Background:
Back in January, I switched from the iPhone to 3GS to the Motorola Droid. In a lengthy piece titled “Why I Switched to Android,” I outlined the reasons I chose the Droid.
None of that has really changed. Android is a great platform, and the Droid is a killer handset.
So why did I buy a Palm Pre Plus? Well, my 18-month old son smashed my phone and I needed a replacement. I decided to give Palm a shot at it, and so far, I’m pretty happy.
Hardware:
The Pre Plus is the opposite of the Droid. If the Droid is a Hummer, this is a Porsche. The Droid is AC/DC; the Pre Plus is Michael Bolton. It’s way smaller and way lighter than the Droid. The Pre Plus is all curves, all the time — the Droid’s hard angles are nowhere to be found.
When Palm introduced the Pre last year, they described it as a “river stone.” That’s completely accurate.
The physical keyboard is interesting. The phone is a portrait slider, which is a little unusual these days. They keys are small, but very solid.
The screen packs the same number of pixels as the iPhone does into a smaller space. It’s dense, and very nice looking. The only bummer is that it’s covered by plastic, not glass. I hope it holds up.
The phone isn’t as loud as the iPhone 3GS, and certainly not as loud as the Droid, but it gets the job done nicely unless I have my windows rolled down in the car. I’d peg it a notch above the original iPhone in that regard.
As far as buttons, the Pre Plus sports a power button, a volume rocker and a dedicated ringer/silent switch.
Build quality has plagued Palm for years. The Pre doesn’t break that tradition. While the keyboard slides out smoothly and pops into place quite nicely, the keyboard is creaky if I press to hard. It’s pretty sad.
The camera is lackluster. It’s a 3 megapixel unit with a LED flash. And while it can shoot video, it doesn’t have a macro mode. It’s fine for most things, and nothing on the market is as easy to use as what Apple’s done with the 3GS.
Software
Palm’s WebOS is ahead of it’s time. It multitasks more like a computer than a phone, and the card interface Palm has come up with is genius.
The collection of apps available for the Pre Plus is pretty limited — much more so than even Android. That said, the handful of apps I need on a phone are there, so I don’t mind so much. I’m not a gamer, so the lack of games doesn’t matter to me, either.
When Palm announced WebOS, the big thing they pushed was “Synergy,” Palm’s magic sauce that combined Facebook, Gmail and other accounts on the phone without combining them in the cloud. While that’s a neat addition to a slideshow, in real life, it means scrolling through 500 contacts from Facebook, most of whom I haven’t talked to in five years. Needless to say, I’ve got it all turned off, and am just using the contacts in my primary Gmail account.
Thanks to Synergy, the calendar app can also connect to more than one account, which means I can keep my Google App-powered work calendars and personal calendar separate. That gives WebOS a leg-up on Android, which can only connect to one Google account for calendar information.
The phone will connect to a PC or Mac in USB mode, just like most Android devices, for quick file transfers. (Thankfully, the Pre/iTunes thing is over.)
The media player smokes Android’s. That’s not too hard, since the media player Google ships with Android is a pile of poop. Photos pop on the rich display.
Multi-touch on the Pre works pretty much like it does on the iPhone.
Finally, the jailbreak (or “homebrew”) community for WebOS is amazing. I’m going to be rooting my phone this weekend.
Mobile Hotspot
The killer feature on this phone — in my opinion — is the Mobile Hotspot software. In short, it allows the Pre Plus to become a Wi-Fi router for up to five devices. Anywhere I get 3G coverage (and being on Verizon, that’s just about anywhere), I can get Wi-Fi. The software will let me set the SSID and adjust security settings, just like a real router.
As the owner of a Wi-Fi-only iPad, this is awesome. It means I can use my iPad out and about easily. It also means that if the Pre Plus doesn’t have an app I use every once in a while, I can simply run the iPhone/iPad version as needed.
The most impressive thing about the Mobile Hotspot is that Verizon doesn’t charge for it on the Pre Plus.
The downside is I don’t leave home without the Pre’s charger.
Wrapping It Up
Palm is a lot like Apple. I know that is an obvious thing, since a good number of Palm employees are old Apple employees. The Pre Plus is very Apple-like device in a number of ways — it’s innovative, sexy and media-rich. WebOS is very smooth, and has far fewer rough spots than Android. The hardware/software relationship is much better, since Palm builds them both.
I am in no way saying the Palm Pre Plus is the best smartphone out there. The very future of Palm is in question, and iPhone OS and Android continue to dominate in sales. I am saying that it is a very capable smartphone, and has some features others lack. And that I’m enjoying carrying it around.