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Thursday, July 2, 2009
Gadget Review
What it's like to live with the Palm Pre, iPhone 3GS
By Eric Convey, managing editor, Boston Business Journal
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To be a gadget reviewer is a brutal fate.
Companies send you — lend you, to be clear — their latest devices, often before or as soon as the general public gets them. Then you have to figure out how to use those toys within a day or two, and in most cases write a review within a week. It’s a great way to tell people what it’s like to use something new. The downside is that it’s not so good a way to tell people what it’s like to live with a new phone or computer or what-have-you.
So this month, beaten to the initial punch by the industry’s favored national reviewers, your friendly gadget columnist spent some serious time with two of the hottest gadgets of the year: the Palm Pre and the Apple Inc. iPhone 3GS. This review is not so much about what it’s like to go on a date or even a one-night stand with either smartphone. Rather, you’ll hopefully get a truer sense of what it’s like to own one; consider it a report after the onset of the seven-year itch, as measured in gadget lifetimes.
First, the Pre.
The small handheld, produced by Palm Inc. and sold exclusively by Sprint Nextel for now, has been the focus of drooling by the gadget community for months. It’s about the size of a larger mobile phone. But it’s different than many rivals in two key ways: First, a small keyboard slides out from beneath the main chassis. This is a real keyboard, unlike the onscreen virtual keyboards produced by Apple and a few other companies.
But it’s not as big as the roomy keyboard included with most BlackBerry and many Windows Mobile or Android devices. People with large digits may find it uncomfortable. At least this reviewer was able to type much faster on it — especially when factoring in the lack of typos — than on the iPhone, with which I was much more accustomed.
The second big difference between the Pre and its competition is that the Pre runs Palm’s new webOS operating system.
Happily, webOS feels like something from Palm, a company with a long and deservedly proud tradition for making comfortable and pleasant environments for working with handheld devices, dating back to the days of the PalmPilot organizer. The most significant feature may be the Pre’s ability to run multiple applications simultaneously. This is big if you want to do something like slide away from an e-mail to look up a street address, then quickly resume writing the e-mail to add the address information you’ve just looked up.
But the elegant user interface comes with a twist, which is that it’s not as easy or intuitive to use as some users might like. For a few days, I thought the Pre had a number of limitations that, after some serious tinkering and a little reading of an online manual, I learned it did not have.
Central to the Pre experience is the combining of information from various sources. The address book, for example, can show information from a number of online address books at once. Most important, you can do this with e-mail. In my case, for example, e-mail from my work Microsoft Corp. Exchange account and personal Gmail account ran together when I clicked on the e-mail app. This was good. Unlike any other device with which I’m familiar, the Pre also let me include a second Exchange account I have for a college where I work part-time. Most devices are restricted to one Exchange account. This may be a rare need, but for me this is great.
All your information and e-mail from multiple sources in one place. Nice. (The iPhone can do this with calendar items but not with the address book or e-mail.)
The downside to the OS is a paltry selection of applications. The lack of applications available at the online Palm App Catalog is depressing. Palm promises this will change quickly now that more software developers are getting the kits they need to build for Palm webOS, but so far that’s just a promise.
This is the Pre’s biggest weakness, and it corresponds to the iPhone’s greatest strength.
The 3GS uses Apple’s richly stocked App Store. Business users will find important applications like Salesforce there and all manner of organizing and product management tools. Calendars work elegantly with Exchange servers. Spreadsheets and Microsoft Word documents render nicely. So far, we’ve dealt mostly with business applications.
When it comes to applications intended for fun, the Pre is a good player in a field where the iPhone is a fabulous one.
The Pre handles video — including the Sprint TV service — nicely. But with its bigger screen and access to the iTunes Store catalog, the iPhone sets the standard.
Games for the Pre will no doubt come quickly, but the iPhone has a great head start. For a delightful flashback to the 1980s, try Centipede.
Corporate network operators will like the Palm. It has a remote wipe feature for lost or stolen phones. But now the iPhone does too. And it’s a safe bet the iPhone will take almost no training time. Not so for the Pre.
The 3GS is far snappier than earlier iPhones or the Pre, and the new 3.0 iPhone operating system offers a search feature that is far superior to any of those offered by rivals, including Palm. Open a search window with one swipe, enter search terms and then take a quick breath. Soon, you’ll see a list including every application or file on your iPhone containing the sought-after keyword. The Pre’s search is much more limited.
Networks are critical. AT&T Inc. now offers a first-rate data network. Sprint does too.
Finally, there’s that most basic of features — using your handheld as a phone. The Pre is much, much nicer to hold. But the iPhone handles tasks like switching calls more easily.
Both cost $199 with service plans.
Eric Convey is managing editor of the Boston Business Journal. He can be reached at econvey@bizjournals.com.
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