Sunday time with the palm pre

  Ok time has come to post my review of the palm pre. Jason will no doubt follow up with his review soon. I have spent over a week with the pre as my primary phone. And I think I have a good understanding on where this phones sits with me and the other phones I have had. 

   Design

First lets just say that the design is sexy. Its most likely the sexiest phone I have owned. I really like how the screen just fades inside the rest of the surface of the phone. It reminds me of a screen you would see on future time movies like minority report. To my surprise the keyboard, once you get use to it isn't that bad as I originally thought. The gesture area is a thing of genius. Its very helpful, especially when online. And the one button at the bottom of the phone is very helpful in those moments that you misswip for gestures and you just want to stay simple. There was some concern with the screen movement and how it gives a little when its closed sometimes toward one side or the other. Not a lot but just a little to notice. Other times it doesn't do this. Now I have heard its worse with some units people have gotten but mine seems to be minor compared to one persons unit which had a couple cm gap between the screen and base of the phone and move sideways just the same. If yours does this I think you should take it back to exchange. Another concern is the slider ease. Sometimes it seems better or easier than others times I try it. I guess this is normal being that I never have used a slider phone because I have never liked them except for this one. But still its not a deal breaker for me. For all I know I might be trying to open it up wrong.  And finally speaking of opening up wrong the battery door is got to be the worse part of the design of the phone. You shouldn't have to guess how to open up any phone that has a removable battery. It should painless and effortless but instead I had to go online and pull up a video to show me. That's stupid. The touch screen however is very good and just barely falls short of the iphone and I mean barely. Overall I will give it a 4 out of 5 stars for the design.

O/s system and graphics

   Ok coming into what I'm sure you have heard about the web os system of the phone. Now instead of going into it all over again I will give you the cliff notes. The muilt tasking is great! I didn't really have use before I got the phone but you start to use it and like it after you get use to it. The card display and opening and closing of them is amazing. I really like how you can just tap under a shrunk card to make it get even smaller. Very useful when you want to have mulitple cards open. And with such things going on I'm very amazed that the system doesn't  crash with as many things that are going on. This is something that all smartphones could stand to learn from. Now all this doesn't come free, it will cost you "speed" the more you use it and the more windows you have open. The graphics on the screen are very good as well. Not as vivid as the iphone but just under it and most likely the 2nd or at worst 3rd best screen display on a smartphone. As far as ranking these two I give it a 4.5 stars of 5 stars. 

 The phone and battery

  The phone is good. No problems there for me at least. But this is based on where you live. I guess the best part of the phone use lay in the hands of the touchstone. This unfortunately is a add on and will have to be bought separately. But the benefits of it together with the phone is too much to ignor. I really think its so cool to be able to lay the phone on it and it auto switches to speaker phone when taking a call. Take it off and then it switches to regular phone. That's so cool. And this mixed with the phones lay out with the contacts and snergy powered adjustments( if the google account or facebook account friend change pictures, contact info or even birthdays it will change on the pre automactically)connected to you google accounts is truely worth the price of entry. The only thing that most would change or adjust for the phone is the battery power or length. Why they put a 1150 powered battery in this phone is beyond me. But strangely for me I didn't see that big of a drop off from the iphone powered battery length in it vs the pre even though the iphone had a 1350 powered battery.  So if you do the math the pre's battery management is better than the iphone's if you look at all the things it does vs the iphone's and has a smaller battery and just barely misses the same use and standbye times of the iphone's. So I give this category a 4.3 out of 5. 

Overall it gets a 4.3 out of 5. So stay tuned for Jason's review and take soon.