Nearly there: first thoughts on the Palm Pre and WebOS

Palm Pre

I purchased Palm Pre (O2, UK) a few days ago, and I thought it would be interesting to post my impressions of it after having used most of the functions of WebOS, its operating system, and having played about with most of the built-in apps. I have been using the phone as my primary device during a few normal work/university days, which turned out to be an interesting test of the device’s hardware.

Let it be said at the outset that this is not a review: if you want that, have a look at the excellent Ars Technica pieces on the hardware and software aspects of the phone.

Read on for more…

Overall impressions

This is an extremely promising device, with a fundamentally modern architecture and interface metaphors appropriate for its multitasking, productivity-centric target audience. WebOS is not intended as an iPhone ‘killer’, and though it could fulfil some aspects of that role, I agree with Ars Technica’s assessment that WebOS and particularly the Pre are at heart messaging and presence-centric, rather than focusing on media and browsing.

Where WebOS really comes into its own is in efficiently managing streams of contact, whether they be through email, IM, SMS or other means, and making real-time updates a pleasure to keep up with. This is a true multi-tasking phone, but unlike my old phone (a Nokia E71 running Symbian S60 3.1), multitasking feels as natural and well-integrated as on any good desktop OS. But unlike a desktop OS, WebOS adopts new metaphors for multitasking and interaction – the ‘card’, which despite having a few teething issues, is much more appropriate for a mobile device than anything imported straight from Mac OS or Windows, and gestures, which grace almost every aspect of the operating system. Most importantly, the innovations in WebOS are not intimidating – they are something that people will actually use.

On the downside, the hardware lets the OS down slightly, due to poor battery life and possibly suspect build quality.

Hardware

The European version of the Pre reminds me of my old Nokia N95 8GB, in terms of its build quality and overall form factor. Palm got the following things right:

Perfect shape and size, although the stock rear cover is a bit slippy so I recommend using the one shipped with the Touchstone (the wireless charging device).
Amazing, beautiful screen, on which pixellation is almost a non-issue, and the rounded corners are absolutely appropriate for WebOS. It dims in dark environments by just the right amount, too.
Excellent touch system, enhanced by a really good capacitative technology
Notification light (built in to the ‘home’ button). A plus.
Gesture area below the screen generally works very well.
Good reception – I am able to make calls with no issues in an area where my E71 tends to switch aggressively between 3G and GSM, leading to momentary drop-outs
Good phone call sound quality and volume
Excellent music playback through the headphone jack – as good sound quality as an iPod Touch.
What seems like very fast graphics hardware, which will surely come into its own as WebOS matures.
MicroUSB port a very useful addition (see hardware drawbacks below)
TouchStone wireless charging implemented beautifully
Good camera with decent flash
Takes standard headphones, and compatible with BlackBerry/iPhone headsets. Win.

But there are some compromises in the hardware:

Battery life is not great, and could be a dealbreaker for some. WiFi eats the battery for breakfast. My initial tests show that a full charge, with moderate use and without using WiFi, lasts around ten to eleven hours before the Pre starts complaining. It takes a bit over twelve hours before it actually switches itself off due to low power. Note that this testing isn’t exhaustive, and I do live in a very poor area for coverage, which tends to increase power usage.
The cover on the USB port is difficult to open, and is certainly going to get damaged and/or lost as a result.
The back of the Pre sometimes gets warm under use. Though this seems to be partially related to use, sometimes it happens when the phone is idle. I expect this will be improved with firmware updates, and could improve the battery life too.
The plastic that the Pre is made from feels hard-wearing but perhaps a little cheap.
The stock back cover is not totally flush with the components underneath, leading to an occasional and slight plastic creaky noise when using the left side of the keyboard.
The ‘home’ key, while very useful as a notification light, could have been replaced with a non-protruding software key and left more room for gestures (as is the case on the Palm Pixi, the next WebOS device)
The keyboard is pretty good, but feels like a downgrade from the great one on my E71. I’m getting used to it quickly though.

Software

In general, I cannot say enough good things about WebOS. It’s clearly an early-revision product, but it already shows enough promise that with the right nurturing from Palm and the developer community, it could be a real knockout. Apart from the lack of 3rd-party apps, it’s already highly competitive with the iPhone OS, the latest revisions of BlackBerry OS and Android 1.5.

I should also say that my Pre is running 1.1.3 firmware, which is older than the current US revision (1.2.1). It’s a shame that Palm were not able to update the European Pres, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that the issues fixed in 1.2.x are really fixed.

Notifications

Beautifully done, simple as that. Every other phone should do notifications like this. Almost every app integrates with it seamlessly, and it’s easy to triage what you do and don’t need to look at. The music player swoops down into a simple set of controls complete with miniature cover art, the messaging app displays message previews.
Most importantly, notifications are non-modal. You don’t have to stop what you’re doing and deal with them. Every non-critical notification disappears after a few seconds and shrinks into a tiny icon to let you get on with things.
IMs and SMS messages can optionally be displayed as notifications even when the phone is locked. Very useful for at-a-glance message triage.

‘Cards’ – the task switcher

Generally very good metaphor for interacting with different apps and screens. Gestures are well integrated and consistent.
On the downside, sometimes it’s difficult to tell which activities are truly always-on, and which activities need a card kept open in order to work. For example, the IM client is always on even if you close Contacts, where it lives. But swipe away Tweed (the most popular Twitter client), and updates for it cease. Not unexpected behaviour given the integration of IM into the OS, but not very consistent from a UI point of view.
Love the real-time updates of each card.

Browser

Generally excellent, and well integrated into the system. A ‘real’ web browser, and about as fast as the iPhone 3G’s.
Occasional issues with JavaScript-driven sites, such as Facebook’s x.facebook.com. Full Facebook is fine though.
Integration of the browser into WebOS’ universal search system is very good. From a standing start, only one tap is required to look up a term in Google, Wikipedia or Twitter (not including typing the actual term of course).

Messaging app (IM and SMS)

Generally superb. The threaded messaging is service-agnostic, meaning if you SMS someone, and they reply using IM, the messages will show up in one integrated conversation.
Could do with supporting more IM networks. This is likely to happen soon as it’s based on libpurple, which supports more IM networks than… well, anything else.
Can’t get it to connect to AIM. No idea why.
Seems to support multiple accounts for the same IM network: nice.
The ‘return’ key sends messages: the problem is, it’s really easy to hit accidentally. I’ve sent a few unfinished messages this way and had to revise them.

Email app

Excellent. Fast, powerful and easy to use.
The ‘all inboxes’ view, and the ‘favourite mailboxes’ system are really useful, and make browsing big IMAP accounts easy.
Message composition is nicely done, and integrates with the notification system (the message being sent flows into the notification bar and is progress is visible while engaging in other tasks).
Push IMAP works well but the Pre can occasionally drop mailbox connections without warning or notification, and not resume them for up to a couple of hours.
Could do with a search mechanism (this is present in WebOS 1.2.x)
I haven’t tested Exchange, so I can’t say anything about that.

Music player app

Notwithstanding the fact that the Pre no longer works with iTunes, the music player is really quite good overall.
The Cover Flow interface for skipping through playlists is great.
Should have a podcast system whereby podcasts can be downloaded over the air, rather than relying on syncing with a computer.

Contacts/Synergy

Great principle (integrating contacts across many cloud services into one address book).
Problematic implementation: it’s difficult to sync straight from a desktop computer, and Synergy can present you with far too many contacts, many of whom may not want on your phone. With Synergy, it’s possible to sync all contacts from a service or none.
Could do with supporting more services. LDAP directories and SyncML servers are high on this list.
LinkedIn is also missing as a data source, but this is fixed in WebOS 1.2.1.
I’ll say it again: SyncML should be implemented and integrated into Palm Profile.
On the individual contact level, metadata support and the interface are excellent. WebOS supports names for phone numbers (like “office phone”, “US mobile”) which sync from the cloud.
It’s very easy and clear how to do most tasks, like add a number from the call log to a new or existing contact.

Calendar

Generally good, with a great interface. The separate day, week and month views show enough to be useful without clutter.
But same issues as with contacts: ‘all or nothing’ syncing from the cloud. No direct syncing capabilities for desktop machines.
No CalDAV support, presumably apart from with Google Calendar.

App Catalogue and 3rd-party apps

Generally shows promise, though some of the apps present are just sophisticated re-workings of existing web apps.
EverNote app shows the potential of the environment – it’s really very well done.
Not really a shop yet in Europe – free apps only at this stage.
3rd-party apps often do not respect localisation preferences, for example erroneously showing dates in US formats, temperatures in Fahrenheit, and so on.
The prospect of ‘homebrew’ apps graduating onto the main App Catalogue is very encouraging.

Miscellaneous

The lock screen is really good – offers PIN security or a simple ‘swipe to unlock’ mechanism
The quick launcher is nicely done – a swipe up from the gesture area accesses common favourites
Speed generally good. The Pre only slows to a crawl in one circumstance: while installing an app. After that it returns to normal.
Photos app should support more upload services, like Flickr. It presently only supports Facebook and Photobucket.
Google Maps app does not have Street View, and sometimes craps out when no internet connection is available.
Google Maps app shows distances in miles and feet, with no option to change it to Metric.
No way of syncing memos and tasks to anything (apart from third-party solutions)
No way to move the text ‘cursor’ apart from tapping at a particular place in a word. If part of the word has scrolled past the edge of the screen, you are forced to delete enough of the text so that you can see the bit you want to edit. Difficult to explain, but not so good. Fixed in WebOS 1.2.

Conclusions

So, in summary: “fix the niggly software issues, sort out the battery management, and you’re onto a serious winner”.

As for whether I’ll keep mine, I’ll see whether the battery life issue can be tolerated, and whether it looks like Palm will update the firmware to improve it. Extended batteries are beginning to become available, which will help. I have about ten days left in which to decide if the excellent software is worth this compromise, so we’ll see…