I am a both Palm and iPhone developer. I developed for Palm back in 2003-2004. All of my apps were purchased by Iambic Inc later 2004. Then 2008 I started developing for iPhone. I really didn't need another phone, but I needed Palm PRE device for development and testing purpose.
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Impression |
Overall rate (out of 5) |
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Overal look & feel |
Build quality is very cheap compared to iPhone. When you hold it, it feels good for the size of the device, but you will be disappointed how sliding compartments are unsteady. It feels cheap and too plasticy. |
2 |
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Screen |
Smaller in size then iPhone, but has same resolution which means it can pack same pixel as iPhone in a smaller screen. This is good and bad. Good that you have high resolution in smaller screen, and bad, well its a smaller screen. The colors are very yellowish when you compare with original iPhone. You will only notice this when you compare side by side with the iPhone. But for most people this is no issue. |
4 |
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Keyboard |
It has physical keyboard all right. But keys are crammed. This is not too bad. But the main complain is the sliding part. You will notice how cheap it feels when you slide in and out. Keyboard is also not spaced down enough from the top screen slide part. So when you are typing the top row of the keys such as QWERTYUIOP, your thumb doesn't get enough space. Even though iPhone has only on screen keyboard, but iPhone's keyboard gives you much more real estate to type then PRE's. |
2.5 |
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Phone app |
I was surprised to see how much the phone app in PRE resemble the iPhone's app. No visual voice mail. Feels wired to call in to listen to voicemail after using iPhone for few years. |
3 |
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Multi tasking |
Yea, this is pretty unique. And flipping through all running tasks is a breakthrough in mobile device. Although Windows Mobile has multitasking, but it's not as easy to browse through running apps and closing them. Depending on what apps you are running, device responses may feel sluggish after 5 active apps. However, I am willing to take performance hit over not being able to keep my web browser open while composing an email, and chatting with friends. |
5 |
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OS and App UI |
Not as polished as iPhone. It feels something is missing... Only unique cool factor of the OS is, how the running applications (Cards as they say) is browsed. Other then that, everything is what iPhone did back in 2007, but only bit less polished and bit more sluggish. Seriously, If you are using iPhone, you will be really disappointed how much it copied iPhone, yet couldn't make it better. |
3 |
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Built-in apps |
Ya, it has all the usual suspects as you would aspect. Apple was critisized in 2007 because their calculator app was too basic. Well iPhone changed that in 2008, and Palm PRE decided to stay with most basic calculator here in 2009. |
3 |
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Notification |
Yes, this is unique and very well done. Love how every alerts stacks up in the bottom. You can do something about those alerts right away or deal with them later. |
5 |
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App Store & Third party apps |
Palm PRE will lose the battle with iPhone if they don't find away to get at least half of iPhone developers, and do it very soon. There are maybe less then 50 apps right now, at least this is how it feels like. Most of them are crap anyway. |
2.5 |
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Games |
There is no way PRE can match or even come close to iPhone when it comes to gaming. This is because PRE does not have strong OS foundation like iPhone and it does not have native graphic library like OpenGL. iPhone is not battling with smart phones when it comes to gaming, it's battling with real gaming device like Nintendo DS and PSP. |
1.5 |
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