Palm Pre (CDMA)
Phone Scoop Review
Jun 3, 2009 by Eric M. Zeman
Palm hopes the Pre can bring it back from the brink of extinction. Based on what Phone Scoop sees, Palm's chances of salvation are pretty good. The Pre is a solid phone, even if it makes a few mistakes. read review ›
User Reviews
Average Ratings
Used to LOVE my Pre
I was SOOOOO excited to get my Palm Pre. Like many other users, I was looking for a smartphone that wasn't married to AT&T.
The Palm Pre fit my needs exactly. I found the phone easy to use at first and I liked the pull out keyboard and the screen size. After the first few hours of use, I noticed that the phone kept turning off by itself. The Sprint rep took the battery out, cleaned the contacts and replaced it into the Pre. The phone still kept shutting off by itself. On my next trip to Sprint, I was told that the battery wasn't hitting the contacts correctly. The Sprint rep shimmed the battery into the battery compartment with a piece of paper cut from a business card and sent me on my merry way. Well...it failed again. On my next trip to the Sprint store, I demanded a new Pre since it had only been 3-4 days since I bought it.
This new Palm Pre worked fine until the GPS and navigation froze 1 day later. I spent about 4 hours on the phone with Customer Service before going to the Sprint store. The Sprint rep couldn't fix it either and told me to take my 1 day old phone to the Sprint Technical Center, wait there, and maybe they could help. I returned the phone on the spot.
This review may seem like a commentary on Sprint but the phone was having major issues and the phone is tied to the carrier. I spent too much time trying to resolve my phone issues but wanted to give the carrier the benefit of the doubt and try to resolve my problems on my own.
Conmments:
Pros
Shape and feel is solid
Pull out keyboard is great for those that don't like touchscreen typing
Sprint Navigation is the best nav I have used on a phone - when it works
Cons
Phone turns off randomly - seems to be poorly engineered
In order to upload your MS Outlook or similar, you have to upload to Sprint cyberspace where they keep your confidential info. This can be downloaded to a new phone if you lose your original phone - Unsecure
Lack of apps
This phone lags
Pros;
Decent battery for a smart phone
nice screen
really good camera for a phone if perfect lighting
Cons;
Extremely slow to launch programs
Touch screen is not that responsive; have to touch hang up several times before the phone will do so.
The phone is just too slow. After awhile it gets really annoying
Read reviews in one month - Sell ur Palm Stock
Maybe I got a lemon but...
3 minutes into my very first call, it dropped. 1 minute later it happened again. Went right back to my blackberry curve and no problem. All Palm needed to do was add navigation and voice dialing to the 700P. Then make it shorter, thinner, narrower, lighter, more memory, a few different colors and maybe even a flip version and voila, perfection. I hate this OS. I hate this phone. Saw today Palm CEO is stepping down and Pre creator is stepping up. The other guy getting out in time. Can the 700P idea please happen? My only complaint about Sprint is they should let people use any CDMA phone they want.
Pre sucks. Bring back Palm OS.
Capacitive touch is friggin enraging. Signal is horrific. Speaker sucks. Huge lag in bringing up "cards," more so than WinMo. Heavier than BB Curve. Slider is terrible. Even with a good signal I'd hate it. I honestly don't know how anyone could really like this when you try to use it regularly.
Extremley dissappointed; disgusted.
Mmmm, the Pre?
So the Palm Pre....
At first glance when I received the phone I was extremely satisfied with it, amazed, and even impressed. Now I am no real phone critic, but decided to share my overall experiences.
About 3 weeks into use of the phone, it decided it would take life into its own hands and power down at will. I thought of course this was to my misuse of the phone at first, but quickly realized it was a software glitch.
My replacement phone did not activate correctly, so had some issues with that, had to have a reset performed on it. Then, the camera malfunctioned and did not work at all.
2nd replacement phone? So far is going well. I was not very tolerant of these issues though as the phone was purchased for business use and from my experience was very unreliable.
I do not like the fact that I can not forward text messages, do not have the capability to take video, and can't sync with my work email address to send from it.
I also think there is a larger variety of apps for BlackBerry and better use of them as well. Pre's apps catalog is very limited and basic at best.
Keyboard and overall function of the phone is not hard to use, but mostly I am not happy with it. The touch screen doesn't seem to register a lot and have to double push buttons.
Otherwise, I do not recommend the phone and had I known some of these things before purchasing, would not have done so myself.
NO OUTLOOK SYNC!
i'll start off by saying what i wish i would have read in somebody elses review first: IT DOESN'T SYNC WITH OUTLOOK!
i'm glad i bought this for my wife and not myself cause i'd of been really pissed. now i remember why i never liked palm before. its seems really not smart of them to not let it sync with outlook.
pros: the phone is pretty! very nice display!
cons: no sync with outlook! difficult to use at first! does get better with time. battery life is crappy!
i am not and never will be an iphone user so i'm not comparing it to that. i just thought this phone would be more business and less candy.
to each his own i guess.
DONT BUY IF YOU WANT WHAT EVERY SMART PHONE SHOULD DO, SYNC WITH OUTLOOK!
Did the palm pre engineers use the other palms?
To give you background on me I've gone thru umpteen phones in my life. My friends are always asking to look at my phone because I had the latest and greatest. That is until I met the palm family. From 700p to 755p I stayed with these unattractive but very functional phones forever. All of a sudden I stopped changing. I met my match.
But I wanted more, so when I saw a new palm was coming out I was thrilled. I figured the new palm engineers would take the best of the old palm features and add other new features with the old os. It turns out the new palm is hardly anything like the old.
The touchscreen is great but where are all my old keyboard shortcuts? I had speed dials and shortcuts to certain apps. Now I only have speed dial. I won't get into all the pros and cons, I'll just say that the Pre engineers should have consulted with some Palm users to get some feedback. Pre may gain users but may lose some Palmheads.
I'll stick with this phone, but I'll be hoping for a lot from the upgrades to come.
Great Palm Phone bu no iphone Killer
I stared out years ago on the Palm Pilot and then Treo product line all the way up to the Treo 680. I switched to the iPhone when it came out and after an adjustment on the PDA side (palm in superior in that dept) the iPhone more than made up for it. Wife an Attorney would not switch to the iPhone (Hatted no keyboard and the PDA lack of search)and give up her 680 despite its constant crashing and just turning itself off randomly. So Saturday Morning I was 4th in line and easily go my wife her PRe. The rep at the store said it had visual voice mail turned out to be wrong and the browser still will not load my vender's web side for me to pick up orders nor will the iPhone. Calenders do not have the ability to assign colors to events only email accounts. Overall its pretty slick no crashes fast OK battery better than iPhone. Wish screen was bigger eyes not getting any better these days.
Wish it had native support for yahoo email like iPhone. GPS is nice , love apps staying open. Better PDA than iPhone but not as many apps yet. Competition is good Ill have to check out the new iPhone coming out on the 17 Th
Palm Pre is NOT up to my standards!
I have been patiently waiting for the Palm Pre to launch. I was 15th in line on Saturday morning. Someone offered me $20 for my spot in line, looking back I wish I would have taken him on his offer! I am HIGHLY disappointed in this phone. I LOVE PALM! I currently use a Treo 755 and a BlackBerry Curve. I love my Treo 755, never had any issues! On my Treo 755 you have the option to make the phone NOT ring for numbers NOT stored in the phonebook. The Pre DOES NOT have this option. I really don't want to return the phone but it's horrible! My BlackBerry Curve has a bad battery life but not as bad as the Pre. The Pre lags a little bit when you switch through the different icons.
PALM PRE:
PROS...
TOUCH SCREEN-VERY IMPRESSED (BETTER THAN THE BLACKBERRY STORM)
INTERNET
YOU TUBE APP-CLEAR BUT FREEZES SOMETIMES
CONS:
MEMORY-NO MEMORY CARD SLOT AND PHONE ONLY HAS 8GB OF INTERNAL MEMORY. PALM SHOULD HAVE MADE IT 16GB.
VIDEO CAMERA-DOESN'T WORK AT LAUNCH. PALM WILL RELEASE AN UPDATE TO FIX IT.
RINGTONES-YOU CAN'T ASSIGN A RINGTONE FOR TEXT MESSAGES.
BATTERY LIFE-THE BATTERY DIES VERY QUICKLY EVEN WHEN YOU DON'T USE THE PHONE. I WENT TO BED WITH IT AT 52% AND WOKE UP AND THE BATTERY WAS COMPLETELY DEAD!
TOUCHSTONE CHARGER-MAKES THE PHONE EXTREMELY HOT! SPRINT REPS COULDN'T EXPLAIN WHY, THE PALM REP SAID IT'S NORMAL AND IT REACHES UP TO 150 DEGREES!(THAT IS NOT NORMAL!!!)
EH
Con's On CDMA, no data and talk
Build is shody
KB is sub par medicore
SDK sometime this millennium
Pro's Decent cap touch screen.
Unbelieveable
I had the palmpre since August and since then, it hasn't lived upto what I call a smartphone. When I think of smartphone, I think "Intuitive." There are some unnecessary intuitive features, while up until now, since the recent service update, it lacked all the basic features of a prepay phone.
Pros
.The talk time on the phone will last 5 hours
Cons
.There is no way to type while the phone is in landscape
.Cannot view e-mail in landscape without hacking the phone
.Still doesn't have a useful copy and paste (Unless you want to copy an entire paragraph)
.App limit (preset storage limit amount)
.Volume on the phone is very low (same for speaker phone)
.Cannot add launch pages
.Cannot enter web address pages while the phone is in landscape
.Phone does not pan across screen while typing (Whether in landscape or vertical)
Pretty much, everything intuitive you want it to do, it doesn't (even with the recent service updates).
Sprint has been excellent, but, definitely will not recommend this phone for their service.
