I’ve had the Palm Pre from Sprint for about two and half days now. I had been scouring forums for info on it when it first got announced earlier this year and that practice will not stop even now that I have it in my hands. I need to see what other user experiences are like, especially with this widespread battery life issue, but also because a homebrew development team is growing, and as their impatience grows waiting for the WebOS SDK release, they’ve begun working on methods to get applications running without Palm’s blessing.

Here is my quick review based on the two and a half days. I posted it on a thread about the Pre, so it’s not exactly spell checked and so on. I know I probably won’t get to a full review any time soon on the blog.

I had typed up a long review on my Pre an hour or two after playing with it nonstop. Then I thought I posted, but I really didn’t.

I don’t think I can recall all the points I made but here are some things now that it’s been a good several hours:

1. If you are signing up with the Alliant Credit Union discount, make sure to bring in a print out of the benefits you should receive from Sprint along with the 25% off (www.alliantpromos.org/sprint/) The girl that was helping me thought I couldn’t apply the discount to Everything Plans when really it’s only Simple Everything Plans and ERPR’s you can’t apply discounts to. I also made it a point to ask/insist I have my activation fee waived (listed as a benefit from Alliant) I was glad I did this because the activation was not 18$ like I had imagined but was instead 26$ She could not waive the fee at that moment but told me to come in when I get the bill and she’d waive it and even noted on my account that she’d waive the fee just in case I had to deal with a different customer service rep.

2. The 25% off discount from Alliant may not take effect for up to 2 months. Sucks right? I was a little miffed when I heard that, but what can you do.

3. The customer service rep said a 7$ insurance fee is necessary at sign up but can be removed later although they insist you keep it (of course) should the phone conk out. (I’m up in the air on whether I’ll cancel, first I need to pay off the cost of the phone and see what my actual cost monthly will be including the discount (I imagine 59$ w/taxes… so tack on 7$ for insurance… we’re breaching my comfort zone for monthly plans)

ACTUAL PHONE REVIEW:

4. The one biggest flaw I noticed was the wiggly top slider that many users say they have. The wiggle only exists when the device is closed. When it is open (keyboard out), it is solid as a rock.

5. Battery life seems to be an issue for many as well. Although the recent update according to many has alleviated the issue a bit. It’s just going to be one of those things that’ll need to get better with time and updates. For now I’ve reduced the brightness completely, turned off auto location, bluetooth, wifi and changed e-mail to push. This is overkill and many will be frustrated at the idea of turning off many features that add to the coolness of apps/phone etc. I’m just doing it as a test though. Besides I’ve yet to run my battery down to nothing and recharge to break in the battery.

6. The phone is heavier than I remember the demo unit at Sprint being. And I’m actually happy about that. It also feels less plastic-y.

7.The keyboard is spread out much more than the Centro, so I’m getting used to typing on it. I’ve never used an iphone keyboard so I can’t compare but I like feel pretty confident that I won’t hit the wrong key like on a virtual keyboard. (Look, I’m gonna be honest, fingernail typing is mostly what I do on the Centro and the Pre, but that’s alright with me. Sorry for all the fat fingers out there. Give it a try though. It isn’t that bad and it comes more naturally as time goes on.)

6. Cursor placement when typing can be a pain. For example if I meant to type:

Meet me at the beer garden at 10pm

but instead wrote:

eet me ay the beer garden at 10pm

and I need to go back to fix those things, using a thumb to place it precisely before/after the letter that needs to be added/changed is a pain. That’s one of the things I miss about the centro, the five way oval let me click left and right to place the cursor. I may have missed something where I can do that on the Pre but I haven’t found it yet.

***edit***

For ppl like me who don’t read things. I just found out how to do more specific cursor placement. Just press the orange square key and then swipe left or right to move the cursor!

7. The app store grows daily. Hackers have already got a “hello world” app running so combined official works and individual homebrewers, it’s going to be exciting to see what comes out.

8.Browsing the web is great. It was one of my biggest concerns as I’ve seen other browsers on other sprint phones and they all have a terrible display system. The Pre uses it’s real estate effectively.

9. It’s so simple! I think it was a PC World writer yesterday who wrote a terribly biased (pro-apple) article bashing the Pre and saying he didn’t like the fact he had to learn gestures. Holy shit… I’m sure it kills you to learn about 3-4 simple hand movements (not like they’re asking you to draw circles and stars etc) Everyone wants to tout Apple as a provider of devices that “just work”

The Pre just works too.

10. Love the led lights in the gesture area, I kinda want to see a Mac-esque heart beat glow implemented by homebrewers either as a message alert or some such.

11. Clean up your Gmail contacts! Unless you want doubles galore.

12. Give us true copy/paste. The current copy/paste only works on editable fields.

Anyhow, that’s about it for now. I love the phone. I’ll admit I’m a little scared about seeing $60+ a month bills after a year + of 37$w/taxes bills.