So after doing everything I could to get my hands on a palm pre, my friend Hooman came through an landed me this awesome device. My initial thoughts were around Sprint. This phone comes tethered to Sprint, which isnt a network that has the coverage I am used to. I must say in the 2 days I have been using the device, the voice quality is great and the network speeds are good. Back to the Pre, its a nice feeling device, it sits in your hand easily, its very sleek, but that will get old soon if it doesnt work well. The speed of the UI is impressive. I am a tough customer, and this device doesnt take long to boot up apps, its very easy to shut them down as well. Everything is just a gesture.
Phone
This is one of the coolest parts of the palm pre. With most touch devices, you "butt" dial or turn off features with your ear while talking, the palm pre included a proximity feature that allows your phone to sense when its in your pocket or next to your face and turns off the screen, eliminating accidental "touch" dialing or hanging up by ear. The rest of the phone is pretty standard and works well. It has a slide to unlock feature which is very good.
Messaging
Lets face it, texting is a key feature for any phone, and this phone does it very well. It combines all of your account messagers into one thread, so for example you can AIM someone then switch to sms and this all appears as one seamless thread, very impressive. I am a little disappointed with the configurations on this phone. If I just want to display I have an SMS, Email or MMS it should say so, but it shouldnt display all the info in the sms or email to prying eyes when my phone is laying around. So you either turn you notifications off or have the contents exposed when then phone is locked, there is no inbetween.
Web browser
No flash support but everything else works very well. It uses multitouch to zoom in and out on pages and renders very quickly. With Sprints 3g network there is almost no delay. Not much more to say here. Sprint defaults to a bookmark page where all your favorites are listed, which means it two keypresses to get to your default homepage but a nice interface.
Camera
This is biggest oversight on this device or lacking feature.. no video. I dont know why device designer skip this? As for the camera, the quality is good, 3.2 megapixels, the flash is ok, but no zoom.. overall not very much here in comparison to better phone implementations.
GPS
This phone has a fast gps radio, so location based apps work quickly, and a nice implementation
Applications
The app store is new, and has only a few apps, not much there. I am not sure if you can add your own app but it doesnt look that way, this is a big downfall. I should be able to install an app on my device even if palm doesnt want it on the webstore.
It does come with great apps like google maps and a youtube app and you can download where and pandora.
Keyboard
The palm pre has a slide down keyboard that is easy to use with both hands, I have large fingers and have no problems using it.
Battery life
It seems like power users will drain their device in a day, otherwise it should be fine for light users.
Cables
It uses the less common Micro USB as apposed to the very common mini usb, very lame choice, it might as well be a proprietary cable. Mine came with an induction charger as well, which is very cool. just set it on the charger, no cables.
Summary
Pros
For a pda that does your basic communicating, this is a great device, Its fast and easy to use and it has all the core features you would want.
Cons
lacking notification options, no video, no micro sd, and no non palm store applications.. This phone is probably not for a power phone user at this point, but with some os changes it could possibly be.
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