Palm Pre review - full hands-on first look

We’ve been waiting to get our hands on Palm’s hotly anticipated Pre smartphone for a little while now, with UK samples proving rarer than hens teeth. We finally managed to get hold of one yesterday, and it’s a great little phone.

First off, it’s a lot smaller than it looks in photographs, proving considerably more compact than handsets like HTC’s Touch Pro or Apple’s iPhone. The pebble-like design is truly stunning, with a glossy screen that blends into the black casing when not in use, although it’s a magnet for fingerprints and scratches. Thankfully there’s a protective pouch.

The screen itself measures in at 3.1 inches, with a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels. It’s not the sharpest screen we’ve seen, but it’s colourful and more than good enough. The pre-installed wallpapers don’t help matters though, proving blurry and lacking clarity – open the menu and it’s apparent that the screen is crisper than it initially looks.

As with most previous Palm handsets, it’s a touchscreen display, but this time there’s no sign of a stylus. There’s no need, either, as Palm’s WebOS operating system is one of the most finger-friendly we’ve seen to date. Swiping upwards using the small button below the display brings up the main menu, with clear icons for launching commonly used applications – such as an internet browser, SMS and email clients and camera.

Along with the Android and Apple iPhone OS, you can also scroll to the side for more applications. The beauty of this operating system is the ability to easily multi-task – clicking the button below the display resizes the screen you’re on, leaving a ‘card’ (a smaller rendering of the screen) and letting you swipe it to the side to manage other applications. It really couldn’t be easier, and is amazingly swift and fluid. You can also swipe upwards to close the application.

It’s great for email connectivity, proving simple to setup email accounts and sync with applications such as Microsoft’s Outlook and Exchange. Bringing your contacts together from different applications  - such as Facebook, Google and Outlook – is also a model of simplicity, using a feature called Synergy. 3G/HSDPA connectivity offers smooth download speeds, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth is also built-in.

The Pre isn’t perfect though – the biggest problem we had was getting to grips with the Pre initially, and although it’s easy to control once you know what you’re doing, it’s not the most intuitive handset straight out of the box. Several times we had to search to find what we wanted, although it’s worth it once you get the hang of it. One feature we love is the ability to start typing on the homescreen, where the Pre then brings up a variety of search mediums – including Google, Google Maps, Wikipedia and Twitter.

It’s the hardware keypad that’s certain to attract business users, however. It’s not that big, but we found it a definite improvement over soft touchscreen keypads. Similar in usability to previous Palm Treos, it features a rubber finish, and, although close together, the keys are responsive and easy to type on.

Features are plentiful – GPS is integrated, with Google Maps also included. The 3.2 megapixel camera takes reasonable if unexceptional photographs, although internal storage is limited to 8GB, and there’s no form of expansion – so you won’t be able to simply swap memory cards.

Small gripes aside, the Palm Pre is an excellent handset. The small keyboard won’t suit all users, but we preferred it to the touchscreen display found on the iPhone, and although it currently lacks a huge array of software applications, the operating system offers a valid alternative to Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone OS.