Thoughts on the Palm Pre
I moved to the Palm Pre three months ago, and I think I’m finally ready to make a judgment on it. Here goes:
- This phone is open. I mean really open, all the way down to the OS. You want the battery level to give you a percentage reading rather than vague bars? No problem. You want to be able to force roam (on Verizon’s network—more on that below)? Sure thing. Basically, the phone is a sandbox, and a beautifully thought-out one at that. And by allowing users to patch the phone to fit the way they use it, Palm not only gains visibility into what features people want, they create a tech team that is actively developing their OS, which truly is the most often interacted with part of any technology. You can develop all the apps you want, but it’s the OS that guides the user’s interaction with the apps, and thus most affects how a user feels about the phone’s ecosystem on the macro level. Phones are not videogame consoles (not yet anyway), and I don’t think people buy them for the sake of one or two apps—they buy them for the overall experience. Also, the Konami code unlocks Developer Mode. That’s just awesome.
- The hardware is good, but not great. While I like the physical keyboard (and am more or less happy with the homebrew onscreen keyboard I downloaded), I often find the phone difficult to open. Maybe it’s my clammy hands, but the surface of this thing is just slippery. Once I put on a vinyl-ish screen protector and the matte Touchstone battery cover, this problem mostly resolved itself. But I don’t think Palm gave enough initial thought to opening/closing in the everyday world.
- Sprint’s network is good in SF, terrible in Detroit (my hometown) and mild in NYC. But there’s a saving grace: Sprint leases roaming time from Verizon, and with the right OS patch, you can force roam when in areas with poor service. So long as less than 50% of your monthly time comes from roaming, there’s no extra charge.
- On a side note, do phone makers yet understand the full ramifications of signing exclusivity deals with service providers? When the iPhone came out, it was so cool that people forgave AT&T’s crappy network. Obviously, that backlash has begun in earnest, but why is this not an object lesson for all makers? I know Apple gets a cut of the AT&T contract, but is it worth the hit its hardware takes on behalf of the underlying network issues? And if a maker tries to distinguish its hardware from the network issues, isn’t that a terrible Hobson’s Choice (blame your business partner vs. let people blame your brand)? I suspect a better long-term strategy would be to avoid exclusive deals and sacrifice the lower upfront revenue for better long-term brand equity.
- Palm fails fast. I love this model. Google appears to love this model. Apple appears to hate this model. It’s not a universal truth, of course—I wouldn’t want to invest heavily in a laptop on the premise that, though it sucks now, it may rapidly get better. But nonetheless, it allows you to work empirically rather than from abstraction, effectively crowd-sourcing software design. How many software developers have spent hundreds of hours developing what they thought was an incredible feature only to discover that consumers either didn’t care about it or hated it? I’d wager plenty…
- I’m going to contradict myself a bit now, but maybe Palm did something right by staying with Sprint only early on in development. WebOS was a geek’s playground when released, but not really perfect for everyday users. By confining it to one smaller network, Palm kept the lower, larger part of the consumer pyramid from developing feelings about the early versions of a product. As Microsoft will tell you, a bad early experience can kill all chances for redemption, even if the final product is not inherently terrible. I’ve only had my Pre a few months, but in that time WebOS has seen significant updates, and I can say with confidence that, though someone like my dad would not have been able to deal with the issues I encountered when I first got the phone (issues with Google contact sync, since resolved; some issues with maps; poor battery utilization; etc.), the updates have brought the phone to a point where even he would be able to use and love it. Now that it’s moving to Verizon, he can. Fortunate timing, maybe. But you could also think of it as a cagey rollout schedule.
- Opening the app storefront is just genius (maybe). Yes, you lose control of the user experience, but you gain a free development team and myriad distribution channels for an app store that is starting from behind. Apple would never do this—and why should they? They worked hard to create the iTunes store experience, and it’s worked for them—but Palm doesn’t have an iPod pushing users to a piece of Palm software for some other everyday use. So why not try something different.
- The pricing simply can’t be beat. I pay ~$75/month for 450 minutes to landlines, but unlimited mobile-to-mobile (any network), unlimited data and text, GPS, navigation, streaming TV, and—wait for it—INSURANCE. Take that, every iPhone owner who’s ever cracked a screen.
- The screen is too small. It is. Smaller is not always better, and it makes web browsing just slightly too difficult. I think it would be fine to make the phone 15% larger so long as it didn’t gain additional thickness. It’d still be smaller than the iPhone, but it’d be big enough and small enough at the same time (insert Goldilocks joke here).
- The placement of the usb port is a complete and utter design failure, unless the purpose of putting it in such an inaccessible location (with an impossible-to-open cover) was meant to push users into the Touchstone, in which case, it’s less a failure of design than an act of near-sightedness.
- The tethering via wifi hotspot, if it performs as advertised, is a spectacular idea—if priced correctly.
- All in all, I’m happier with the Pre than any other phone I’ve had. I’ve spent considerable time with the iPhone, and although I’m an unabashed fan of Apple, the combination of cost + openness + Verizon backstop is pretty much the perfect package for me right now. It’s one piece of hardware that genuinely makes my life easier, and that’s the best one can hope for for a phone.
