I have and will always have a soft spot for Palm and its devices. Palm is the company that made the legendary PalmPilot and it was also largely responsible for popularizing smartphones with the venerable Treo. Lately though, the general public has largely forgotten about Palm. It has been supplanted by the iPhone, BlackBerry or any one of the number of Google Android phones available. However, Palm has made one last stand in the shape of the Pre Plus, and it is quite a good one at that.
The Pre Plus is available from Verizon Wireless and will soon be coming to AT&T as well. I tested out the Pre Plus on Verizon's network here in Hanover and came away mightily impressed.
At first glance, the Palm Pre Plus seems very plain, almost nondescript. It is a rounded block of shiny plastic. Turned on, the 3.1" touchscreen display emerges from the darkness of the phone, and beneath it appears a strip of LED light that marks the gesture area. The Pre Plus runs webOS, which is distinctly different from the user interfaces of iPhones, BlackBerries and Android devices. While webOS has apps that open up on the screen much like those devices, the apps are contained in windows called cards. The benefit of this approach is that you can have multiple apps open and the same time, have things running in the background and very easily switch between all this activity.
Frankly, using webOS on the Pre Plus is a great experience. Being able to multi-task makes it feel a generation ahead of the iPhone and the interface has a continuity that phones like the Droid just lack. Something in particular about webOS that I appreciated was the way it handled notifications. Unlike the iPhone, which throws a pop up at you whenever something happens, the Pre Plus has a notification tray that can show and hide multiple notifications at the same time. This is a much more intelligent and useful way of handling notifications.
The best part for me is that I can see and feel many of Palm's roots throughout webOS. PalmPilots were great at managing contacts, calendar and to-do lists, and this history lives on in webOS. The calendar and to-do apps, in particular, are much better than the alternatives (or lack thereof) that come with the iPhone.
While webOS provides the Pre Plus with a unique and intuitive experience, it is also probably the Pre's greatest weakness. Unfortunately, there are not nearly as many apps available for the Pre Plus as there are for the iPhone or even Android. This shortcoming is hard to overlook because it is the extensible nature of apps that really separates today's smartphones from the dumbphones everyone used just a few years ago.
There is one app Verizon makes available for the Pre Plus that gives it a leg up on the competition though. The Mobile Hotspot app is a revelation.
It takes the Verizon's 3G service and turns it into a Wi-Fi network available for up to five devices. Best of all, this service is completely free, which is amazing considering that Verizon sells a separate device (the MiFi) that has only this feature costs at least $40 a month. I found this feature completely invaluable while traveling recently, both to stay sane on Amtrak and to avoid paying for internet at hotels.
At the end of the day, I came away thoroughly impressed with the Palm Pre Plus. Especially when you take into account that it only costs $50 with a new contract, it really is a steal, considering a comparable 16GB iPhone 3GS costs $199. It is certainly my hope that people flock to the Pre Plus, not only to give the iPhone legitimate competition, but also so Palm can stay in business and continue its innovation of smartphones.
