On Technology

Early reviews of a new product capture the features and first experiences. But often those first impressions turn to disappointment as the novelty wears off and the flaws begin to surface. After using the Palm Pre for 100 days, I thought a more detailed review was in order.

The Pre is no ordinary phone. It represents Palm's do or die effort to come back from the abyss. It's also the first product after the company's restructuring and refinancing, a company that's much smaller with just 1000 employees. And it's the first phone that favorably compares with the iPhone.

The Pre has sold reasonably well, about 800,000 units since Sprint's rollout in June. Palm has announced plans to offer it to other carriers and has just added a second model, the Pixi at $99, while lowering the Pre to $149 (after rebates, of course.).

So after all this time, how good is the Pre? First, I've found the phone itself to work very well. In my use in a half-dozen cities on both coasts, the call and voice quality and service were excellent, noticeably better than the iPhone. There were far fewer randomly dropped calls, particularly when in strong signal areas where calls shouldn't drop.

The Pre makes it easy to search and call a contact's phone number by typing the first few letters, just like the Treo. You can also scroll through the contact list or set up the keys for one touch speed dialing. One improvement I'd like is for the phone to more easily open with one hand. The dial pad on the screen may also be a tad small for those with large fingers.

The Pre is surprisingly small, yet the screen is large enough for Web browsing, and e-mail. The Web browsing is as good as on the iPhone, which is no mean feat, helped by Sprint's fast data network and an excellent browser.

Its WebOS operating system is all new and also works well. Its multi-touch capabilities work much like the iPhone to zoom and pan. But occasionally the OS shows some sluggishness, requiring a second or two to respond.

The Pre is fun and mostly intuitive to use. It has the ability to run multiple applications at once (multitasking), saving the time to close one application before opening a second, and allows quick switching between them while both are running.

Notifications conveniently appear at the bottom of the screen to alert you of missed calls, appointments and new e-mail. While the Pre has robust music, photo and video apps, it can't compare with iTunes' versatility. The Pre initially synced with iTunes, but Apple's latest version of iTunes disabled that capability.

The Pre's slide out keyboard is similar in size to the company's smallest Treo. I had fewer typos than with the iPhone's on-screen keyboard, but I missed many of the typing shortcuts found on Blackberrys and iPhones, such as spelling corrections and the double spacing to end a sentence, insert a period, and capitalize the next letter.

I experienced a few crashes and encountered several bugs: the Bluetooth headset occasionally lost connection, screens had missing icons and on one occasion I could not retrieve e-mail. But they were few in number and no worse than other phones.

So what are the disappointments? The biggest is Palm's sync strategy called Synergy. Unlike earlier Palms, the iPhone and Blackberry, the Pre doesn't sync with your computer contacts and calendar programs such as Outlook and iCal. Instead it syncs with online calendars and address books such as those from Google and Microsoft Exchange. Synergy gathers the details from each of these accounts as well as social apps such as Facebook and creates a consolidated calendar and address book on the phone. It will automatically update the phone as you make changes online. One neat feature was that my friends' Facebook pictures were imported into the address book.

This concept works well for those that rely on online applications for their main calendar and contacts, but not for those using Outlook or Apple's iCal and Address Book. This makes Pre's focus less suitable for business customers and more for those that have their contacts spread among social networks.

When I created my Pre address book for the first time combining my contacts from Mac's address book, Facebook and Google, I found many of my contact records filled with duplicate and out-of-date phone numbers. That's because Google was not used as my primary address book and many numbers were old. At one point in frustration I deleted the entire address book and went into a Sprint store and had my contacts transferred from my iPhone to the Pre.

Third parties such as Missing Synch are working on solutions for desktop syncing, but in my testing it often failed to sync all records.

Palm's app store, patterned after Apple's, now has fewer than 100 applications compared to over 60,000 on Apple's iTunes store. While the numbers are few, it includes AP News, New York Times, OpenTable, Evernote, AccuWeather and FlightView, and it is adding new ones every day.

Also included on the phone are Sprint TV and Sprint Navigation. The latter is a powerful app that provides turn-by-turn spoken directions using 3D maps. (AT&T charges $10/month for a similar app for the iPhone.) For navigation to work well you need a strong cellular connection along most of the route, as maps are not stored on the device, but retrieved as needed. A number of times Navigation could not find my location even though I had full signal strength.

Palm offers some excellent cases and accessories that enhance the Pre's experience. I particularly liked its Touchstone charger ($50). Lay the Pre onto the top of the small pedestal and it charges; no cable connection is needed. It works very well.

So after 100 days what's my conclusion? It's an excellent smart phone, if you can deal with its approach to syncing. It's a particularly good alternative to the iPhone for those that want to avoid AT&T and pay about 30 percent less for Sprint's plan.

Both the iPhone and Pre have plastic bodies with fragile touch screens. That's created a huge industry for accessory cases. Among the thousands of cases available for the iPhone, one of the best I've seen recently is the new Sarach Flip Case from Sena (senacases.com). This hand-sewn quality leather case has a front flap to protect the screen, a magnetic closure, and a card pocket. Yet it's still slim and easily fits in your pocket ($70). Two of the best cases for the Pre both come from Palm. The Palm Pre Leather Slip Case and Leather Side Case each provide good protection using a high grade of matte finished black leather with a velvet lining ($40 ea.). palm.com.