Updated: read our full UK Palm Pre review
The Palm Pre is a stunning new touchscreen smartphone – the interface uses a card concept where you can reorganise the cards by flicking them to and fro, and up to remove them.
Apps for media playback, browsing the web, finding contacts – they are all designed around the card interface and flicking with your fingers.
You can interact with the screen and swipe with your finger in the gesture area below the main screen.
Overall, the Pre is a powerful, multi-tasking, touchscreen phone that will challenge the iPhone and may outshine the T-Mobile G1, Samsung Instinct, and Blackberry Storm.
Here's a rundown of the screens you can expect to see when using the Palm Pre.
WELCOME: The main screen – the first thing you see when you turn on the phone – with five icons below
Phone calls
CALLING: Dialing a phone number is extremely accurate – we never hit the wrong digit or letter
VOICEMAIL: The Palm Pre does not support visual voicemail in the sense that you can't see a list of voice mail messages – you have to dial to get your messages
HISTORY: You can view a quick call history, though – choosing between all calls and just missed calls
SHOW NAMES: Sparse options for dialling, sure – but one option is to be able to type on the keypad and see contact names instead of actually dialling
RINGTONES: The Palm Pre includes only a handful of ringtones, but you can turn an into MP3 into a ringtone easily
Your comments (3) Click to add a new comment
gambol2k9
June 15th
3. I'm desperate to get my hands on the Pre but I'm beginning to think it could be a long while before it hits the UK :(
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pseudolife
June 12th
2. @ jbelkin:
Ok Spock.... You're the reason the iphone will be always be the "leader" of smartphones. Not because the Pre isn't fantastic, but because you've been sucked into the pokemon craze of "gotta catch 'em all" ipods and iphones. They aren't THAT fantastic. Touch screen is nice... but landscape sliding key-boards are really the future of smartphone interfaces. Once the internet catches up to the smartphone craze, people will want to type even more than they do currently on their phones.
Anyway, your comments are totally bogus. The buttons are the same size, (Not that it matters.) THEY ARE designed the same way, and its not like apple INVENTED THE TOUCHSCREEN!! Hello?? Its been around FOREVER!! Apple's Design = Ikea.
The pre is great because it offers people a nice phone that does things similar to the iphone while not being RESTRICTED by the ridiculous "design" standards of fApple. By the way... looking pretty IS restricting.
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jbelkin
June 12th
1. Great article and very telling why the Palm Pre - nevermind palm's cash flow problem & meager app offerings will never come close tothe iPhone - first page icons aren't even designed the same - different directions and the buttons are all different sizes and not logical. Typical. They get a working touchscreen and think they've reach iphone/apple design status ... this does look better than samsung or nokia UI design but that's not saying much.
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