linh.nguyen

Well, I wanted to do a one-year-later post regarding the Pre.  Sadly, the power button died on mine twice in the same day, so Sprint ordered me  up a new (refurb likely) one.  Kudos to Sprint for not dicking around on this one. Anyway, it seemed a good of a time as any to do this post.

Let me start–I love WebOS.  I think it’s the best implementation of multitasking and notification out there right now.  While seemingly two run of the mill features, you use those two features every single day, all day.  The form factor is also amazing.  It feels like a phone, not a large rectangular box.  Though, I’ll be honest, I have wished for a larger screen at times.  Also, the touchstone is very much worth it (just don’t pay retail for it).  I brushed off the touchstone as an expensive add-on I’d get, but after using it for a while, and having to plug in for charging at times, I found it to so refreshing to just grab the phone and go.  This is surely something that needs to extend to every phone in the future (ok, likely it will be wireless power, not inductive charging).

It is not without its own problems though.  No matter how much I love WebOS, it is slow.  Painful at times.  Especially when multitasking big items, or pulling up the unlock pad when said large items are in use (namely, the media player, Pandora, or camera).  They did improve the Phone App with the updates though.  I’m hoping WebOS 2.0 will give us 1st gen buyers a noticeable boost in optimization, but given it will likely run on something such as Snapdragon,  I’m not getting my hopes up on it.  The upswing to this is the 800mhz overclock (many threads, just one) has shown to give vast improvements, so a new CPU (+GPU optimizations) will go a long way.

Build quality is also of issue.  Given it has a slider, it was bound to be an issue vs touchscreen only phones.  I actually did not have much of a problem up till 9 months in.  Dropped it a few times, yes.  And it was like new for the most part.  But it felt like a switch went off, and suddenly I got much more of an Oreo effect and the screen was cracking along the USB port (and at the same point opposite, pressure from pushing the slider up?).  And the power button dying (brother’s did too, but I think it was different, they just “popped” it out). My refurb has a decent Oreo effect as well.  I’m hoping HP can really add value here, they’ve had some good stuff with their ENVY line.

On the app side, Palm just released the PDK, as well as access to the mic and camera via API.  It’s taken too long, and I’m not sure if it’s too late or not.  I can only hope HP’s infusion will allow Palm to push harder.  Someone had stated the lack of good “time-waster” apps which is spot on.  That’s what I always see iPhone users touting, and where everyone else is lacking.  But don’t get me wrong, productive apps are also lacking like a GPS logger, document editing, good virtual keyboard, RTM sync, wifi syncing, and self served streaming video to name the top things for me.  I also don’t want to have to “jailbreak” my Pre to add some  homebrew that fills some of those needs.  There’s a web distribution model, I’m not sure why more people haven’t taken up on it (it’s not like Palm is preventing homebrew, I’m just lazy, and don’t want to un-homebrew to get OS updates).

With all that said, I have the chance to switch to the HTC EVO when it comes out.  A month ago, I was set on doing it.  Mostly to put my Pre into backup status for my brother and I (especially since I have a fresh phone now).  Better than insurance, but a hair riskier if we both break our phones.  The key thing being EVO will address my speed issues, along with providing a nice large screen for video watching/streaming (which isn’t solved still from what I can tell, there’s no AirVideo like app for Android either) while on the elliptical.

But it’s not like I *need* to do this.  Nor is the Pre so terrible that I want to get rid of it.  Despite the more negative bias this post has, I really do like the phone.  I’m very good at finding the issues I have with whatever I buy  At the end of the day, I need messaging, email, quick searches on google, and a camera (this last one needs speed increases).  Everything else is gravy.  I’ve learned full web browsing is great, but a tablet will be better for me in that arena.  No matter how large a screen a smartphone has (I define “smartphone” as something I can pocket easily in jeans *looks at Dell Streak/Mini 5*) it will be too small to really enjoy full web browsing for more than a few minutes.  So we’ll see if I bite the bullet, but I really want to see Palm pull through.  And I may just stick around to see what HP does.   And save myself $200 to put toward real camera gear

Well Palm, it’s been 6 months since you introduced your make-it-or-break-it phone.  And now it’s time for me to give my overall thoughts on the phone.

WebOS is a wonderful OS.  I love it.  From a user standpoint, I like it much more than anything else out there now.  With that said, the hardware behind the OS needs a lot of work, or alternatively, the software needs to be much more polished.  Basically, it’s slow.  The music app takes forever to load, and takes up 80% of the system resources it seems (pure feeling, not scientific).  Random pauses here and there.  Making a quick phone call… is not so quick.  There have been updates, and the phone loading/priority is much better than at first, but it’s got some ways to go.  But I’ll reiterate, the WebOS UI is simply awesome.  Quite a predicament.

Physically, the Pre is also the best shaped smartphone I have ever held.  It’s almost the size of a “normal” phone, but still very usable as a smartphone.  Every one else seems to be going for the large screen iPhone monstrosity which I personally dislike for a phone.  The screen size on the Pre is a wonderful balance.  The downsides are the Pre is a bit plastic-y in parts and that the touchstone back should be the default rear cover.  Also, it does feel a little “rocky” with the slider mechanism.  We’ll see what another 6 months will do.  For reference, I think the HTC Hero is close to the perfect touchscreen only form factor and the Pixi sits somewhere in it’s own world.  It’s very nice to hold, but the permanently exposed keyboard feels a bit wasted.

The lack of apps is a bit frustrating, but to be honest, there isn’t much I would buy anyway.  I’m still waiting for a good GPS logger so I can geotag my photos.  I’m not sure any other phone has this either.  But other than that and maybe a few more puzzle games, I wouldn’t get much.  It’s just a matter of improving the apps out there now.  Oh, the default apps need more adjustment options, like volume association, and everything needs to be faster.

Recently, my alarm clock volume got tied to the music volume.   I leave my music app open and playing when I go to bed, at it’s lowest level.  I have never had a problem with the alarm not going off in the past at it’s normal volume.  Last Friday, Monday, and Tuesday I somehow slept through my alarm.  I RARELY ever do, and was baffled.  Turns out, I happened to catch it Tuesday morning when I snoozed the alarm after scrambling because I was late again.  It rang… at a very very faint level.

I have no idea why this happened.  I have since tested the alarm against the same scenario of the music app open and finishing up playing.  The alarm functioned properly again.  We’ll see if it holds tomorrow morning.  But dang, way to break on me right when I was writing up this little experience piece.

The keyboard has been fine.  I’m actually making more errors now than I did before though, probably out of trying to type faster.  WebOS desperately needs a good text correction/prediction algorithm, however.  We’re human Palm, we’ll make mistakes whether we get a virtual keyboard or a physical one.   But I have to say, I’ll take t his over any other smartphone that has a keyboard right now, sans maybe the pixi keyboard.  The current landscape ones are huge, and the Blackberry’s are just an oddly shaped phone.

All in all, speed is my biggest complaint.  Early on I could deal with it, but as I started using my phone more and more, it has become more frustrating.   The fastest way to work is to slide the keyboard open and start typing.  But coming out of lock mode sometimes takes a few seconds.  Trying to use the phone touchscreen only and using 3rd party software for quick contacts is painful.    You can’t make a quick one-handed call.  It may sound trivial, but when you are used to doing it that way for 10 yrs, it’s annoying as hell when you can’t.

So, what’s the verdict?  Palm, fix the speed.  And fix it fast.  Everything else is pretty subjective for the most part.  I can live with the faults because EVERY phone will have it’s faults with me.  But c’mon Palm, the iPhone 3Gs and Droid are running the same hardware, give or take.  They are kicking your ass around (ok, they are also both 3rd/2nd gen OSes).

The bottom line is I was an early adopter, and this is a first generation product.   Palm has a mountain to climb now that Google is full steam ahead.  I honestly don’t know if Palm has the ability to stay afloat for another 5 years, but it would be a damn shame to see them go under.  WebOS is truly an innovative OS, it just needs to get to 2.0 fast.  Hopefully, it’s not too late.