Palm Pre deals & review

As a fresh and uniquely exciting addition to the smartphone world, the highly popular Palm Pre uses the Linux-based multitasking WebOS platform that recently replaced the PalmOS.

It gets powered by the ARM Cortex A8 clocked at 600 MHz. under its elegantly styled QWERTY slider form factor. And no, it’s not the usual side slider with QWERTY keyboard but a portrait slider with full touchscreen gadgetry and a slew of features that cement its hold as a most competent alternative to Blackberry and HTC on the business phone markets. 

But what makes the Palm brand quit a promise to compete with the big boys is that apart from its serous features for serious executives, it take a nod to the fun features we’ve come to expect from smartphones of all persuasion. At least it tries.

Key Features

The Palm Pre is a 3G phone on the tri band UMTS (850 / 1900 / 2100) with data connectivity speeds at 3.6 Mbps on HSDPA for truly fast internet connections. International roaming won’t be a problem with its quad band GSM (850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900) with class 1- GPRS/EDGE data speeds up to 236.8 Kbps.

Local data connectivity gets served with WiFi 802.11b/g for hotspot surfing as well as Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and microUSB 2.0 for wireless and wired data transfers and syncing, respectively. There’s also a built-in GPS receiver for SatNav functionality.

This is full-bodied handset that’s relatively thick and solid to the feel as it measures 100.5 x 59.5 x 16.9mm and a weighty 133g. Its stand-out feature is its 3.1-inch TFT LCD display with Half-VGA resolution and 16 millions colors and using the capacitive touchscreen technology. 

It also has a gravity accelerometer for auto rotate portrait or landscape viewing according to handset tilt.   It carries a digicam with 3.2 megapixel resolution, enhanced fixed focus and LED flash. You can auto-tag images taken with it using its GPS receiver. Video recording and a secondary VGA camera may be a lot to ask from a serious business phone as the Palm Pre has neither. 

But its multimedia isn’t going to be left behind despite having no radio. You still get a reasonably competent media players for audio files in the MP3, WAV and eAAC+ formats as well as video content in the MP4 and H.263/H.264 formats. 

There’s a speakerphone as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack for your favorites high fidelity headsets but you can also go wireless stereo listening with its A2DP profile support for stereo Bluetooth earphones.

The Palm Pres has microSD support hoping that its users would be content with its 8 GB internal memory for use files and a 256 MB RAM for its OS and system file when launched as it requires this much to support multitasking. It gets fueled by a standard li-ion battery with 1150 mAh rating and can get you up to 5 hours of talk time on 2G and 300 hours of standby time on a single full charge.