Palm Pre User Reviews

I'm a long time Palm user (more than 12 years... ever since the Palm Pilot Pro)...

Palm used to be THE cutting edged leader in a field of business aimed devices that allowed you to plan meetings / store contacts etc...

''Upgrading'' from the Palm TX I'm really disappointed in this toy ... Because as a phone, It's nice... but face it, a business tool it ain't !! Palm is now just trying to play ''catch up'' with Apple... One more amongst a long pack of rivals.

The good : Sound Quality (phone) / Nice screen... / great picture and video camera / very good MP3 player (impressive speaker quality given it's size + good earphones that come packaged) / Intuitive OS / nice for quick web browsing / (I like the way the MP3 player pauses to let phone calls come through then goes back to MP3...

The bad : Horrible battery life / Small keyboard (you do get used to it, but it's not as nice as Blackberry's) / And for me the killer : The abandoning of Palm Desktop or lack of a decent web based equivalent... That just kills any real use for business... No wonder all major companies are going Blackberry....

In sum : Nice phone, but lousy business tool.... I'm going to buy a refurbished Palm TX to act as a decent agenda and planner... The Pre still pales in comparison with it's predecessor.

It multitasks well, and is usually pretty quick apps, but it is cheap. The speakers are horrible. I'm on my third phone and it'd driving me crazy. I had to speak to everyone for 2 weeks via speakerphone... Also I love querty keyboards, but this one is just too small. I'm always pressing extra buttons...

I love mine, all the apps and multitasking is awesome - the thing is stout too, i pulled into my apt complex the other day and there was some baby mamma drama goin on, the lady asked to use my phone and that tool knocked it out of her hand - only scratch was on the back cover, thing still runs like a champ, my 2 yr old spilled some soda on it too, never had a problem, my wife has one too and, once again, our 2 yr old knocked hers into the toilet - we put it in some rice for 2 days, took it out, runs great, love this phone!I think that the battery life could be better - the video quality is pretty good too, I was pretty suprised. There could be some more applications, games and such, but its pretty good for right now. The OS is super easy to use - like access to change to wi-fi and blue tooth - super simple.

 I purchased the Pre on Sprint the day it was released and it is still in mint condition. If you treat your phone with care you will not have the oreo effects, slider problems or scratches some have reported.  We all know that people usually only write reviews when they are not happy with a product, and fewer bother to write one when they are happy.  I assure you there are way more content Pre owners then the small percent that have experience a material problem with their phone as happens.
 
WebOS is hands down the best OS available and Palm is providing updates averaging every month to make it even better. There are over 2000 apps available which doesn't sound like a lot, but most of what the average person needs is available. If you check out the phone and find there is a specific function missing that you need, most likely there is a patch available that will provide it.
 
I like the hardware design in that the screen is large enough considering the slide out keyboard and it can still fit in my pants pocket easily, any larger and it might be too bulky. It doesn't have the same feel as the sturdier slate phones, but if you treat it with some care you will be fine.
 
Don't let the customer service people steer you to an android phone because they know that better, get some hands on time with the Pre and you will be sold.
 
I'll leave the in depth breakdown of the phones pluses and minuses to the other reviewers, overall for me this phone does every thing I need and I wouldn't trade it for any other phone. 

The Palm Pre is a fantastic phone that continues to impress and grow on me with every passing day. It's a great combination - very good phone, excellent calender and contact organizer, super web browsing experience, and very nice multimedia player (as well as really good camera and video recorder).

While I've seen reviews talking about issues with the hardware, I have a launch day Pre and the hardware is solid. The sliding mechanism has never been problematic, and the screen is beautiful. I purchased and put on a plastic stick-on shield layer which has prevented any scratches. The keyboard takes a few days to get used to, but is very good.

The operating system WebOS is really functional and easy to use. Flipping through open applications as "cards" is really intuitive and makes total sense. When I have an email, txt or notification, the phone has a flashing notification light. Having said all these things, I think the future is what is most exciting about this phone and operating system, as the OS is only in it's first generation (1.4 at time of this writing) and have to be sure that 2.0 and beyond will hold major improvements in both performance and features.

Anyway, the Palm Pre deserves serious consideration by anyone looking for a full feature smartphone. ESPECIALLY given the recent price drops. This thing is a total steal for the money. Give it a try!

I really don't know why phone arena put that so awesome review bwcause i know telephones are better starting by the sony ericsson x2 and finishing whith the htc hd2.I usually conform with them but not this time.I will start be the camera only 3 mp (a god mobile it will have at least 5mp, the runner web os, is not that good i prefer even android, i prefer it doesn't have a qwerty part because is horizontal open, is the bad version of the iphone.It's very heavy  for nothing.............

to all you haters who say the palm pre is badd just (die) this is the best phone i have ever hadand i have had alot of phone trust me ive had the droid, mytouch 3g, iphone etc. it does everything you want it to theres no match sorry and y do people say its a fat phone its the perfect size you idiots

the palm pre is the best phone I have ever used. I had a iphone 3G for about a year then I switched to the palm pre with sprint and I love all the features such as multi tasking and the qwerty keyboard. the screen is also better then the iphones and fsster then the iphone 3G but not faster then the 3GS. i wish the pre had a better apps as the iphones apps kill palms but with the new 1.4 update coming ouut i think the pre will be better then the 3GS but thats just my opinion. the battery life also does kind of suck on the pre i think because of multitasking. The way the pre interface flows it just makes sense.

I had a palm pre for at least six months. there were plenty of updates since i had it. the latest update changed the performance but not a lot. i wish the screen can be square instead of round corners. the home screen is nothing but wallpaper on it and five icons on the bottom row. the Project Ares developer really doesnt do anything, i wish you can customize than home screen 

The Palm Pre is a nice and well balanced phone. I think Palm rushed the phone out before it was truly ready, but in its current state, it is ready for basic use. Power users might want to wait until GPU access is offered, which will improve performance and battery. Key features is Synergy. Palm allows you to pull your information from a cloud, which includes Google, Yahoo, Exchange, facebook, and Linkin. If you prefer not to use the cloud, Palm uses its Palm Profile to keep your information backed up. Next feature is multitasking. It is not the first phone to offer multitasking, but it does it the best. It is the closest thing to being on your desktop. It uses "cards" the same way Microsoft used "windows" in its operating system. I love this system. The one thing I wish they would add is the ability to view two cards at the same time, but I really like the "in yo face multitasking". It is truly unmatched. It has nowhere to go but up. It will only get better.

Had my Treo 755p for 2 1/2 years.  I was hesitant to get the Pre.  Reviews I had read about synching data, lag, etc.  made me leary.  I activated it 10 days ago and couldn't be more pleased.  This is the greatest leap forward in phone ownership I've had in 10+ years of cell phone ownership.  The whole set up of the phone was completely easy.  Using the one time data transfer, I chose google, and all my contacts and calendar items seamlessly moved into the Pre.  Texting is fabulous, including sending of photos via text. Setting up email accounts was a non-issue; the phone does it automatically after you put your password in.  I have bought several apps, and am loving every minute of using the phone.  You will get used to the keyboard.

well like every new phone that comes out i have to try it. so i bought the pre after all the glamour and excitement i heard about it and i was disappointed. this phone should not have been made. anytime U want to open any application it lacks to bring it fast. especially when you want to make a phone call going from missed calls its slow ass well.  The touch response lags just as much. The hard keyboard on the phone is way to small and most of the time i press the wrong letters and my fingers are not big so this shouldn't be a problem yet it is.  The only good things about this phone is the apps that palm has yet most of the apps have no use for anything important.  The phones black shiny case leaves marks likes theres no 2morrow and the battery life on the phone does not even last me a half day without having to be recharged again.  I wouldn't really recmond this phone to anyone and i have already gone thru 3 of these phones because of different issues they had.  On top that all sprints customer service suck and im probably ready to go to another company as soon as i see a new phone i like. If you are still interested in this phone buy and find out the hard way how bad it really is... palm should go back to the drawing board with this one........

I've had a lot of different sprint phones, I've tried pretty much everything at least once excluding the new hero, moment and pixi. The Palm was my absolute favorite. The multi tasking is awesome. The screen's clarity is great and I think all around it is one of the best phones sprint has to offer. I would change the whole ten to fifteen min setup and the fact that in store they have no clue about this phone when it first came out. I got it in a trade and couldnt use it for at least a day because sprint couldn't help me out in store (where the swap was actually done). But sprint customer service sucks anyway. Back to the phone the sliding keyboard feels a bit flimsy and the keys are too small.

My other half and I got our Pre's the day they came out.  This phone was over-hyped in my opinion.  It's slow.  That's my biggest annoyance with it.  I would be trying to make a call and I'm wondering what the hell it's doing, so I hit the on-screen phone button again.  Guess what?  It just hung up the call that I was starting!  I wanted to pull my hair out over that.  Every application is slow except the web.  It had a terrific web browser.  It was faster than any other mobile browser I have used.  Other than that, I got to where I hated this phone.  Calendar is terrible.  It is very slow.  If you had to go to a date in the future (or even the next day for that matter), it would take probably five seconds with a blank calendar before it would start showing the events for that day.  (That comes back to it being slow.)  The calendar was terrible in other ways too, such as you could only snooze the appts for 5 minutes.  What good is that??  Palm updated this four times in the time I had it and I saw no performance increase.  I even did hard resets several times to make sure that I wasn't doing something to slow it down.  I don't see how this phone can get such high ratings when they rate the Samsung Moment so low.  I have been using that for a week and it is awesome.  Apps are up as soon as you click them, the camera is awesome, the speakerphone is very loud, keyboard is great, AMOLED display, 800 MHz processor, etc..  The only thing the Pre is better at is looks.  The Pre is much thinner and smaller.  I guess that all people care about.

Quote: "I just wanted to make a post to the "conflict of interest" guy. Just  a little FYI, on the bottom where it says "PHONE ARENA NETWORK: WEBOS ARENA, ANDROID ARENA" Those are just links to go to the "web os arena site" stop freaking out idiot!................................................................................................... "At the bottom of webosarena.com, it says: "This site is part of the PhoneArena network"If you cannot see the conflict of interest here (a review site, which also run a spesific os site), you don't know the meaning of the saying "conflict of interest". To refrase it: Lets picture a fictive website called mobiledevicereviews.com. They also run a website called theincredibleiphoneosx.com.Would you say there would be no conflict of interest if the mobiledevicereviews.com gave iPhone (running osx) a 10/10, saying it is the best phone in the world (and giving poor reasons for it too, as i described about palm pre). Mobiledevicereviews would not be a neutral part, if they are involved with a spesific party in which they review. That is called a conflict of interest.It is funny, how the whole review about palm pre has "Jumped" over the parts where it is at best only mediocre, like the camera, video, screen size, external speakers, etc. Also funny, how when referring to multitouch, he shows how the bottom meny can be dragged up and down the screen, telling how cool isn't that..? When did moving a bottom meny make a phone good at all? It would be like giving the Jet a plus for having a cube meny which is nothing but annoying, just because it looks cool the first time you see it. Un-nessesary features would AT BEST be forgiven for being there in the first place.phonearena.com, please reconsider your review. I would like the russian to review the phone instead, he seems to be (although not completely) less biased about the various phones.

I just wanted to make a post to the "conflict of interest" guy. Just  a little FYI, on the bottom where it says "PHONE ARENA NETWORK: WEBOS ARENA, ANDROID ARENA" Those are just links to go to the "web os arena site" stop freaking out **!...................................................................................................

Seriously, i thaught phonearena was one of the best mobile review websites in existence, until i suddenly found out PALM PRE, had jumped to a sudden 1. place in top overall phone, with an 9.9 SCORE overnight?!?! Still it doesn't participate in any of the other top 5 categories like the previous best and secound best phones, iPhone and Omnia HD.Readers review gives this phone a whopping 2.0 lower score than that of the phonearena reviewer. I mean, what is the review'er thinking? A totally shallow and biased review, I was really really (!) dissappointed. To make an example of the bias, the reviewer mentions in the video that "none of this is extremely different from what we saw before, but its nice to see this in a different phone that is not made by apple". Nuff said. He hasn't tried 3GS either, probably not omnia HD either at the time of the review. I would say a 10 out of 10 would mean the cellphone is perfect, though he, even with mild excuses, mentioned several flaws with the phone. He also based much of the positive with features not yet available on the phone (like apps). Right, then omnia HD is the best phone yet produced, it just hasn't gotten the right OS ported to it yet to operate perfect, maybe it will in som years, right..? You get the point. This review in total was total rubbish. but...:BUT THAT IS NOTHING COMPARED TO THIS !!:What _ R E A L L Y _ R E A L L Y _ S T R U C K  _ M E _ is the link at the bottom of PHONEARENA.COMread, and i repeat READ !!!::: "PhoneArena network: WebOS Arena"It seems phonearena.com is in cahoot with the OS on palm pre, an obvious CONFLICT OF INTEREST, would you not say? It would be like apple reviewing their own phone against others.What is going on here??!I will give this one a rating to counter-weigh the bias of the phonearena reviewer.

A great phone. Multitasking is very, VERY useful. The best browser I've ever used: I tested it's speed over WiFi vs. a iPhone 3GS, and it was faster on every single page I tested (Espeically after the 1.2 update. I did chrome.google.com, firefox.com, and newegg.com as benchmarks.) The keyboard completely surprised me. I expected it to be barely half decent, as it looks kind of small, but it is amazingly usable, the keys are quite clicky, and they are a hard rubber that really facilitates grip on each key. Very usable, in fact, I prefer it over most blackberries and definitely over the iPhone on-screen keyboard.There are a few flaws though, the the callendar app is a bit sluggish sometimes, as is the messaging app every once in a while. And Facebook sync is a bit irritating sometims as well.Overall, I'd give the phone 9.8/10. I've used the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and now the Palm Pre, and I'm happy to say the Pre is the best over all. :-) Plus Sprint's coverage, price, and service kicks AT&T's butt, PERIOD.

I bought this phone a month ago. I was trying to decide between this and an iphone. Glad I chose Palm over Apple. First the Sprint service is fast and responsive (3G is fast). I use Wifi where available. This phone is great to talk, text, email, sms and mms! The camera is pretty good too! The browser is the one best out there by far, with flash support coming soon it can only get better. Who could forget the multitask ability. The app store is small now but with web based apps it will be huge in the near future. Already some good ones in the store. Overall I love this phone.

I've used all of the smartphone OSes except for Symbian. So far my favorites are WebOS and OS X. Android could be spectacular but it isn't (yet anyways) and Windows Mobile is pretty bad even on a great piece of hardware like the Pro2 (interested to see what they'll do with WinMo7).I opted for WebOS because it's nowhere near as locked down as OS X, slicker than Android and WinMo, and my previous phone was a Palm Centro (this may be why I like the Pre's keyboard so much). At first, I didn't like it as much as I thought I would. The phone had dead pixels and the slider seemed a little rickety. The slider got worse as time progressed. I took it back to the Sprint store and got another and, so far, no problems. The slider is still a little rickety but it's much more solid than the last one and there are no dead pixels. Palm needs to work on their quality control, most people seem to say their Pre's are rock solid but there's still a pretty good chunk of people who end up with lemons and they seem to always come in batches (I've read reports of people getting 3 or 4 bad Pre's in a row). The reception could be better. Also, the stock battery life really sucks. I ended up getting an extended battery (2600 mah from Seidio - it's great except for the fact that the cover screws up the flash at a distance. Seidio needs to fix this! I ended up blacking out the bottom half of the flash with industrial marker and it's not perfect but it works). With the extended battery life, the battery life is insane, I can stream Pandora all day during work no problem. With moderate use it lasts 2 days easy, 1 day with heavy use. The stock battery? Terrible. I strongly advise getting an extended if you go with the Pre.Negative stuff aside, this is my ideal phone. It's pocket friendly, open, very slick, excellent web browsing, a good business phone and a fun multimedia phone. Once/if Palm rolls out Video recording and they get support for Flash on the web browser it will be the perfect OS. Once Palm fixes the quality control problems it will be one of the best phones (hardware wise) to date. Also the homebrew community is amazing and Palm seems like they're happy to have the community around.Looking forward to what Moblin and Android can do, hope OS X becomes less locked down (and NOT on AT&T) and I really really hope Windows Mobile 7 will be the same leap in quality and efficiency that Windows 7 was. The more quality mobile OSes we have, the better. For now WebOS and Palm Pre is the combination for me. It may not be the right phone for you but it's almost perfect for me and based on what I see Palm doing and the homebrew community developing I believe the Pre will become my perfect phone for the foreseeable future. Here's to hoping Sprint doesn't find a way to mess it up.

I think this phone is a love it or hate it type deal. I just got the phone and so far, I love it. I think when the new update comes out I'll love it even more!! Comming from a Blackberry, I'm impressed.

I am in love with the design and look of the Palm Pre. I love that you can slide it up to reveal a full keyboard, rather than sliding it sideways or a clamshell phone. However, the phone feels very cheap. It sounds cheap when you open and close it and doesn't feel good in your hands. But I think it is an amazing phone, and future versions of this phone will be amazing.

I got my Pre about a month after it first came out.  I can tell you that I absolutely love it!  The screen is amazing, the multiple apps will change your life, and the touchstone charging dock is awesome.  Though I did have one issue with the touchstone.  I charged it like normal but when I took it off, it still said it was charging.  Then I put it back on the dock and it wouldn't charge.  So I ended up restarting the phone and haven't had a problem since.  But the touchstone is really sweet; it would be hard to go back to plugging in your phone.  The gestures are amazing too.  I own an ipod touch and sometimes find myself swiping back down by the home button.  I do have one other minor complant.  The phone is a little sluggish.  Compared the the itouch, it is a little choppy and not smooth.  But I wouldn't call it slow.  It's something that is noticeable but not fustrating.  Saying that,  this phone could use a couple of software upgrades but is overall awesome.  You can't go wrong with the Palm Pre!

I must be one of the lucky ones. I use the phone for anything and everything and have had no problems with it. Both me and my mom have one, and she too had to change her phone within one day of having it as the speaker and mike weren't working on her first one. With her second one, it's fine with the exception of her battery.I recieve a lot of emails and text messages throughout the day, combined with me using various applications (sudoku, pandora, facebook, myspace, the internet and using the phone to play my own music) and the battery doesn't die on me. In fact, it lasts several days without dieing.  The keyboard is great for me because I have acylics on my nails which make texting on other phones extremely difficult. (Long nails + LG Rumor = Major Frustration). The OS is slow to start up/shut down, but other than that, the phone is fast. But, like any OS, it does have it's slow days. The 3G ranges from being extremely quick to extremely slow, but that's normal with any internet service.It does suck that you can't change the other alerts aside from the ringer. This is amplified by the fact that me and my mom will be in the same room and have to figure out who's phone just went off. Another annoyance is when you call the voice mail box and have to type the password in. The phone doesn't let me hit the keys from time to time (it shows the touchscreen, but then turns black as if your ear is to the speaker).I don't like that the phone turns itself back on after it's done charging. It has woken me up on several occasions with its light (at 3 in the morning, no less), and I've resorted to sticking it in my pajama drawer while it charges.But other than that, I love the phone. It fits easily in a pocket or in my purse, and the keypad is perfect for my nails. For me, the pros completely outweigh the cons with this phone.

I bought this phone the day it was released and have had only a few complaints... one being rather inconvenient.  I have now owned a Pre for three months, and today i will be activating my third one (that's one for every month I have had this phone).  My first Pre had to be returned after the speaker in the earpiece just stopped working (along with the proxcimity sensor).  The Pre I returned yesterday (the second one) was also a great phone until the touch screen stopped working for no reason.  Now this problem might just be my misfortune, but as great as I find the phone to be with multitasking, organization, and web browsing, I do not find this phone dependable.  Other than the Pre dying on me monthly, I do really like the phone.