Last week we took a good hard look at the new Palm Pre’s hardware.  It features a fantastic screen, an easy to use keyboard, and a fantastically modern form factor.  My only real complaints about the hardware were the difficult slider, which hides the keyboard and the lack of a memory card slot.  Heck, I was even impressed by the battery,which far exceeded the rumors I had heard.  Let’s be honest, though.  You did not come here to look at the hardware.  You came here to look at the new WebOS, the interface. Is it a stud or a dud?  And that is the question we are going to answer today.

WebOS Interface

Main Screen: Let’s start at the very beginning, and that is your main home screen of the WebOS interface.  As you can see, it is pretty much blank.  Not much to see here except the fully customizable wallpaper in the background (nice pic, by the way).  You can use any picture on your device, even one you took yourself with the included camera, as your wallpaper (for the record, the one I am using in these screen shots is one of the included images).

At the bottom of the screen is the Quick launch Bar, which features five icons.  This gives you access to the main functions of the device: phone, contacts, calendar, and email.  The last icon opens the launcher screen, where you can access all of the other apps on your device.  I really liked this Quick Launch Bar, which offers quick and easy access to many of your everyday functions.  That being said, it would have been nice if you could add additional apps to the quick launch bar.  While almost all of us are likely to use the functions found in the included Quick Launch bar, there are plenty of other apps which you may need quick and easy access to as well, such as the Internet, messaging, photos, and who knows what else.  To get to those, it can be annoying to constantly zip between the main screen and launcher screen.  It would be nice if Palm would give you more control over which apps could be launched from this main screen.

The final point I wanted to mention about the Quick Launch Bar is one of the Pre’s many hidden features.  From any screen on the device, just drag your finger up from the bottom of the screen to activate a floating quick launch bar.  Convenient…and pretty cool.

OK, let’s get back to the main part of the screen.  As you may have guessed, it is not intended to stay empty for long.  When you launch an app, game, or other program, it will open into this space, filling the screen.  Tap the home button to minimize the app and watch what happens.  The app will minimize, becoming a tile called an activity card on the screen.

While you may only have one app open at a time, you can have as many activity cards as you like.  Just flick the cards side to side to scroll through them, and tap the one you wish to open.  To close an app, just give the activity card a good flick from the bottom to send it shooting off the top of the screen. 

The best part about these activity cards, though, are that they are live miniaturizations of the app.  So, if the app is updated, then the tile will change.  This offers a fantastic way to stay on top of your email or even monitor your calendar or a website, without restricting access to the remaining functions of the device.

Finally, you can tap the top of the screen from pretty much anywhere in the Palm Pre, in order to reach the communications manager.  From here, you can control Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Airplane Mode.  you can also use this menu to monitor your battery levels (but not memory which would have been nice).  I loved the accessibility of these features, which are buried too deeply to be useful on many devices.

Launcher Screen: So, I already told you that three of your most common apps, plus the dialer, are in that strip on the bottom of your screen.  The rest of the apps on your Pre, as well as any you download later, can be found in the Launcher Screen.  To get there, just tap the fifth icon in the strip, which looks like an arrow.  That will open the App Launcher.

The Launcher Screen is actually three screens or pages of apps.  This may remind some users of the iPhone screens, but I thought this comparison was a bit unfair given the fact that Palm originally utilized this arrangement.  Unlike the iPhone, which allows you to create as many pages as you want, the Palm Pre is limited to three pages.  Rather than adding new pages, each page of icons can scroll vertically, so new icons can be added at the bottom.  I found this arrangement worked well enough, but the constant scrolling was a little confusing and did make it difficult to find apps (hint: when you download an app from the App Catalog, it will always appear at the bottom of the first page of apps).

Rearranging apps is a bit cumbersome.  This does resemble the iPhone.  Push and hold on the icon you want to move, and then just guide it with your finger to its new preferred position.  If you drag it off the edge of the screen then it will move the icon to the next or previous page.  Deleting apps is a little more complicated.  To do that, you will need to enter the List view from the menu on top of the screen, then select the app from the list view and hit delete.

I was somewhat disappointed that the Launcher Screen did not offer better organization.  This has been one of the consistent complaints about the iPhone OS, and I think Palm missed an opportunity by following a similar layout organizationally.  I would have liked the opportunity to create subfolders or categories so I could link related apps together in one place.  This would have made the apps in the Launcher Screen far more organized and easier to search for the app you need.

Notifications: In all the years I used Windows Mobile, my biggest complaint was always notifications.  Typically, you would get a small white window with the notification information.  If you missed it, then it would often disappear behind a tiny icon.  This seems like it should have been an easy thing to work out and make more effective, but it still has not happened.

When I started using the Palm Pre, one of the first things I looked for was the notifications; and I must say I liked what I saw.  Each notification (whether it is a voicemail, email, text message, or appointment) appears as an item on the bottom of the screen.  Each of these notifications runs the entire width of the screen, making them easily visible. 

What I really liked though was the permanence of the notifications.  They will stay down there, appearing on the main screen and even the lock screen, until you clear them.  If you think they will get in your way stacked up at the bottom of the screen like that…well, isn’t that the point?  But you can minimize them by simply tapping the screen.  This will relegate them to hiding behind icons on the bottom of the screen.  Tap that icon to open the notifications again.  Simply tap any notification to access the item.  Note that the email notification acts slightly differently.  Tap the message to view.  Tap the envelope on the left in order to jump to the inbox.  These are the notifications I always wanted from Windows Mobile.  They were informative, easy to read, and offered quick access to the necessary information.

Lock Screen: One of the first impressions I had of WebOS was the lock screen.  Anytime you shut off the screen, or leave it idle for more than a minute, the lock screen will activate.  The lock screen shows your wallpaper, with a lock icon on the bottom.  When you push the icon, a dome will appear around the it.  Just drag the lock icon outside the dome to unlock.  What I found cool (and I have no idea why I liked this so much) was the way the lock icon could move freely in all directions around the screen.

If you have any notifications pending, these will also appear on the lock screen, so you do not need to activate your device in order to check your notifications.  Though if you prefer a little extra privacy, you can deactivate notifications on the lock screen.

For a little extra protection, you can also password protect your device.  I prefer a simple four digit password, but you can also choose to use a full alpha-numeric password if you wish.

Synergy Sync: One of the biggest draws of the Palm Pre is a feature you never see, but will use all the time: Synergy Sync.  Once you get it set up, Synergy Sync will allow the Palm to communicate with the Cloud to download your calendar, contacts, and email.  This was a big problem with Windows Mobile, and third party developers had only recently started to plug that hole.  With the Palm Pre, it is all built in from the beginning…mostly

I have some good news and bad news about Synergy Sync.  The good news is it is simply amazing.  It is easy to setup and use, and features complete sync of all your calendars, instantaneous push email, and smart-merging of your contacts from different sources.  The bad news…it only works this well if you use Google, Facebook, or an Exchange-type server (it will also sync with Outlook on your computer).  If you use another service, like AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft Live, and others, then do not expect to sync much more than your email.  This was just fine with me since I am primarily on Google anyway, but if you are not using Google for these services, then prepare to be disappointed.  I was really perplexed by this.  I do not know the reason for not allowing the Pre to sync with other services, but if this was a strategic decision by Palm, then I think it was a bad one.  The more services with which the Pre can sync, the broader the audience Palm could have attracted. 

Despite the limited services available, however, I was beyond impressed by the Synergy Sync function.   All I can say is that it worked, and it worked well. 

Quick launch

Dialer and Phone:  Obviously, the dialer is where you are going to make your phone calls.  The main screen has a very nice, easy to use dialer pad.  You can use this to dial the number directly, or tap the address book icon to search your contacts.  Once you have entered the number, just push that large green button to place the call.  Two large buttons on the bottom of the screen give you access to your voice mail and call history (above, right).

I used the Palm Pre as my primary phone for several weeks, both making and receiving calls on it.  I was quite impressed by the call quality, which was crystal clear from most locations.  I will say that the bars seemed to fade a bit faster than some of my other Sprint phones, but this was not a significant concern, and I found the call quality, in most cases, to be at least as good as my Touch Pro and HTC Snap (both Sprint phones).

Contacts: The Contacts Screen is a fantastic example of the Palm Synergy Sync in action.  It draws all of your contacts from every account you add, and combines them into a unified contact list.  I was really quite impressed by how well it merged all of my contacts, taking duplicate entries from multiple sources and merging them together.  If any photos were associated with the entry, then that will be displayed as a photo contact.  If multiple photos are associated with an entry, then you can choose which to display.  My only complaint here was that there was no way to setup a list of frequent contacts or favorites.  That would have saved some trouble of searching or scrolling through my contacts every time I need to make a call.

Email: Email is another fantastic example of Palm Synergy Sync.  On the main screen, you can access all of your programmed email accounts, or jump right into the unified inbox (aptly called All Inboxes).   I really liked the layout of the inbox, which featured nice large, finger friendly entries.  Tap one to read the message or use the buttons near the bottom to create a new email or refresh the account.  What was most impressive here was the push Gmail, which allowed messages to appear on my Pre almost simultaneously with their appearance in my online inbox.

I have heard some people complain that the screen in the individual messages was too cluttered, but it really did not bother me at all.  The top third or so contains the sender and recipient information, as well as the subject.  The message itself fills the rest of the screen.  Additionally, the finger scrolling extremely well here if your message needs more screen space to be displayed.

Calendar: Most of you reading this are probably pretty familiar with mobile calendars.  Now, I use Google Calendar, and I sort my appointments into about a dozen different calendars.  With Windows Mobile, there was no native way to sync this and most third-party software wanted a significant amount of money to sync more than one calendar at a time (even Google’s Google Sync will not sync more than one calendar).  So, I was really interested in how well the Pre would handle multiple calendars.  I was pretty impressed to find that as soon as I connected it to my Google account, it immediately identified all of my calendars, and synced each of them.  If you want, it will even color code entries from different calendars. 

There are three basic views.  In single day view (top), you will see an hour-by-hour itinerary of your day, with full entries giving you the details of each event.  In week view, you will see seven days at a time, with just a colored square on each day indicating an event is scheduled, but you have to revert to the daily view for details.  It would be nice if you could view more details in seven day view .  I usually like to use seven day view in order to see my week at a glance, but it is not nearly as helpful when I cannot see what is scheduled.  Finally, in month view, you will only see some shading on a date if there is anything scheduled, but it will not be color coded to even indicate which calendar has an event on that day. 

You can create a new event by simply tapping the appropriate time in the daily view, or making an entry in your online calendar and syncing.  Again, though, this will only work if you are using Outlook, an Exchange server, Google, or Facebook.  Other online services are, unfortunately, not covered by Palm’s Synergy Sync.

Other Included Apps

Messaging: Text messaging is probably one of the single largest uses for almost any phone.  As such, I was surprised not to find it in the Quick Launch bar.  Still, once you find it in the Launcher Screen, I thought it worked great.  You can carry on several different conversations at once, and each will be threaded individually.  You can even use the Messaging app to connect via google Chat or AIM (but again, not via MS Live). 

Media: On of the biggest areas people tend to look at when they buy a converged device like this is the multimedia capabilities.  Heck, even a lot of non-smartphones highlight their abilities to sync with iTunes play music, take pictures, or even play videos.  So, let’s take a quick look at how that all is going to work here.

We can start with taking photos, which I found to be a bit more inaccessible than I would have preferred.  In order to access the camera, you have to open the launcher screen, scroll over to camera, and click the icon.  While I understand the desire to have as few buttons as possible, I would not have minded a hardware button to access the camera at all.

I was a little underwhelmed by the camera on this device.  At 3 megapixels, it took pretty good pictures.  But there was no ability to zoom, which even most Windows Mobile cameras offer.  There was also no video camera or other settings.  Pretty much all you can do is point and click.  Although I did appreciate the included flash.

The photo album gives you the appearance of organization, with each folder getting its own entry on the main screen.  The problem here was that there is really no way to easily change folders on the fly.  As such, all of the pictures you take will be stored in the photo roll.  I was also a bit annoyed to find that all of my incidental mages, such as album art and game graphics appeared here as well.  This all led to a fairly cluttered album, which was not easily managed.

I was impressed that the Palm Pre could sync directly with services like Facebook and Photobucket (though no Flickr or Picassa), allowing you to immediately upload photos and share them with your friends.

Like I mentioned earlier, you cannot record video with the Pre, which I found to be somewhat disappointing.   You do, however, have two options for viewing videos.  You can transfer them to your device and watch them with the included video player, or use the Youtube application (below) to watch online videos. 

Video playback quality was pretty good, and I was even impressed to find that the video kept playing even when it had been minimized to an activity card on the main screen. 

Overall, I liked the finger friendly video player, however, the lack of codecs, which severely limited the formats you could view.  That being said, I am not someone who tends watch a lot of video on my mobile device, so this really did not bother me at all.

What bothered me more was the lack of audio codecs, which meant that I could not play Windows Media Audio formatted files on the Pre.  While it handled mp3 files just fine and had acceptable sound quality, most of my audio library is ripped in the WMA format, and I did not relish the idea of reformatting all of my music.

That being said, I liked the media player itself, and thought the Pre did a nice job of creating an easy and finger-friendly interface, including the Shuffle all button right on top.

In addition to copying music from your computer, there is also a built-in Amazon music store.  I thought this was a pretty nice touch, which gave the Pre access to music content comparable that available from iTunes on the iPhone.

Tasks: I really liked the interface for the task manager, but I did find it to be a bit underpowered.   From here, while you can view your tasks in one lists, or break it down into different sources or categories, you cannot sync very well.  Sure, it will sync with any Exchange servers you may have set up, but not with any other online services, such as Remember The Milk, Toodledo, or even Google Tasks.  That was a real disappointment for me.  For a phone which prides itself on its sync-ability, the handling of tasks seemed significantly out of character.

Internet: I was really impressed by the web browsing experience on the Palm Pre.  The browser itself uses the same webkit kernel as the iPhone’s Safari browser, and it shows.  In fact, if you are familiar with the iPhone’s browser, then this is going to look awfully familiar to you.  Like the iPhone, this browser can handle both full sites and mobile optimized sites, giving you the full browsing experience.

What really stands out to me is the bookmarks screen, which is where you land when you initially open the browser.  This gives you a tile representing each bookmarked page.  You can create as many bookmark tiles as you want, and they will all appear here in one scrollable screen.  You can use the Bookmarks settings menu to rearrange or delete bookmark tiles.  The only real disappointment for me was the inability to play flash media or access flash-based sites from the mobile browser.  We cannot fault Palm for that, however,as all mobile browsers share this limitation.  Fortunately, Adobe has indicated that mobile flash should be coming by the end of the year.  That is great news for all mobile users.

Documents: One of the most important aspects of a mobile device which intends to break into the business market is the ability to work with documents while mobile.  I have to say that I was disappointed by the offerings on the Palm Pre.  The main program you are going to want to use is DocView, which allows you to load MS Word documents and view them on your Pre.  At this time, however, it is not possible to edit any of your documents, which is unfortunate.  The good news, however, is that Dataviz (the folks behind the DocView app) have promised a more robust program coming soon, which will include document editing.  No word on pricing, but based upon their document editors on other platforms, this is certainly good news.

In addition to the DocView program, you can also view pdf formatted documents with the PDF View app. 

As with the Pre’s multimedia options, I was struck by how few formats are supported here.  If you use Word or PDF then you are fine…but what about those using Word Perfect or other word processing apps.  Again, Palm seems to be guilty of drawing too narrow a circle and excluding many potential users.

The only real opportunity you have to create documents is using the Memos app, which uses some extremely cool bulletin board analogy as the user interface.  Graphics and interface aside, however, I found it to be significantly less feature rich than Evernote, and wasted little time downloading the Evernote app for my Palm Pre.

GPS and Google Maps: Not much to say about the GPS, except that it works well.  The navigation software included is the same Telenav software as all Sprint phones, and it really continues to impress me.  In addition, you will find Google Maps (right) preloaded.  I was disappointed not to find a Palm Pre version of Windows Live, but the included options are more than sufficient for most needs.

Backup: Long time users of mobile devices know the importance of a good backup.  I cannot tell you the number of times I have had a device crash out on me…usually late at night, which is never fun.  A goo backup is like a security blanket protecting you from these unexpected problems. 

I really liked the Palm Pre backup utility, which works in the background, almost without you even realizing it.   Your backups are all stored online when you need them, so there is no need to worry about conserving space.

Sprint Apps: One of my complaints about Sprint based phones in the past has been the number of Sprint-branded apps, and the prominence they have been given.  The original HTC Touch, for example, devoted a whole side of the TouchFlo cube to the included Sprint apps.  That being said, I thought Sprint did a good job here of including a few apps which really add functionality, without becoming obtrusive. 

In addition to the navigation software I mentioned above, you will get access to Sprint TV.  I have never been a fan of watching TV on my mobile device.  I know a lot of people, however, who disagree with me, and they will be happy to see this feature included.

There are also two sports-based apps for NASCAR and NFL fans.  Both apps offer a fantastic look at their respective sports with all the latest news, scores, updates, and even broadcasts and video. 

Rounding out the Sprint Apps is the SprintWeb, which is a collection of news, sports, and other headlines from around the web.  This reminds me a lot of a Sprint-branded version of your Google homepage.  You can even access your instant messaging and other online portals and options from here. 

I have to say that I was relatively impressed by the job Sprint did with their included apps.  Each of them added a useful feature to the Palm Pre, which is a lot more than I can say about some of the other Sprint phones I have used.

App Catalog: Let’s be honest, the Palm Pre app Catalog is barely off the ground.  Given the fact that it took Apple over a year to launch the iTunes App Store, however, I think the 30 (mostly free) apps which are currently available is not too shabby.  Shortly after the Pre launched, Palm released the SDK publicly and we should start seeing a wealth of new apps coming over the course of the next couple of months, and hopefully, well into the future from there.

I liked the layout of the App Catalog, which highlights Featured and Popular Apps.  Although I do wish they would have highlighted new apps in these top rows as well.  One thing I did notice is that it is not always easy to tell when an app you own has been updated.   At present, the only way to find an update is to scroll through the apps and look for the update icon.  This is fine for now, when there are only 30 apps, but they will need to do better when the app store begins expanding.  My preference would be some kind of indication at the top of the screen indicating that updates are available, and listing the apps which have updates ready for download.   For the time being, however, I am simply remaining excited by the potential of the App Store, and ready to delve more fully into it as the library of apps expands.

Conclusion

I have to admit that I had some reservations going into WebOS.  I had heard some criticism of the platform, and many of the people I talked to were not as impressed as I might have expected them to be.  I did not have any of those problems.  Other than a few lags or slowdowns when loading an app or switching between apps– rarely more than what I have experienced on other platforms – I fell almost instantly in love with the WebOS user experience.  I thought the main user interface was absolutely fantastic, and the Synergy Sync offered exactly what I had long been seeking…the ability to easily sync with my Google accounts.  All was not perfect in the world of webOS, but it never is in any of these devices.  my main criticism revolved around the relatively limited multimedia experience, including the underpowered camera and lack of video and audio codecs.  When taken as a complete package, limitations and all, WebOS wasted little time becoming my favorite mobile interface, and has now replaced Windows Mobile as my device of choice.

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