-renders quickly.

Summary
I really didn't see anything on this phone that stood out as lack lustre. It is a really great build, excellent user interface, and overall a great phone. I don't think the question is whether it's better than the iPhone, because to be honest, it's just a bit different. It's a personal choice. I tend to think the Pre fixes a lot of the annoying things about the iPhone, but maybe the iPhone is still "cooler" -- but at the end of the day, the number one goal of a smartphone is whether it can successfully make and receive phone calls, can give you access to the information you need, and can browse the web and leverage GPS successfully. Both phones do that, but in different ways. I think the Pre does it better through Synergy and general better thought into multitasking, etc.