Palm Pre Roundup—What The Critics Say
The Palm Pre hits stores tomorrow. For those unaware, the Pre is the latest smartphone to hit the block from the beleaguered Palm Corporation. Palm became the early leader in this space after buying Handspring’s Treo line of smartphones.
The Pre is touted as an iPhone competitor. Much like Sprint’s Instinct, Verizon’s Voyager, T-Mobile Google Android T1 and the Blackberry Storm, cellphone carriers and phone manufacturers are looking to take financial bite out of Apple’s iPhone market share. Thus far, the iPhone had sold upwards of 37 million iPhones, even with a recent drop in sales.
Well, the technology reviewer trinity has spoken and the word is very favorable. The few drawbacks are the cheap hardware feel, tiny keyboard and pilthy pickings in Palm’s app store. However, don’t expect lines around the mall for the new Palm Pre. That’s Palm’s take, not mine.
Reviews:
Wall Street Journal - Walter Mossberg
Pre is 3.9 inches high by 2.3 inches wide and two-thirds of an inch thick — shorter but thicker than the iPhone. The compact, slightly curvy design results in a screen that’s a tad smaller than the iPhone’s. It is by no means obvious that there is also a hidden, slide-out physical keyboard, a nod to consumers who don’t fancy the iPhone’s touch-screen keyboard. The Pre has a virtual dialing pad for tapping out phone calls, but there’s no virtual keyboard to complement its physical equivalent. At times, I would have liked the option: You don’t always want to slide out the keyboard.
Like the iPhone, Pre has an excellent browser that displays Web pages in their real layouts. Sprint’s 3G network was pretty snappy in decent coverage, though Wi-Fi when available is obviously faster. The browser doesn’t support the Adobe Flash video standard. Palm and Adobe hope to deliver the capability in the future.
Pre poses no immediate challenge to the iPhone when it comes to robust apps. Only a dozen or so are available at launch, including Pandora Internet radio, Citysearch, The New York Times and Classic, an emulator that lets you run old Palm (Treo) programs.