The Phone
The Palm Pre is also a phone. It lacks the visual voicemail that the iPhone has but otherwise works.
The dialer is missing some polish that the iPhone’s dialer has. For starters, there are speed issues. Switching between the keypad and call log screens takes a good 2 - 3x longer than on an iPhone. Granted the iPhone can switch between the screens almost instantly, but it makes the Pre feel very slow. Bringing up your contacts, selecting one and dialing from it is also sluggish compared to the iPhone. If you’ve never used an iPhone, you most likely won’t notice.
Secondly, when you manually enter a number at the keypad screen using the keypad it doesn’t automatically search your contacts for a match. If you dial a number that you already have stored in your contacts, the iPhone will bring up the contact name in your dialer automatically. It’s a small difference, but it is just another example of the Pre lacking the Apple-polish that it could easily have.
The other thing that would be nice to have? The ability to start typing a name from the keypad screen instead of having to open up the contacts window to search for someone. Apple can’t allow this on the iPhone since there’s not enough room for the virtual keyboard and virtual keypad to co-exist, but Palm doesn’t have that problem. Exploit your advantage Palm. Update: Apparently you can enable support for this in the dialer's preferences! Thanks to everyone who sent this one in.
The external speaker on the phone is very visible and thus loud (at least louder than the iPhone 3G’s speaker).
The Email application is very simple to the iPhone’s Mail app. It’s simple, very quick to load and is miles ahead of most non-Apple smartphones in terms of UI. But Apple raised the bar so it’s worth talking about what needs improvement:
1) There’s no way to search your emails. Apple had this same fault until just this week, so Palm has some time to catch up on this one.
2) Whenever you open the Email application it always brings you to a list of all of your inboxes, not the last used inbox. If you’re like me and happen to have a couple of email addresses, but one that you use more than the rest, this can get annoying.
3) Scrolling in the Email application (whether looking at your inbox or reading a message) is choppy. I’m not sure why it’s choppy since Palm has significantly more CPU and GPU power compared to Apple, but the frame rate when scrolling is not smooth. The iPhone doesn’t have this problem and there’s no reason that the Pre should. Again, if you’ve never had an iPhone you probably won’t care, but we’re aiming for perfection here.
The Email application does support POP and IMAP accounts, as well as Exchange. I didn’t try the Pre with an Exchange server but from what I’ve read it works fine as long as your server doesn’t require a PIN (or remote wipe). If your server requires those security features then you’re out of luck until Palm updates the OS.
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OCedHrt - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
My HTC has predictive text input (based on key locality) in case of a miss so I don't think Apple has a patent on it.macs - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
Speaking of fast web browsing.... i use opera mini on my google Ion phone (android). It delivers full browsing experience and it's blazing fast. Opera mini loads anandtech.com over my 3g network in just 9 seconds. You should try!imaheadcase - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
Thats how apple stays in business right there, everyone thinks throwing money at overpriced products IT will get better eventually.. ZING!I don't know why this review is comparing it to a Iphone, Iphone is outclassed by other smartphones as it is, why not compare it to a real phone like a HTC touch or the like? You know, a phone that is popular with regular people and not hollywood hipsters only..
Downvote if you want, but the FACT of the matter is, the Iphone is a niche market, look at the top phones sold by At&T, the basic flip phone is still the best selling phone in the world, the HTC touch even outsells the iphone 10-1. Like I mentioned before, I know one person who has a iphone and he only got it because parents got it to him as a going away to collage gift.
jmaine - Saturday, June 20, 2009 - link
Where are you coming up with these stats from? Please show me one reliable source that says the HTC Touch outsells the iPhone 10-1. Please leave the bs in your dreams.ltcommanderdata - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
One thing I find funny about arguments that the iPhone lacks basic features found in other phones is that despite this Apple has still sold 21 million iPhones as of March 2009, which is quite a success for a company that wasn't in the cell phone business 2 years ago. The question other phone manufacturers should be thinking about is what happens when the iPhone incorporates many of these lacking hard features in addition to the fluffy pizzaz it already has? How much additional demand will there be for a full featured iPhone?Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
The reviews agree, the HTC Touch isn't in the same class of smartphone as the iPhone. Most phones will outsell things like the iPhone; lower prices and lower monthly fees will determine quantities, but the space the iPhone competes in is the high end smartphone market where the stakes/players are a bit different.Take care,
Anand
rudy - Monday, June 22, 2009 - link
I cant find any provider which sells an HTC touch cheaper then an iPhone.Stas - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
Same. I know 2 ppl that had iPhones. 1 was my techy friend, who took it to the shooting range and unloaded his rifle at it after 5 months of use. The other is my wife's friend who only knows how to call and text on it (not sure WHY she got it... oh, yeah, it's COOL).But I can think of at least 8 ppl that have a Blackberry... :)
anandtech02148 - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
Nokia N97, europe's answer to all american hyped up marketing trash. N97 unlocked, using Fring to escape that other american trash, US cellphone pre-nups.Voip, sip account, sweetness. symbian s60 5th is a bit shaky, but then again there isn't a perfect Os for new cellphone model that comes out every 3months, thanks to Taiwan,Korea and China new handset are out every 24hrs. the only win for Apple here is a lot of laid off engineers creating adobe flash games for the iphone, how else would you get 50,000 apps. my hope is Nokia's answer apple in the next 6month with dual cores Arm.
snarfbot - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
im glad you're happy with your 700 US dollar phone.dumb americans are happy to get a free phone and use the same carrier for a couple of years, probably because almost every network is essentially the same in terms of features/cost.
on a side note, something needs to be done about the word american.
america is a big continent, people commonly refer to those living in the USA as "americans".
it would be more fitting if we were dubbed usa'ians our something so our neighbors dont get insulted by accident.
which brings me to my last point, in response to the actual article!
it is odd indeed how the messaging protocol varies regionally, i think the major reason most people in the US use AIM, is because we were all introduced to the splendor of the internet by aol in the 90's, then when broadband became available people switched over and kept their AIM screen names. Those that used a different isp just used AIM because everyone else was on aol, etc.
Peoples elsewhere probably used icq, until msn/yahoo came along and freed them from oppression.