HP Veer deals & review

The HP Veer is a handset that takes a lot of inspiration from the HP Pre 3, which was itself heavily based on the old Palm Pre handsets. When Palm was acquired by HP the latter company inherited all of its phone designs as well as the critically acclaimed WebOS phone operating system, which makes its way onto the Veer in a new updated version (2.2). The Veer has a similar sliding design to the Pre 3, with the same compacted QWERTY keypad design underneath the screen

The screen itself is 2.6" which is quite small for a touch sensitive screen. This is compensated for by the additional functionality provided by the QWERTY pad as well as the increased portability of the Veer compared to other touch sensitive phones. The screen runs on capacitive technology which means that multitouch input methods are available for use. The screen on the Veer is not quite as visually spectacular as the one of the Pre 3, with a reduced 256k colour count and resolution of 320 x 400. This still provides an excellent rendering of the WebOS interface however, and the resolution still offers a great deal of sharpness when the overall size of the screen is taken into consideration.

While the Pre 3 runs on a speedy 1.4GHz processor the Veer is limited to just 800MHz. Although it is not quite as fast as its more high profile counterpart it still offers a very speedy experience when dealing with apps. The Veer comes with Adobe Flash 10.1 which means that streaming videos can be enjoyed online, and video and music content can be enjoyed offline with the excellent support provided by the phone´s media player. Like the Pre 3 the Veer does not feature an FM radio, and the 8GB internal storage is limited to 6.5GB for user content. The main disappointment here is that there is no microSD card slot to expand the memory, so 6.5GB is really all you get.

For many people this will still provide plenty of room however, and much more entertainment can be provided by online content. The HP Veer comes with 3G and Wi-Fi support so that web access is possible in most situations and the Veer features an excellent Web 2.0/HTML browser. There is also fantastic support for social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Other messaging options included on the Veer are threaded SMS, MMS, email and instant messaging. The Veer also comes with a 5 megapixel camera with some great features like geo-tagging. Video recording is available but is unfortunately not up to the same 720p standard as the HP Pre 3. All in all, the camera on the Veer is perfectly suited to everyday use.