Palm Phone hands-on: an Android phone for your phone
Palm Phone hands-on: an Android phone for your phone
2018-10-15
hey everybody I am dieter bone and if
you are of a certain age you know that
that means that I am the palm guy I used
the Centro I used pixie I use the pre I
founded pre central dotnet I was all
about webOS all about palm and then it
died but now it's fact not the company
but the name palm and it's coming back
as this little thing that I was hiding
in my hand it's a tiny little phone to
go along with your big huge hulking
phone well what's all that about so this
is the palm phone and the basic idea
here is you don't want to carry around
your big giant phone and so you can have
this little weekender phone and it uses
horizons dual number system so you pay
an extra 10 bucks a month and that
allows you to have this phone share your
phone number and also you know share
text messages so you can leave your
other phone behind which is a great idea
except there's a couple of caveats if
you're an iPhone user your iMessages
obviously won't come over if you're an
Android user you're gonna need to use
Verizon's you know custom text messaging
app instead of the built in Android
messages in order to catch your messages
the other question probably asking is
what's the deal with this phone well
it's an Android phone and the basic
navigation works this way there's a
single solitary button on it you press
it it turns the screen on you swipe up
to unlock it if you double tap it it
will launch the Google assistant and it
will listen to your voice and you can do
voice stuff and they did that because I
figured it's a lot faster you're gonna
want to be doing a lot of voice stuff
now there are no soft buttons on the
bottom and so there's this one single
solitary button and it works one of
three ways so if you tap it once it
serves as a back button if you depth if
you double tap it it goes home and if
you long press it it takes you to this
overview screen they have built in a
custom face unlock feature into the
camera but I'm sure it's nowhere secure
as face ID on the iPhone so you can't
just use a standard unlock pattern if
you want the screen is 3.3 inches and it
actually looks pretty good it's not too
bad and you know for the basic stuff
that it's meant to do it's relatively
fast although it is a Snapdragon 435
processor with three gigs of RAM and 32
gigs of storage so this isn't exactly
like a powerhouse in terms of specs
as far as palm the new palm is concerned
you really are just going to be using a
few different apps at the same popping
in and out so it can run any Android app
because it's running Android 8.1 but
really they expect you're just gonna use
it for music maybe a little facebooking
navigation you know that's sort of stuff
really simple kind of weekend or phone
stuff now there is a camera on this it's
a 12 megapixel camera on the back and
you know I'm sure it's no great shakes
we haven't looked at it on a big screen
here but on this tiny screen you know it
looks fine there's a conference room and
if you want to just volume you need to
go into you know the quick settings
thing here now the other thing I'll
notice when I'm in the quick settings
things here is there's this palm and
this is where we start to get into why
this is a little bit more like an old
palm phone at least why they claim it is
so when you turn on life mode which is
what they call it this basically acts as
both battery saver and do not disturb at
the same time so when this mode is on
you turn the screen off and no
notifications will come in and in fact
they turn off the radio so not even
phone calls will come in so this thing
should last a very very long time in
this mode it's only got an 800 milliamp
battery in it but if you have this vote
on the thing I'll probably just hang out
you know it's a nerd forever the other
sort of cute little palm thing is
they've made this shortcut on the lock
screen where you swipe up and you get
this little like graffiti area with four
buttons on it and then you can do a
search for you know see running to the
clock or you can jump right into the
camera or messaging or whatever the home
screen here it is just an app launcher
there's not two different things and
it's in this honeycomb pattern you can
of course move stuff around you know
drag it around install it and then
you'll notice here I long press on an
item and that brings up shortcuts to
jump directly into things inside the app
it's a really underused feature in
Android and really glad they sort of
foregrounded it here and that even works
from that lock screen so if I were to go
here and you know write an S it'll jump
into different things inside different
shortcuts inside the app so like jump
right in to scan inside the camera app
example or the tribe app so that's kind
of I know what you're thinking dieter is
this really a palm phone I mean it's got
sort of a palm logo on it but it's not
running webOS and the only really palm
thing about it is that a bunch of other
palm phones have been tiny and yeah
you're right
you should almost think of this more as
like a really big SmartWatch than a
really little phone you can't buy it on
its own it's actually sold on like a
connected device a plan so it's not for
10 bucks a month it's 350 or you can get
on 15 bucks a month on a you know
installment plan and it can do more than
a SmartWatch because it can run every
single Android app but it can do less
than your phone because you know it's
got a tiny screen and you're not gonna
want to spend that much time on it and
that's kind of the whole idea here is
this is meant to be a time well-spent
phone it's a phone that you turn on do a
couple things turn off and ignore and
you can even turn on that life mode
thing and completely ignore it entirely
so it's sort of like a back-up plan to
your phone is that worth 10 bucks a
month maybe
thanks so much for watching we're gonna
have a whole lot more about this thing
including a review when it comes out in
November in the meantime you should
subscribe to the channel now because
we've got a whole bunch of pixel 3
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