Gadgetory

hey guys john r Ettinger from TechnoBuffalo here at a full review for you of the Palm Pre Plus for Verizon Wireless you see me put this guy head-to-head with the iPhone with the Nexus One now it's time to let it stand on its own legs and go over sort of the specs and the features and what I think about the device as a whole so some of the general specs I'm probably more salient ones it's got a 3.1 inch capacitive touchscreen with of course multi-touch it's got a 3 megapixel camera on the back with LED flash as of right now it does not record video but palm has said that update is coming soon it's expected sometime the end of February early March resolution on the screen is 320 by 480 and the screen really does pop it doesn't appear to be washed out or or dim so the resolution is actually quite nice so I always start off my phone reviews with how does it work as a phone no matter how many features they can pack in or how fast a processor how much RAM or hard drive space if it sucks for making phone calls it's not gonna be useful to you so this is a Verizon device and Verizon's network at least where I am in Southern California is very strong call quote it was fantastic on the Palm Pre plus I heard no white noise or buzzing on my end and people on the other end of the phone reported the same they actually had a hard time telling that I was even on a cell phone so if you're looking to get a Palm Pre Plus and quad it was a concern of yours you can push those aside it's going to sound quite nice speaker volume was sort of on the weak side not as strong as other devices I've tested if you rely on the built-in speakerphone for your car or ever you might be there's a chance you're gonna be a bit disappointed something to keep in mind so any review of the Palm Pre or really any modern palm device isn't complete or wouldn't be fair without a brief sort of overview and synopsis of its operating system web OS so the Palm Pre again is of course running palms new operating system and really started the the biggest bread-and-butter of it and what the best is multitasking and I've showed this in many videos give you guys just a quick demonstration as how it handles it it uses things called a deck of card interface it launches an application so I got the web browser open right there I can launch Twitter application and you can keep you know upwards of 50 applications open I've seen videos showing that it works and I've tested up to 30 and the thing actually worked quite well it's really of uh speed degradation the painting applications you have open but it's capable to keep quite a bit so you can hit that you gesture area right down below and you can swipe through open up an application and if you want to close it swipe it off screen which I find can be extremely satisfying a fun feature of web OS so some of the differences with the Palm Pre Plus that weren't on the initial pre that were launched well over a year ago at CES for Sprint's is the absence of the home button down below that's been replaced by a touch-sensitive LED should see it light up when I swipe my finger over it so now you just touch it and that's would be the equivalent a the home button and that'll launch your deck of cards feature we sort of saw this first with the palm pixi and that sort of carried through to the pre plus you also have double the RAM and double the storage space now you've got 16 gigs of in device storage although still absent and a bit disappointingly is any sort of expansion so micro SD or mini SD or any sort of expansion is gone from the device other than that it's pretty much the same Palm Pre you either love or hate sort of Verizon add-on that they added it's the ability to have a mobile hotspot essentially what that is it treats this as a MiFi device and I've did a video demonstrating this you can see it right there mobile hotspot for $40 a month it'll suck in Verizon is a video network and kick out Wi-Fi that you and four friends would connect to at once but turn this into a mobile router it doesn't work pretty well the 40 bucks is gonna buy you five gigs of up-and-down data transfer so not bad go ahead and close that something to to keep in mind if you really fear a road warrior and you carry a network card or some sort of USB device you actually use the Palm Pre Plus as everything in certain data plans run you close to 60 bucks this is going to see a bit of money down the road if it's something that you use pretty regularly so I've been a big fan of webOS I really liked it when I first saw the pre-launch however a year later things haven't changed much and the features that I wished were gonna come really haven't gone and absolutely completely is any sort of autocorrect which is something that I think the device really needs and you look at its slide-out keyboard it's a very small keyboard I've got pretty decent size fingers and as I try and type my fingers cover a lot of the letters so oftentimes I got fat fingers and I'll type the wrong letter have to go back and delete it I wish there was some sort of more robust auto correction that would have definitely made the Palm Pre Plus I think a more well-rounded device the keyboard is a bit improved as well over the initial pre also gone is the sort of orange button that used to be right there it's now open gray and the keys have a bit more clicky feel to them similar to what you find on the palm pixi so while it's a better typing experience certainly not the best one that I've used if you're a big proponent of physical QWERTY keyboards and that's why you were drawn to the pre plus I recommend going to try it in a verizon store or a Sprint store when check out the original pre keyboard can be a bit difficult to use I actually prefer an on-screen keyboard I found that in the long run I'm a bit more accurate with it and if my not is accurate mostly physical are the the virtual keyboards have Auto Corrections so the iPhone or Android so it'll sort of accommodate for the miss types that you may make although overall I've been very happy with the device its multi-touch works extremely well on the web browsers or pictures it's got a built-in YouTube player Facebook to plays video you can download songs you can put songs on here it does work very well there was a bit of a cat and mouse game with palm and Apple and it's perfectly sort of make this device sync with iTunes Palmer put in the fix and Apple will fix it again to prevent it from happening and insert it would go back and forth can't really do that anymore it seems that palm is a band that sort of cat-and-mouse game so this won't sync with iTunes directly although you do get drag-and-drop capability so you plug it into your PC or Mac you just drag files right to it it doesn't work pretty well now one thing I wish the device had was more applications in its app catalog it's got a lot of potential I think the device in the platform it could handle 3d games I can handle sort of your standard applications but there aren't that many in there which is a bit disappointing so I'd like to see that improved either you know via software updates or really just by the developer attention now this is released on two different carriers Verizon and Sprint we're going to probably get a bit more of a developer interest in the platform if I have to rank this on a one to five scale I give it a very solid four and a quarter missing out because lack of video recording at least right now although that it's coming and the lack of any sort of auto correction on the keyboard things I do like I do like the webOS as a whole I really like the notification system so you saw a little mailbox or a little envelope pop right there notice with the way it handles notifications is really top-notch I can tap that I can go right to my email I take out a message from Brandon I can either tap that and go right to it or hit the Gmail lo going to write to my gmail or I can just swipe them away multitasking is probably the best implementation that I've seen really just works fantastically and is a very well-rounded and pretty nimble device so if you're looking for something on Verizon that's full feature gives you multi-touch has a QWERTY keyboard if that's something that you really insist on that's sort of very cool look you owe it yourself to check out the pre plus overall it's a very solid device an early thin and nice form factor anyway I'm John writer from TechnoBuffalo with a full review for you of the Palm Pre Plus for exclusive content and all your tech news and to create and even make a couple bucks from your own tech blog I'm sure to check out TechnoBuffalo com I will see you in the next video