Gadgetory

everybody michael fisher with pocket now forgive the casual attire but I was asleep I was almost asleep when my colleague Adam Daode sent me a text message said you know what tomorrow is I said no I don't he said it's the fourth anniversary of the launch of the Palm Pre the official start of the all too short webOS era but there wasn't any time in June sixth scheduled at PocketNow to get an extra video in we have too much to do we have a you review we've pocket our weekly we have all this stuff so I thought at 1:00 in the morning it would be a great time to film a throwback unboxing just to pay a little bit of tribute to the Palm Pre and to one of the great lost operating systems of our time so without further ado and thanks to the prudent calendar monitoring skills of Adam Dowd pocket now brings you a throwback unboxing of the Palm Pre I was in line on this day exactly four years ago waiting outside Boston's Boylston streets print store yes webOS had enough buzz in 2009 to generate lines all to get this box the packaging was made of premium materials that let you know that what was inside was valuable layers of high-density plastic that still hold up well to this day and finally nestled in its own protective tray behind the legend designed in and inspired by California the device itself the first-generation Palm Pre and then as you dug deeper into the box who hid packet after packet of literature all of it emblazoned with branding Sprint and Palm I remind her that at one time these two companies had teamed up proudly to try to sell something great to try to build something new the attention to detail extended all the way to the welcome pamphlets with their folded over tabs and orange bindings to the little chrome embed in the power cable and while the screen protector has long vanished from my own pre which bears the scars of solid year of use the protector is still on the stock battery cover which didn't see much use since it wasn't compatible with the touchstone how about a little peel off then for old times sake slapping the old battery cover back on and putting the preface down you can almost imagine it's 2009 again the pre still a shining beacon of hope for those who want to have their breath taken away by a smartphone that isn't called an iPhone or an Android sitting with the pre I'm reminded that phones once were reasonably sized before they got so big as to seem ludicrous the pre sat beautifully in the hand because of its rounded design it wasn't trying to win any slimness contests because it didn't have to it was designed for humans before that slogan was even dreamed up by another company and then there was that keyboard slightly gummy slightly tacky and nowhere near as responsive as it should have been but still a slide-out keyboard from one of the companies that made them a standard on mobile devices a keyboard that worked together with a touch screen using a gesture area that was an entirely new idea the flimsy USB port cover actually stayed with my pre for the entirety of my year of using it as my daily driver but sadly the battery did not not remembering whether webOS devices needed batteries to boot or not I decided to try my luck cross my fingers and plug in the pre is inquisitive where's my battery I don't have the heart to tell it i bundled that battery in as a value-add to sweeten the pot when I sold the pre 2 on eBay after the crash I would have to settle for popping an old sim into the pre 3 that our multimedia manager Jaime Rivera had graciously gifted me knowing my love for the dead platform and so that's what I did the pries more recent more capable but ultimately just as doomed sibling came to life beside it and for a few minutes flicking cards around and universal searching to my heart's content I remembered the joy of a new platform it felt like and yes this is mawkish but it's true coming home I've moved on since then of course not just because I entered the technology field but because like everyone else I had to I was forced to and while I'm glad things have progressed I still think it's only proper to stop every once in a while and pay tribute to a great platform that helped push modern smartphones to their current heights because while we should always keep our eye on the future we shouldn't forget those who propelled us there thank you Paul