The release of the Pre is very close – which means that Palm has to provide devices/lift NDAs now if it wants to benefit from pre-release reviews. Palm did just that, and enabled a few sites to play around with the Pre.
The list below contains interesting reviews:
Gizmodo
Gizmodo’s Jason Chen has taken the device for a spin, and figured out that Palm still is Palm: their hardware still has the same eekers it always had.
Unfortunately, the centro-style keyboard still is around:
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It’s not good enough for a smartphone. Each of my thumbs take up the width of four keys, ensuring that only a fingernail approach would get me anywhere near accurate typing. It’s a very Centro-like key layout, and each individual key feels slightly too rubbery and sticky to be pleasant. Each key offers lots of resistance and doesn’t depress quite enough to get a good tactile feel while typing quickly.
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Engadget
Engadget is surprisingly happy with the Pre:
One feeling that we were constantly stuck by while testing the phone was a kind of revelatory, ‘Hey, this actually feels how a computer feels.’ It was an experience not completely unlike our first encounter with the iPhone — that little light that goes on that tells you that things can really be different than how they’ve been before. We also felt that same thing the first time we picked up a Treo, so it’s fitting that the Pre should inspire a similar response.
To put it simply, the Pre is a great phone, and we don’t feel any hesitation saying that. Is it a perfect phone? Hell no. Does its OS need work? Definitely. But are any of the detracting factors here big enough to not recommend it? Absolutely not.
PalmInfoCenter
Ryan Kairer generally praised the device, but found a few stability eekers in the WebOS:
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For instance many of the more higher end apps such as Photos, Music and even the Calendar can take anywhere from a couple to 7 seconds to fully load, …
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I also ran into a few issues with memory allocation. I was initially shocked to get a “out of memory” type alerts when trying to open a new app during my first experience with the device.
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Digital Daily
John Paczkowski has put together a list of some further reviews – hit the link above to access seven further reviews.
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