The Palm Pre DebutsThe Palm Pre Debuts

You can't have everything, but it looks like they got a lot of it right.

The long anticipated Palm Pre was introduced by Sprint on June 6, and the reviews are starting to roll in. As the cellular carriers don't give a hoot about the requirements of business customers, those of us who cover the enterprise market don't get included on the pre-release reviewers list. The Sprint team covering Interop a couple of weeks ago couldn't even get any pre-release units to show off. However, the heavyweights have weighed in, and we can start getting a good picture of how the Pre stacks up against the two dominant smartphone platforms, Blackberry and the iPhone.The great truth about smartphones is there will likely never be one truly dominant model. Working within the confines of a small form factor, limited power, and the other inherent limitations, every design is going to have to leave something off the list. The trick is to develop the device that provides most of the things that most of the users will want, and to do so with a compelling user interface that draws the user in and continues to deliver a satisfying experience over time. The Palm design team, led by Jon Rubenstein who worked with Steve Jobs on and off for 16 years, seems to have made a lot of the right choices.

The Basics The Pre is touchscreen (3.1-inch 320x480 pixels like the iPhone) smartphone with a glossy black, scratch-resistant finish. It is one-half-inch shorter than the iPhone and one-quarter-inch thicker which, in combination with the shape and finish, give it a better hand feel than the iPhone. The screen slides up exposing a full QWERTY keyboard with a BlackBerry-like feel, though it is somewhat cramped for the meat-fisted.

As it's designed for the Sprint network initially, it is a CDMA device with EVDO Rev A data capability; Verizon, the other major CDMA carrier, has indicated they intend to offer it within the next 6-months. It also includes Wi-Fi support (802.11b/g), stereo Bluetooth, and GPS; with no GSM capability, it's not a device for the international traveler. The one-size fits-all device includes 8 Gbytes of memory and no memory card slot. The iPhone doesn't support removable memory either, but at least the Pre allows you to swap the battery. Battery swapping will be a big feature as the Pre's battery life is on par with the iPhone. They also have a 3.0 megapixel camera and a $70 inductive charger (i.e. you don't have to plug the Pre in to charge it) called the Touchstone.

Software The one part of the Pre that everyone was waiting to see was the new Web OS, and initial reports conclude that it delivers some unique features and overall a very good user experience. The touch screen supports many of the iPhone elements like sweeping and pinch-and-zoom, along with some nice enhancements. First, unlike the iPhone it does support multitasking, i.e., the ability to have several applications open at a time; the limit is around 10, after which you get an out-of-memory warning. The Pre also has a Quick Launch Bar, which allows you to launch your five favorite applications without returning to the main screen. This seems to hearken back to the 4-fixed function keys on the original Palm handhelds.

One cute feature for managing the multiple applications is the card deck which allows you to have a compressed view of open applications and either access them with a touch or close them by whisking them off the screen. At the moment, the Pre's application store seems to be about 40,000 applications short of Apple's iTunes store (which has about 40,000 applications). Expanding that applications library will be key to developing a Pre ecosystem. However, enticing developers away from Apple will be difficult given the iPhone's 20 million unit installed base.

The Pre also supports an application called Synergy that allows you to consolidate contacts and calendars from multiple sources (e.g. Google, Microsoft Exchange, etc.), and a wireless back-up service so you can recover your personal info from a network-based server.

Conclusion: A Good Shot Down the Center of the Fairway I don't play golf, but the Pre's designers seem to have made an exemplary first shot. It looks nice, feels good in the hand, and the user interface has some catchy features like card stacking and whisking to close applications. Of course, having the ability to do multitasking opens the door to a lot of convenience features.

Battery life is a downer, but at least you can swap the battery which is a big plus over the iPhone. The reviewers also noted that it was sluggish to downright slow on routine tasks like loading applications and viewing pictures. The keyboard has a good feel, but physical limitations leave it somewhat cramped--in short, you can't have everything, but it looks like they got a lot of it right. As with any mobile platform, the key will be to get the developer community to joins in and build those iPhone like applications for the Pre.

What we don't know how is how it will address enterprise requirements. The user interface sounds intriguing and multitasking is key; we don't care much about cameras, stereo Bluetooth, and Facebook interworking. Better battery life will be essential, and on the Wi-Fi side it's b/g only. Hopefully Sprint won't repeat AT&T's mistake of selling the heck out it before they have the data network capacity to support it with decent performance. None of the reviews mention power-on password, onboard encryption, or secure VPN remote access, but Apple's capabilities in those areas is still spotty two-years after launch.

Longer term, the picture is cloudier, as Sprint is the only carrier opting for WiMAX rather than LTE as their 4G solution. Finding handsets with CDMA and WiMAX support could put them in a tough spot as the industry begins to move to 4G early in the next decade. In the meantime, the Pre may have what it takes to make Palm the comeback kid of 2009, and Sprint could sure use a hot handset to help keep the "Now Network" from becoming the "Then Network."You can't have everything, but it looks like they got a lot of it right.