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(More customer reviews)I received my Palm Pre Plus from AT&T about two weeks ago. I have owned a Palm Centro for a couple of years now, and I naively expected the same functionality from the Pre Plus that I enjoyed with my Centro. That really was my fault as I didn't do enough homework on the features and functions of this phone compared to the traditional Palm OS.
Physically, the phone felt comfortable in my hands. It wasn't heavy enough to be burdensome, but it wasn't so light that it felt like a toy. The keys have the traditional clear overlay that protects the letters, and they are a bit larger and better spaced than on my Centro or Treo 650. I was very pleased with the slide out keyboard.
Learning to navigate the phone via the swipe motions took about three or four days to become totally natural. It would have been much easier if Palm had included better instructions with the phone, but the included manual contained little more than instructions on how to turn it on, answer a call, etc.
Setting up the necessary software to customize the phone was moderately challenging, even though I am one of two of my school's officially labeled "geeks". Web OS seemed to me to have been shipped prematurely. There are many wonderful customizations available, but you have to download several programs and rely on what's called "Homebrew Apps" or third-party software for the features that old-school Palm users take for granted. For example, there is no custom ringtone for unknown callers, no options for reminders, no easy scrolling through a text message to quickly fix an error in the line above, limited or no brightness options, etc.
Traditional Palm software for the Centro and Treo phones will not work on WebOS. You can buy an app for the Pre that will allow you to run some (but not all) Palm OS apps on the Pre.
There is no included phone-to-pc sync option. For me and many other Centro/Treo users, this was a BIG deal. There is an app that will allow you to back up your Pre to your desktop, BUT the the traditional hot sync is not available on WebOS. The phone comes with Google calender sync installed, but any attempt to sync Google Calender, the Pre, AND Outlook will result in possibly hundreds of duplicate event entries. There is third-party software you can purchase to allow a full sync with Outlook, but it can cost as much as $60-$70. Even those software options do not back up your media to your computer. You are on your own with that one.
Another nasty surprise was the missed call notification. When the Pre informs you that you have missed a call, a tap on the screen will open up the dialog that lets you know whose call you missed. Unfortunately, it immediately dials the number of the missed call AT THE SAME TIME. It is really unpleasant to be in the middle of a meeting or other activity and find yourself trying to explain to your mother that you really didn't mean to call her back right then or why you felt compelled to call her and hang up.
As they say in the world of Pre, though: There's a patch for that. In other words, you can download system tweaks that change many of the basic functions of the Pre and make it more user-friendly. While I think that's great, I also believe that most of it shouldn't be necessary.
On the bright side, should you brick your phone playing around with Homebrew (unofficial freeware) apps or patches, Palm has available for download Web Doctor. This script will restore your phone to factory specs, erasing everything except what your Pre shipped factory with. When you sync with your Palm account, your address book, Palm store apps, and a few other things will be restored. Your media, however, is gone forever unless you have used USB mode to access your media folders and backed them up manually or used a cloning app to copy your Pre data for restore.
There is no removable memory option. The Pre comes with 16g on-board drive space, and that's it. It offers the option to choose "charge" or "Use in usb mode" when you plug in the included USB charging cable.
While the battery life is terrible, there has been a sharp drop in the price of charging accessories. The Touchstone (a cable-less charger) has dropped from the $70 range to around $20 shipping and all here on Amazon. There has likewise been a similar drop in the price of car chargers, AC to USB converters, and replacement batteries.
An item of note: The batteries for the Pre are physically indistinguishable from Centro batteries with the exception of the black outer packaging that the Pre battery comes in. Palm says that you are not to use Centro batteries in the Pre, but they have not as yet made an official statement as to why. They only warn you that using a Centro battery in a Pre can damage your phone. They just won't tell you how. This is especially frustrating as not only are the two batteries both listed at 1150mAh, but there is a substantial price difference between the two - not to mention that many Pre users already have a ton of Centro batteries lying around gathering dust. If you ever get bored, you can always head over to one of the Pre message boards on the web and get the Pre/Centro battery argument going (again). You'll have more entertainment than you can stand, I promise.
There are many features of the Pre that made the phone worth the (mostly initial) aggravation. The ability to minimize apps, leaving them open as you open another, is wonderful. As I don't have the best data access in my location, I can open the web browser and leave it minimized while I send a text or record an event into my calender. It comes GPS enabled, and while the AT&T GPS servie is extra, Google maps is not.
The browser is incredibly easy to use, and it offers several short-cut options that put your favorite sites within single tap availability. It also switches between apps quickly and easily without forcing you to start from the beginning in each one. It also still threads chat messages.
You get thirty days of free phone support with your new phone, and after thirty days, phone support is about $15 an hour. Chat support is always free.
The Pre Plus is is a great geek phone that with many options available for customization - including many free themes. It can get expensive buying the apps that many Centro users have felt should have been included with the phone, however, and setting up the customization will be beyond the comfort zone of may users. While the battery life is abysmal, chargers and replacement batteries are becoming more affordable. The graphics are stunningly clear and sharp, the screen is an optimal size in relation to the device, and the versatility of functioning as a thumb drive is an added plus.
In summary, the crux of it is this: it has a mixed bag of positives and negatives, and the way you will feel about it will be directly related to the degree of tech-savvy that you have. If you are a Treo or Centro user who is upgrading, don't expect a great (or even pleasant) out-of-the-box experience, and you need to be prepared to shell out additional $$ for third-party software needed to complete the functionality of the phone. For me, that meant spending about $100 on additional software to allow me to sync, run some classic apps, and to replace a couple of old favorites that just wouldn't run on an emulator.
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