Palm, Inc: Famous. Venerable… Dying?
After the utter collapse of the firm’s once-profitable PDA business at the hand of smartphones, Palm in 2007 turned to devices like the Centro and the Treo 755p to get a piece of the new action. But 2007, for those who do not recall, was the year of the iPhone. The iPhone boasted vastly superior hardware, an OS that threw all of Palm OS’ shortcomings into the spotlight and, of course, delivered the revolutionary app store.
Financial history shows that the iPhone era has been particularly unfortunate for the Sunnyvale device maker, as the company’s stock price fell from a high of $16.25 on June 29, 2007 to just $1.86 by December of 2009.
Palm stock prices between the day of the iPhone's introduction June 6, 2009.
While analysts and investors spent 18 months wringing their hands and losing faith, Palm was hard at work; something big was coming, they said. Rumors about the “something” began in 2008, and by January’s CES 2009, all was revealed: Palm, Inc. had designed a sleek new handset complete with an OS that was so fresh and new that you could still smell the paint. That handset was the Palm Pre.
Analysts, investors, journalists and even the fickle smartphone buyers stood in awe of what Palm had done in secret. The value of Palm’s stock followed suit, making a six-month rally to $16 and change through the introduction of the device in mid-June of ’09. Often more important for a company looking to rescue itself, Palm gained an effusive and excited amount of hype across the web–such things tend to indicate success these days.
Rather than ride the wave of good will, however, the days that have followed the Pre’s launch have been mired in misfortune. Palm’s stock price is once again under $4.00 (and falling), some analysts have devalued the stock price to $0 and rumors persist that the company is headed for a fire sale.
I’ve previously discussed the causes for Palm’s steady decline, but the answers bear repeating: Crappy and uninformative advertising, dramatic early mistakes with third-party developers and hardware that is rapidly becoming outdated in the face of competing devices from the Android ecosystem.
Despite these missteps in several important categories, Palm is trying very hard to keep itself afloat by spreading the Pre as far and wide as carriers will have it. Not but seven months after the Pre launched on the Sprint network, Palm applied a fresh coat of paint and shipped their handset to Verizon as the Palm Pre Plus, the subject of today’s review.
The Palm Pre Plus
As the second iteration of the Pre design, the Palm Pre Plus features only minor alterations to the device’s aesthetics and hardware. For example, the Pre features a silver button on the face of the device, which summons the multi-tasking interface if apps are running, or the application launcher if none are running. The Pre Plus, however, simply features a small, touch-sensitive strip of light that performs the same functions.
Next, both the Pre and the Pre Plus can be charged wirelessly via the Touchstone inductive charger, which Sprint Pre users can grab for $59.99. Pre users also require the $17.99 Touchstone-compatible rear cover, bringing the total cost of inductive charging for Pre users up to $77.98. The Pre Plus, however, comes standard with the special rear cover, bringing the total price for Verizon Pre users down to just $49.99 for the charger itself.
The keyboard on the Pre Plus, too, has received a revamp. In addition to a new white color scheme (rather than the Pre’s orange), Palm took a page from the Pixi’s playbook and firmed up the keys. The change comes in response to complaints of mushy keys on the Pre, which can lead to inaccurate or slower typing.
Finally, the Pre Plus features 512MB onboard RAM to the Pre’s 256MB, and the Pre Plus’ onboard storage has been increased to 16GB from the Pre’s 8GB.
All changes considered, the Pre Plus’ user experience is not vastly different from that of the Pre, but the tweaks do make for a handset that looks and feels more polished.
Specifications
Processor: Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 (500MHz ARM Cortex-A8 & PowerVR SGX 530 GPU)
RAM: 512MB
Screen Size: 3.1″ diagonal
Screen Type: Capacitive LCD
Resolution: 480x320px (HVGA, 186ppi)
Onboard Storage: 16GB
Removable Storage: None
Camera: 3.2MP with LED flash
Radio(s): 800/1900MHz EV-DO Rev. A (3G), CDMA2000 (2G)
WiFi: 802.11b/g
PAN: Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
Size: 3.96″ tall (closed), 2.35″ wide and .67″ thick
Weight: 4.8 oz
The Pre Plus is Palm’s flagship handset. As the newest and most powerful product in the company’s lineup, I would be remiss if I did not compare it to devices of the same caliber from other ecosystems: Apple’s iPhone 3GS, Android’s HTC Nexus One and Windows Mobile’s HTC HD2.
| Palm Pre Plus | HTC HD2 | Apple iPhone 3GS | HTC Nexus One | |
| Platform | webOS 1.4 | Windows Mobile 6.5.3 | iPhone OS 3.1.3 | Android 2.1 |
| Processor | 500MHz ARM Cortex-A8 | 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon | 600MHz ARM Cortex-A8 | 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon |
| GPU | PowerVR SGX 530 (14MPolys/s) |
AMD z430 (22 MPolys/s) |
PowerVR SGX 535 (28 MPolys/s) |
AMD z430 (22 MPolys/s) |
| RAM | 512MB | 576MB | 256MB | 512MB |
| ROM | N/A | N/A | N/A | 512MB |
| Screen Size | 3.1″ | 4.3″ | 3.5″ | 3.7″ |
| Screen Type | Capacitive LCD | Capacitive LCD | Capacitive LCD | Capacitive AMOLED |
| Resolution | 480×320 | 800×480 | 480×320 | 800×480 |
| Display Density | 186ppi | 217ppi | 163ppi | 252ppi |
| Onboard Storage | 16GB | 1GB | 16 or 32GB | 192MB (After firmware) |
| Removable Storage | N/A | 16GB, expandable to 32GB | N/A | 4GB, expandable to 32GB |
| Camera | 3.2MP, LED flash | 5MP, LED flash | 3MP | 5MP, LED flash |
| Radio | EV-DO Rev. A | 1700MHz UMTS | 1900MHz UMTS | 1700MHz UMTS |
| WiFi | 802.11b/g | 802.11b/g | 802.11b/g | 802.11b/g |
| PAN | Bluetooth 2.1+EDR | Bluetooth 2.1+EDR | Bluetooth 2.1+EDR | Bluetooth 2.1+EDR |
| Size | 3.96″ tall 2.35″ wide 0.67″ thick |
4.80″ tall 2.60″ wide 0.40″ thick |
4.55″ tall 2.44″ wide 0.48″ thick |
4.70″ tall 2.35″ wide 0.45″ thick |
| Weight | 4.8 oz | 5.5 oz | 4.8 oz | 4.6 oz |
Accessories
The Palm Pre Plus ships with a complete, but ordinary variety of accessories, including a microUSB cable, a USB-to-AC adapter and a pair of stereo earbuds. Also included in the box is a microfiber carrying pouch to protect the handset in the pocket, as it is particularly glossy. The remaining box contents include a selection of manuals that detail the Pre’s many gestures and webOS features, all of which I’ll explore in greater detail later on.
Design
The Pre Plus has a rather unique appearance that, according to Palm, takes design cues from a “smooth stone.” As one might imagine of a smooth stone, the Pre Plus is replete with uninterrupted surfaces, rounded corners and a bulbous side profile. It is the last point, however, which bothers; at 0.67″ thick, the Pre Plus feels chunky in the pocket. In an age where handset makers are locked in a pissing match to pack as much hardware into as slim a profile possible, the Pre Plus struck me as something of a step backward in this regard.
Out of the pocket and in the hand, however, the Pre Plus told a different story. Between the narrow width of the handset (2.35″) and the gently curving exterior, the Pre Plus fit in the hand remarkably well. The overall size of the smartphone may also be attractive to those with smaller hands, who have lamented to us that the landscape-preferred designs of the iPhone, HD2 and Nexus One are too wide for comfortable typing.
On the subject of aesthetics, meanwhile, the Pre Plus is simply a pretty phone. Done up in a livery of silver and black, a sleek face flows virtually uninterrupted into the rubberized Touchstone charger cover, which gives the phone a certain air of quality. Though volume buttons, a headphone jack and a power button dot the rim of the Plus, those, too, seem to simply melt into the background. The end result is a fashionably seamless, burnished handset.
As a final point on the subject of the Plus’ general design, it was disappointing to see that the infamous “cheese cutter” lip was not reconsidered. On a device with such smooth, swooping lines, a sharp edge like this disturbs the unity of the design and feels almost like a mistake.
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