Customer Reviews

Palm Pre Plus Phone (Verizon Wireless)

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Ok, before I rant about the battery, I want to warn Palm fanboys about the one change you need to prepare for (note: I am a huge Palm fanboy). If you aren't currently using a Treo or Centro phone, skip the next paragraph.

Not a complaint, just some advice because Palm has ALWAYS been the best at contact/calendar management. No one else comes close. If you like the way PalmOS has always sync'd directly with your PC (Outlook, Palm Desktop, etc) - you will need to buy a 3rd-part application to do that with the Pre or Pixi. Palm has dropped support for that. It can synch with an Exchange server like a Blackberry (my company won't support it) or with Gmail (I will never share my contacts with Google, Yahoo, or any other public site). Most of these apps come with a trial period. I recommend that you have it installed on your PC before you do any contact sync or email set up. It worked flawlessly and it's just like I've been doing it with Outlook for many years. When setting up your Pre for the first time, skip the step to set up e-mail so you can synch your contacts with a third party app first. IT's much less confusing.

Oh, and DON'T sync with more than one 3rd party app, because you will duplicate every contact. The Pre is able to see the duplicates and show them as a single contact (sort of) but I tried it with more than one, and I had to do a hard reset and then sync with only one 3rd party app to de-dupe the contacts. PocketMirror does wireless sync, but it is VERY slow with my 3,000 contacts. It's a litte faster via Bluetooth. CompanionLink is much faster, but requires a USB cable.

Ok, for those who don't care about contact/calendar sync, or who get one of the 3rd party apps, here is my summary of the Palm Pre: FANTASTIC!

It is very close to the iPhone in ease of use, innovation, etc. Each has a few unique advantages. But, the Palm wins on the stuff I care about - multitasking being a major item... I can listen to music AND surf the web. Can't do that on an iPone, iPad, or any other iDevice. That's huge.

The ONLY complaint I have is battery life, which is non worse than an iPhone. Palm has made major improvements with 1.4, and needs to keep working on it. Battery drain goes down after you have had it a few weeks, because then you aren't playing with it 7x24. 3G access is what uses the most battery, just like the iPhone. I bought a Siedio extended battery from Amazon.com to provide some improvement, and reducing screen brightness also helps. But, if you are doing a lot of web browsing, tweeting, etc... it's going to drain about 10% per hour - but no worse than the Motorola Droid, by the way. I get about 8 hours of heavy web use, once you've charged the battery for a few cycles.

So, carry a spare battery (another great feature the iPhone doesn't have - you can quickly swap batteries) - or get an extended life battery like I did. Other than that, I also wish it had a soft keyboard and a few things that would make it easier to surf and text in landscape mode...

If Palm would add a few refinements like better landscape support,it would be a perfect phone.

And the icing on the cake? The network, of course! The Pre+ runs on Verizon, and not AT&T. That drives all my iPhone fanboy friends crazy. It was well worth the wait for Verizon to get this phone. I recommend this for everyone... I especially recommend this phone for iPhone users so they can get off the AT&T network...

Now Verizon can say "there's an App for that" as well as "there's a map for that", and that, my friends, makes this a terrific phone!

EDIT: Palm recently released version 1.4 (which auto-magically updates your phone over the air) and it has improved battery performance greatly. They also added the ability to take movies and edit them right on the phone. Perfect for putting videos on facebook and twitter, etc.

Folks, you REALLY need to try this phone.

I've been a Palm user going way back, and loved my Treo 700p through nearly four years of heavy daily use. I'm a happy Verizon customer, so waiting for the Pre Plus to arrive there required patience while everyone moved to the iPhone. It was worth the wait! The design turns heads, especially with iPhone users. The true multitasking OS makes iPhone users jealous--I've had two say they will switch after trying mine. Pre Plus makes the most of WiFi, Bluetooth, and is the only phone that becomes a WiFi hotspot for your netbook/laptop without tethering. Palm's web syncing was seamless, and with my gmail account setup, all my contacts and calendar were wirelessly synced--and are backed up once each day with all the data on my phone by Palm, so there's no more being tied to a desktop app. The phone is fast, intuitive, and very stable. Battery life is good if you keep WiFi off. The apps store is just starting to ramp up, but the best apps so far are: Commuter Computer (NJ Transit and BART), Tweed, Facebook, Kobo (try it, cloud reading--sorry Kindle), Evernote, Weather Channel, Open Table (a little buggy on the login at times), New York Times Reader, Pandora (great!), and Fandango. As of this writing, easily the best smartphone on the market.

A perfect hybrid of the iPhone and Blackberry- but better!
An arrogant and presumptuous statement you might say? Perhaps. An uneducated and unfair assumption? Hardly. With a flawless interactive touchscreen like the iPhone and a slide-out, tactile QWERTY keyboard akin to the Blackberry, this phone has surpassed ALL of my expectations.

I was like all other lonely schoolboys out there on the playground albeit I wasn't out on the playground and I'm 35; hardly a schoolboy. But like the others, I was waiting in vain for my "New Every Two" discount to kick in so I can finally venture into the 21st century with a Smartphone (cue fading echo: phone, phone, phone...). I had done tiresome and extensive research on the "Big 3" that Verizon had to offer: the Motorola Droid, the HTC Droid Eris and the Palm Pre Plus (not big on Blackberrys; too yuppy/primitive/not me). My research included watching way too many videos of these phones on youtube (unboxing, walkthroughs, hacks, Chocolate Rain cameos, etc.), reading far too many blogs to mention and actually fiddling around on the phones. Using the phones. How novel. I'll make this simple:

The Motorola Droid I found to be too bulky, far too heavy for a mobile device, suffering from "only child" syndrome and, from the research I did, the touchscreen was WEAK. W. E. A. K. That is problemo numero uno. Next.

The HTC Droid was very high on the "Me want, me want" list. I did like the touchscreen response, fairly attractive OS and it is backed by Google which I use religiously. The strike? I was coming from a standard slider phone and doing text messages with a standard phone keypad. Going from that to QWERTY in itself is a big step. Add onscreen-only and you're asking for some serious aggravation, anxiety and frustration. What else we gots?

So the Palm Pre had been getting press on it's "revolutionary" webOS and that it was coming to Verizon in January. I was only familiar with it because I would watch youtube reviews and visit the Palm website. I do have to admit that once I played with the Palm Pre I was quite enamored. The shape was ridiculously comfortable. The tactile keyboard was small but, surprisingly, my fairly nimble fingers were able to adjust with ease and the touchscreen was absolutely mind blowing. This is the ONLY phone that Verizon offers where I felt as comfortable using it as I did on an iPhone (which all touchscreens try to rival in terms of responsiveness and illuminosity).

When the time came to purchase my new device, the Palm Pre Plus was at the top of my list. I had to lure my girlfriend into the depths of geekdom and let her know how great this phone was too. She relented and now she is truly addicted to this phone.
One great, huuge surprise I had on this phone was the multi tasking prowess this has on it. On my second day owning it I used a GPS tracking jogging app and listened to some music on my Bluetooth stereo headset. Now I know an iPhone can't do that all at once.

I can't really say enough good things about this phone. I really hope the best for Palm and if you do get one, you're going to see the huge underground following/cult of Palm Pre fanatics that just can't say enough either!

First, Let me say that I am a die hard Apple fan. I got the first Iphone, then the 3g, then the 3gs. I love the iPhone.

However, I have been reading about the Pre for over a year. I looked at the first one on Sprint but decided to wait for the next generation to come out. Now I have the Pre Plus and I can tell you. It's Great! I love it. You can open so many different apps and have them running in the background. You can listen to music while still using other functioins.

The charger rocks also!

Hello Pre, good bye iPhone

Where can I start? Most people probably want to know about apps. I was really surprised that there are so many apps available. And they're good apps. A lot of 3d games, I use netflix app all the time, twitter is good (new to twitter), podcast app dr. podder is a 10, duke nukem 3d, need for speed. Just so many good apps to list.

The camera and video are awesome also. The camera takes really good pictures, better than my camera believe it or not. You can upload pictures directly to facebook, or send them through email or text to other people. the video app was just released in February. Its very similar to the iphone video record app. you can record long videos, and you can edit them when done. Again, you can upload them to facebook, also youtube with videos too. Or email or text them to other people.

If you buy this phone, you HAVE TO go to [..]. They have both homebrew apps and patches there, plus a huge group of users that all use the phone and push it to its limits. Basically, these things let you hack your phone securely and easily. It adds sooooo much functionality. And the best thing is Palm knows about it, they're ok with it, and they give you the tools to do it correctly and fix it if something goes wrong.

The screen looks absolutely great, its so bright that I keep it at 40% just to save battery life. The keyboard works great. It was a little small at first, but I got use to it fast. I have actually found that the small keyboard makes it much easier to type with one hand.

I've saved the best for last. The webOS operating system is by far the best thing about Palm phones. Multitasking is so much more useful than I thought it would be. I can start a podcast download, then click over and send out a text while its downloading. I can be playing a game, minimize it, flick over to my email, then come back and it starts right back where I left off.
The way the notifications comes in is really well designed. Notifications pop up at the bottom of the screen in little banners. You can either let them sit there, or flick an up gesture and they turn into little icons at the bottom of the screen(taking up much less space).. that way there is always a little reminder down there, until you decide to take action on the notification. If you just wanted to ignore the banner, you can swipe it off the screen to the right or left with a quick swipe gesture. The things that elicit a notification are receiving texts, emails, a finished download, when pandora or music app switches songs (although these disappear on their own), etc. Notifications come through so often, that its nice to have them managed in a way that lets me choose to keep doing what I'm doing or act on them.
Universal search will be your best friend. The Pre will sync with multiple accounts. So I have facebook, google, and my exchange server at work. All the contacts from the 3 places are now on my phone so it becomes a PITA to sift through them all. Well, Palm thought of that. So if I want to find someone, I can just start typing their first name and it will bring up that contact. Usually it takes me 3 letters to find who I need. Universal search works with EVERYTHING though. I can start typing a webpage, the name of an app, a person, or just a term to do a google search on it. so basically, whatever I want to do, I just open my keyboard and start typing. Its soooo easy and it just makes sense.

they also have a mobile hotpost app, but it costs $30/month at Verizon. It basically turns your phone into a wifi hotspot, so you can get wifi on anything that uses wireless internet. I am still thinking about getting it, but I have heard you can get it free if you hack your phone a little (instructions at [..])

Sorry its so long, but I almost passed over this phone because I hadnt heard much about it. I am truly astonished, because it is the best phone I have ever used.

I did it! I finally got rid of my Windows Mobile phone and got a Palm Pre Plus, and I love it.
The Palm OS is so much fun and easy to use! Windows Mobile is great only if you use Outlook, but if you use a bunch of other things now like Facebook, LinkedIn, and other applications, Palm does a better job of having all your apps work seemlessly together. I always had trouble syncing with Windows Mobile with all my contacts and calendar. Palm has gone to great lengths to design software to migrate your calendar, contacts and e-mail over to their phones. Palm has quite a few fun apps too of its own, even if, there are not as many as Apple's. The browser and e-mail and surfing the web are easy to do. It plays music and videos including songs from iTunes in MPG4 or MPG3 mode.

This phone should appeal to students, Moms and business people alike. The screen is vivid and bright. The colors are very rich. The games are addicting to play if you buy any. My sons play 3D Need for Speed and love it. I play the matching games, checkers and loaded an aquarium on mine that are fun. I keep my shopping list now on this phone. I can surf the web, read my e-mails, get e-books, get on Facebook and text message a lot easier on my Palm Pre Plus than on my any of my Windows Mobile phones.

I have not had the battery issues others worry about. Palm just updated the phone which allows the applications to open really fast and which extends the battery life. Plus, by tweaking the brightness of the phone, etc., I get my Palm Pre to run all day long. I also bought another battery and a car charger just in case I need to use it for longer. Also, other phones have battery issues as well. My son's iPhone battery runs out often too. If he watches too many videos, his iPhone needs a recharge every 3 hours. The batteries from many phones need to catch up to all the ways people use their phones now.

I also got this phone because it has a physical keyboard. I got tired of the touch virtual keyboards since it's too easy to make mistakes with them. The Palm Pre Plus' keyboard is comfortable and easy to use, I find.

The only warning I have is that this phone is touch screen to the max, which makes it either super fun to use, or will make you super frustrated. There are no buttons, balls or scrolls to navigate with this phone. The stylus found on other Palm devices is gone. You touch, swipe or pinch the screen to open and close your apps, but it takes half a day or so to get use to the feel of the phone. It's not intuitive. At first when you get the phone, you'll feel that anything you touch opens up. That will annoy you at first until you get use to the phone which is why I gave this phone a 4 rating instead of a 5. Palm does include a quick user's guide on all the ways to touch the screen. In addition, one can not easily edit documents with the Palm Pre software, but a new application might be developed soon on this, I hope. That being said, people who want an alternative to the iPhone would probably be very happy with the Palm Pre Plus.

The Palm Pre Plus has been overshadowed by the iPhone and Droid. I was an original Palm user when the Palm Pilot first came out, and then switched to the iPhone, Blackberry Storm and Windows Mobile (Samsung Omnia and Motorola Q). My opinion is that the Palm Pre Plus is the best for my money and for my needs. I would highly recommend the Palm Pre Plus, especially after the new upgrade, if you are looking for a fun touch phone. In fact, I think Palm should use their WebOS to design a touch tablet or netbook too.

New Update: Now Verizon is offering the Palm Pre's mobile hot spot for free. This is like $49 a month in savings! It's a huge feature where you can connect your phone to your laptop and browse the internet or send e-mails no matter where you are.

Based on 3 days with substantial use:

Pros: The UI is excellent, very intuitive, crisp and classy. Display is gorgeous. Call quality is very good...friends commented how clear I sound while driving (both with mic and included stereo head/earphones). Processor is fast and multi-tasking is flawless. Web browser is excellent. Email client with 2 Gmail accounts is very good. Migrating my i760's contacts with Google Sync (through my Gmail account, then to my Pre) was easy. SMS and IM are well-integrated. Pre can function as a USB drive which makes transferring music/etc simple. 3MP flash camera is decent. Subjectively, the Pre is fun to use. But...

Cons: Battery life drains at up to 1% per minute of heavy 3G activity (rapid page browsing, email activity/syncing, or streaming music/video), and 1% for every 3 minutes of talk time. (Verizon claims that an OS update in Feb will reduce battery consumption.) Music player sounds & looks great, but you cannot create playlists on the device (there are some PIA ways to create them on your PC and then transfer to Pre which I haven't attempted yet). The QWERTY is tiny, at only 2 1/4" wide. The keys are raised, rounded, and rubbery, but it still requires a lot of focus to type (it's not driver-friendly) and the unit becomes top-heavy when QWERTY is slid down. Stock document viewer does not allow editing or new doc creation, and Docs2Go isn't yet available for Pre.

In summary: SWEET device, great browser, feels good in your hand... but it's presently lacking as a true music player or PDA. Pray for more apps. I like spending time with Pre, yet I'm still daydreaming about Droid.

As a former Windows Mobile user, a current Blackberry user, and (I assumed) future Droid owner, when I got my hands on the Palm Pre Plus for Verizon I was forced to rethink my opinions on smartphones. The phone came as a revelation for me: I could own a Palm phone running Palm software!

The user interface, Palm's WebOS, is the most elegant UI I've ever used, though there is a learning curve if you skip the videos at setup. Multitasking between browsers (yes, multiple browsers work flawlessly!), video, calendar, contacts, email, TXT messages, and anything else you want to run is amazing! Playing a game and you want to go back to your email real quick? Slide your finger up from the bottom of the touch pad through the screen and your current window becomes a card on the screen allowing you to scroll through all the open programs (cards) till you find the one you like and then simply touch it and it pops up for you. Within the first 24 hours of using this phone I was hooked on the operating system and multitasking - something that the iPhone doesn't do and that the Droid won't do well until Android 2.1 comes out. WebOS is amazing.

Oh, and you can use your Pre Plus as a mobile hotspot enabling up to 5 other WiFi devices to use the Pre's internet connection through Verizon like the Novatel MiFi 2200 Mobile Wi-Fi Hotspot Modem (Verizon Wireless). (There is an additional charge for this service at the time of the review.)

There were a few concerns that I have with this phone, though, that you should know before you buy: the keyboard is very small - smaller than a Blackberry and there is no SD card support to add memory. But I know that - believe it or not - there are many users who recognize that the Pre Plus' 15 GB of internal memory is more than enough, and don't have huge hands like I do. If you are one of these kind of users then I cannot recommend the Palm Pre Plus enough!

**Update: With the WebOS update 2/27/10 (Palm webOS 1.4.0 Build 136), video capture has been added to Verizon's Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. The update also increases access speed to programs, adds additional battery life to the device, gives more options on calendar, MMS support, and new features for email. With these updates, the Palm WebOS solidifies itself as possibly the best OS on any phone in the US.**

Bottom Line up Front: I am very satisfied with this phone and would recommend it to those looking for a nice balance of work-related functionality with the "fun factor" associated with the iPhone.
What I needed: access to email on the go, ability to synchronize my calendar and contacts with Microsoft Entourage (Outlook for Macs), mobile web-browsing, and ability to read Office docs and PDFs.
What I wanted: to use my phone as a mobile hotspot for my laptop and to perhaps retire my ailing iPod Nano. Productivity-robbers (video games, etc.) were not that important to me, I wanted a phone that could serve as a creditable media player.
Why I went with the Pre Plus: as an early-PDA adopter, I waited a long time to make the smart-phone plunge. This was the first phone that was able to lure me over. I urged the saleswoman to talk me into a Blackberry or Android device, but several hours of comparison-shopping brought me back to the Pre Plus. The deciding factor: at no additional cost, I can use the phone as a wireless hotspot for my laptop. When Verizon first offered the phone in January, this was a $40/month service. It's now included in your basic data package, and it works great.
Other compelling features: it works very well as a phone (and I don't feel as though I'm holding a media-player to my face); the software and hardware are seamlessly integrated, making everything intuitive; I can run multiple apps simultaneously without any discernable performance issues (this includes checking email & web-browsing while on the phone); and a recent OS update lets you edit videos on the phone--very useful if you, in fact, send videos from your smartphone.
Disappointments: only one of them is hardware-related and, thus, incurable--the keyboard is somewhat cramped. This said, I like it better than any Blackberry keyboards I tried. I second CNET editors' recommendation that the next version should have a landscape (vice portrait) oriented keyboard. All of my other gripes are software-related and may be improved upon through updates. Foremost among these: no support for [...]. Audible plans to provide it, but it's not here yet. Copying and pasting (particularly from webpages) is not as convenient as it might be. The ability to edit Office docs is on the horizon, but not yet available. The installed music player is a bit too basic. Not all of the apps support portrait viewing (i.e. the screen doesn't always rotate with you when you turn the phone on its side). Until recently, Palm didn't provide developers access to the phone's mic, so "music hunting" apps like Shazam aren't yet available (but the music app Pandora is incredible as is). All of these features, however, are likely to soon be available. Regarding the limited number of apps vis-à-vis the iPhone and Android: I wasn't really worried about it because everything I need IS available and I don't need more productivity thieves. Nevertheless, my pre-purchase research indicates that the issue has not been a lack of interest from app programmers but rather Palm's limited capacity to work with them. With HP's purchase of Palm, the capacity (and a guarantee that WebOS is here to stay) has arrived.
Editorial regarding other reviews: in the wake of HP's purchase of Palm, I've seen industry analysts refer to the WebOS as a wonderful operating system stuck in a pair of crummy phones (the Pre and Pixi). I doubt these commentators have ever used the Pre, which won a CES "best of show" award when released and has been well reviewed elsewhere. Another analyst likened the Pre to Cadillac's ill-fated Cimaron--an effort to make a Caddy for the masses. He declared that the Pre was neither the luxury model (the iPhone) nor the economy platform (Android)...it was stuck in no-man's land. I'd counter that this is the Subaru of smartphones: not everyone may get it, but it does everything quite well, it's smart, it's fun, and it's practical. It is, in other words, exactly the phone to pull me into the smartphone market after years of waiting.

I recently upgraded my cell phone from the BlackBerry Storm 2 to the new Palm Pre Plus and am extremely pleased! Its overall performance and "cool" factor is a definite "A" plus and may be the last phone I ever buy (I am a phone enthusiast and upgrade VERY often). It is sleek, pocket able, feels solid in the hands, and the screen clarity is absolutely amazing. Internet surfing rivals that of the Iphone making it easy to zoom, move, and bookmark with the touch of a finger. You Tube streaming videos are crystal clear (better than Droid, Blackberry, etc) and the touch screen is as responsive as a cell phone can get. Although it lacks a zoom tool, the camera takes incredibly sharp photos and makes it easy to share or post to the Internet. The app catalog has tons of cool downloads from 3D games (Let's Golf & Need for Speed...awesome) to applications for business users. The Pre Plus synchronizes seamlessly with web email, texts, MMS, exchange, etc. all in one location. Not to mention the cool Touchstone charging dock making charging your phone a cinch (sold separately).
With all the good stuff mentioned, there has to be a couple issues to notate. The contacts list does not offer the ability to create groups (family, friends, etc), which I like to have when sending texts to multiple contacts. Also, the keyboard still has room for improvement. The keys are too small and, often times, latent to detect keystrokes which causes a lot of back spacing and re-typing. Palm promises to release an update in February to maybe fix some of these minor issues along with update software to enable video capture and flash (yay). This release also will address the poor battery life of the phone.

Despite the minor quirks, and might I note, less quirks than other smart phones, the Palm Pre Plus for me is just about perfect and a good balance of everything. Thanks Verizon and Palm.