The iPhone has a serious contender in the Palm Pre. Not that mobile phone maker Palm Inc. wants to, but the Palm Pre has the look and feel on its user interface that’s undoubtedly inspired by the iPhone.
It uses a Linux-based WebOS platform that’s unique to Palm but with a home screen that looks like a page from iPhone. It even has a menu icons that take the same elegant approach of showing just what you need which is what iPhone does.
The obvious conclusion points to an effort to take some iPhone market for its own. With a few downsides on the Palm Pre, we think that iPhone now faces a real challenge from it.
Remarkable Features for an Award Winning Mobile Phone
Winning considerable awards and plaudits from critics make the Palm Pre a great option to consider when getting a versatile all-in-one mobile phone. Check out these winning features:
It runs on a 600 MHz Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 (ARM Cortex A8 + PowerVR SGX) CPU engine that’s safely underclocked to 500 MHz. Its sports a large and brilliant 3.1-inch capacitive touchscreen that supports 16 million colors and an HVGA (half-size VGA) resolution. It receives input stimulus just like the iPhone touchscreen with need for a stylus pen that Palm handsets have been known for. There’s gesture area below the display with LED underlighting for additional commands using your finger. It does not switch to a virtual keyboard on the screen like most other touchscreens when keying in data for email and text messaging. That’s what its sliding QWERTY keyboard is for. The handset works nicely with three input sensors: an accelerometer that automatically shifts from landscape to portrait and back at the tilt of handset; an ambient light sensor for automatically adjusting the display’s brightness; and a proximity sensor that disables touchscreen input when the handset touches your face in a call. It’s got a 3.2 megapixel camera with LED flash that does an excellent imaging job with very minimal features. There’s a generous 8 GB of internal memory. It’s among the first smartphones that can be charged wirelessly using electromagnetic induction from a charging block Palm calls the Touchstone Charger. But there’s the usual microUSB port as well for wired charging. There’s Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR with A2DP support as well as 3.5mm headphone jack. You also get turn-by-turn navigation with A-GPS support.
Forgivable Drawbacks
Admittedly, the Palm Pre has a couple of drawbacks. It doesn’t have any microSD expansion slot which we think must have been forgotten by its designers. Either that or it was banking on its generous internal memory of 8 Gb. It’s got no video recording capability. For an excellent imaging mobile phone, this may disappoint. But studies show that few users actually use this feature especially on a handset with minimal user memory, whether internal or external.
But no matter, these are minor letdowns that are overwhelmed by its other features that make the Palm Pre a truly enjoyable mobile phone experience to own. Its awards should speak nicely about that. Telefonica announced its availability in the UK before the Holiday winter sets in. Go get one before Christmas.
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