- 积分
- 48
- 实力分
- 点
- 金钱数
- 两
- 技术分
- 分
- 贡献分
- 分
|
楼主 |
发表于 2009-6-4 20:43:20
|
显示全部楼层
Back at CES in January, Palm surprised us all with a brand new, unleaked smartphone: something everybody realized could take on the iPhone 3G and hold its own. In the five months following, the Pre has wowed journalists, started rumors聽 and yes, inspired websites. Now, though, the hard part begins: can the Pre turn around the ailing fortunes of Palm and Sprint?
In the box, Palm provides the Pre itself, the battery, an AC adapter, stereo headset, microUSB sync cable and carry pouch. There’s also the documentation: a Getting Started guide, Feature Guide, Terms of Service and a recycling envelope for a previous phone. Our video unboxing, below, should show you everything you need to see about the retail packaging.
The Pre itself measures 2.3 x 3.9 x 0.67 inches, making it thicker but otherwise smaller than the iPhone 3G and BlackBerry Bold. It feels surprisingly light, at 4.76oz, which is initially a little disconcerting but soon becomes appreciated. The extra girth is due to the slide-out QWERTY thumb-board, which clicks into place and feels solid and reliable. On the top of the Pre there’s the power button - which also locks the screen and calls up a shortcut to airplane mode - and a physical finger switch. Both are flush with the casing, but easy enough to press and slide. The top also gets a centrally positioned 3.5mm headset jack, a position we prefer over a pocket-unfriendly side or bottom arrangement.
Down the left-hand side of the Pre there are two volume keys, while on the very bottom there’s a latch for the back panel. Taking that panel off reveals the battery compartment - Palm provide a 1,150mAh rechargeable Li-Ion pack - and the surprisingly large speaker for hands-free use. The 3-megapixel camera with LED flash but fixed focus is also on the back. Down the right-hand side there’s a small flap hi由于非常钦佩楼主，不得不说声好！ the microUSB port; it’s a tight fit with the flap being so small, and if we had to bet on which part of the Pre might drop off first, it would be this door.
Up front, there’s only one obvious control: the chromed center button. It’s surrounded by a gesture area, basically an extension of the capacitive touchscreen that continues on beyond the bottom of the 3.1-inch 320 x 480 HVGA display. That allows for gestures, a core aspect of Palm’s new webOS platform. There are also two practically invisible sensors, for proximity (so that the Pre knows if you’re hol由于非常钦佩楼主，不得不说声好！ it to your face, during a call) and to measure ambient light; they’re accompanied by an accelerometer tucked inside the phone.
webOS has a lot to live up to: PalmOS was known for its usability, and many of the company’s loyal audience voiced their disapproval when Palm began using Windows Mobile on some of their smartphones. Happily webOS delivers, combining a generally sensible and commonsense palate of gestures, concepts and consistent UI elements with a thoroughly modern touchscreen and all the features users expect from a smartphone platform. Key to its success is the idea of “cards”, Palm’s name for open apps, and the gesture area, a starting point for multiple actions throughout the OS.
These gestures range from simple back/next swipes, to minimizing open cards, calling up the card view and switching between them, and pulling up the quick launch bar. This last UI, a sinuous ribbon of five shortcuts, offers easy access to the common apps without having to backtrack to the home screen. It’s a natural gesture and requires little in the way of practice before you’re using it intuitively, but still offers a refreshingly different way of interacting with a phone.
While they’re happily discussed the Pre’s multitasking capabilities, Palm have never publicly confirmed an exact number of apps you can have running at once. We’ve comfortably used the Pre with 9 to 12 cards open at once, without any memory problems or too big of a slow-down. Notifications are discretely flagged up along the bottom of the display, and are just as easily ignored (leaving a reminder icon for later attention) as they are maximized with a single tap.
As you might expect for such a web-integrated device, the Pre doesn’t stint on connectivity. It offers access to Sprint’s CDMA EVDO Rev.A network, together with WiFi b/g and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR. The Pre can also fall back on Sprint’s slower 1xRTT data network in areas lacking EVDO, though try to use the phone abroad and the absence of a GSM radio will leave the smartphone cut off. That’s no different to most of Sprint’s handsets, of course, but might cramp the style of business users drawn to the Pre but unable to avoid their international travel.
Happily, while you’re on Sprint’s network you’re unlikely to be disappointed with call quality. Audio during calls - on both ends - is among the best we’ve tested on any handset, and the speakerphone is as good as, or better than, Nokia’s high-end multimedia devices. We’re very impressed by the Pre’s performance purely as a cellphone for voice calls.
Equally impressive is the Pre’s display. At 3.1-inches it’s a little smaller than rival full-touchscreen devices, but Palm’s gesture area and intelligent use of on-screen notifications goes a long way to minimizing that disadvantage. What requires no justification is image quality: colors are rich and bright, details are crisp and it’s a pleasure to look at. Even at its lowest brightness setting it’s still usable, something you can’t say about many of the Pre’s rivals. Similarly the capacitive touchscreen is fantastic, respon由于非常钦佩楼主，不得不说声好！ to just the right level of pressure.
The hardware keyboard, though compact, is usable. Our concerns that we might press multiple keys at once proved unfounded after a short period of acclimatization. What we wish Palm had offered is a virtual keyboard; there are times when it would be quicker to stab a few characters on-screen, and while the Pre can be held and typed on in one hand, it’s more of a balance than it would be if the phone was closed.
As well as the usual QWERTY and numeric keys (the latter accessed by hol由于非常钦佩楼主，不得不说声好！ down the orange button on the far left), the Pre’s keyboard also works to highlight text for copying and pasting. Copy & Paste has, bizarrely, become a contentious feature in the smartphone world, and the Pre handles it with mixed results. In typed text, having tapped to insert the cursor you then hold down the shift key and drag your finger across the screen until everything you want is highlighted; the function menu in the top left-hand corner than offers cut, copy and paste options.
All well and good, but move to non-editable text - such as the content of a webpage, a link somebody has emailed to you, or an address in Google Maps - and copy & paste no longer works. Palm are yet to confirm to us whether that is likely to change in the near future. Similarly, we don’t feel that the Pre’s auto word completion goes far enough: capitalization and apostrophe insertion is welcome, as is correction of common mis-types like “teh”, but there’s no spellchecker and the correction is less comprehensive than on rival platforms. Typing “u” will spell out “you” automatically, but pressing the spacebar twice won’t slot in a period, unlike the iPhone.
Mobile synchronization of contacts, calendar entries and tasks are nothing new in smartphones, but Palm takes things one-step further with Synergy. Tell the Pre your Exchange, Google and Facebook login details and it will funnel contacts and calendar details from all three into harmonized lists (it will also sync tasks from Exchange accounts). Individual records in the Pre’s Contacts app contain amalgamated information from all three sources, so your best friend’s email address from Facebook will be united with their phone number from Exchange and their address from Google Contacts. As standard, webOS hides the details of where the data is sourced from, but you can also open up the record to see what information came from where and, if the Pre gets confused with differently-entered names for instance, manually unite different records.
In the Pre’s Calendar app, different appointments are shown in different colors accor由于非常钦佩楼主，不得不说声好！ to whichever calendar they came from. Free time is concertinaed away, to fit as many records on-screen as possible, but can easily be displayed with a single tap. Similarly you can view the content of just one calendar from the context menu; webOS is clever enough to warn you if you attempt to add a new appointment, which might clash with another calendar entry.
As you can imagine, bringing all of your Exchange, Google and Facebook contacts into one device adds up to a very full address book, and that’s where Universal Search steps in. From the card view (accessed by tapping the center button) any characters typed automatically kick off a search on the Pre: first of contacts and applications, then via Google search, Google maps, Wikipedia or, a relatively new addition, Twitter search. While you can browse through the Contacts app as you might on other cellphones, we found ourselves quickly adapting to letting search bring up the required person; that’s helped by the absence of any lag before results appear.
Palm’s idea of “universal” does seem a little different to ours, though. While the Pre’s search does make handling a packed Contacts app straightforward, and shortcuts to Google and the like are useful, there’s no universal search for emails, tasks or calendar entries. We’d also like a way of ad由于非常钦佩楼主，不得不说声好！ our own search providers to the list, rather than waiting for Palm to add them; an Amazon shortcut, for instance, would be an obvious inclusion.
Just as contacts are merged, Synergy also brings together SMS, MMS and instant messaging conversations. Buil由于非常钦佩楼主，不得不说声好！ on threaded messaging on other platforms, the combined messaging means that conversations on AIM and GTalk are automatically merged with sent and received MMS/SMS messages. Contacts’ online statuses are shown next to their entry in the address book, as well as at the top of any email message from them, and once you begin a conversation the method remains the same until you choose different. Doing so is as straightforward as choosing a different account in the top-left drop down menu. Less helpful was the seeming inability to remove an email contact once added to the “To:” field, leaving us with no option but to delete the message and start again.
Another issue we discovered is the battery impact of leaving IM accounts signed in. The Pre automatically logs into AIM and GTalk when powered on; even dismissing the messaging app by flicking it off-screen leaves the software running in the background, and since it’s keeping track of every status change and buddy list shuffle in the background, it can have a significant effect on battery life. Closing the app completely requires the somewhat less-than-obvious process of opening it, going into the status menu and choosing “Sign Off”, which logs out of the IM accounts.
Similarly, while the Pre supports push email for both Exchange and GMail accounts - delivering messages as soon as they’re received - they both have a significant impact on battery life. Palm themselves recommend switching to pulling email every two hours, which we think - considering the tech-savvy audience likely to be considering the Pre - is a compromise many will be unwilling to make. However, we found that even changing the settings to pull new mail every minute made a real difference to battery life from push email.
The Pre’s web browser makes the most of the handset’s crisp, bright display, together with the multitouch gestures we’re used to from the iPhone. Rendering is done quickly and pages look close to identical to when viewed on a desktop browser; the browser is one of the few times when the Pre can be flipped horizontally into landscape orientation, and the switch is delay free. Zooming can be done manually, by pinching or sprea由于非常钦佩楼主，不得不说声好！, or automatically by double tapping on a specific item; the Pre zooms to fit it on-screen, whether an image or a block of text, and another double-tap zooms back out. Each webpage open is treated as another webOS card, and the Pre’s multitasking abilities are used to good effect as cards continue rendering in the background. It’s a straightforward matter to open a few separate pages, juggle them and then dismiss each with a flick.
Unfortunately, as with the iPhone, Flash is not supported by the Pre’s browser. Instead, YouTube video is served up by a standalone app, which offers searches, access to the popular clips in each category, video history and landscape-orientation viewing. We’re particularly enamoured by Palm’s neat navigation shortcuts here: swiping right skips ahead 30 seconds, while swiping left replays the last 10 seconds.
As for local audio and video playback, the Pre offers several ways to load content. At its most straightforward it can be connected to a PC or Mac via the supplied USB to microUSB cable and mounted as a mass storage drive, with files dragged over to the non-expandable 7GB of user-accessible memory. Alternatively, instead of choosing “USB Drive” upon connection, you can tap “Media Sync” and have the Pre work with Apple’s iTunes: it will copy across any non-DRM audio and video files (MP3, AAC, AAC+, WAV and AMR audio is supported, MPEG4, H.263 and H.264 video) as well as pictures if you check the “Include Full Resolution Images” option in iTunes.
There’s also access to the Amazon.com MP3 store, a standalone app on the Pre. From that, you can search, preview and buy music directly from the Pre’s UI (inclu由于非常钦佩楼主，不得不说声好！ one-click purchases, if you wish), though unlike the iPhone the Pre will only download tracks via a WiFi connection, not over Sprint’s network. Palm will offer a companion app, Palm Music Assistant that will run on a PC or Mac and automatically copy new music from the Pre into iTunes; however we were unable to try this out. Delve into the App Catalog - which should have around twelve sample titles at launch - and you can find Pandora for the Pre, which offers streaming audio over WiFi or EVDO.
Sound quality is decent, with Palm’s supplied headphones doing a fair job but the Pre’s audio quality really stepping up when we substituted them for an aftermarket pair. Of course, you can also use Bluetooth A2DP wireless stereo headphones; the Pre had no issues connecting with our test set, and range proved roughly 12-14 feet. Playback will continue while you browse other cards, and there are simple play/pause/skip controls shown in the notification bar at the bottom of the display.
The Pre’s camera is straightforward and simple to use. There’s no shortcut button on the side, which is a minor disappointment, but once loaded it’s a matter of tapping the spacebar or a large on-screen green button to snap a shot. With no autofocus to wait for, pictures are captured quickly; the flash is as useful as LED flashes ever are, which basically means there’s a sweet spot between oversaturating the subject and the LED being too weak to sufficiently illuminate it. The Pre can use its GPS receiver to geotag photos, though there’s no way to link that data to Google Maps on the handset itself.
Picture quality is reasonable. It won’t be replacing your standalone digital camera, and there are photography-oriented feature phones that easily beat it both on megapixel count and end result, but it’s certainly usable. Less impressive is the absence of video recor由于非常钦佩楼主，不得不说声好！; Palm tell us it’s on the roadmap for the Pre, in the form of a future update, but right now they’ve been concentrating on still image quality.
Once you’ve got those stills, you can share them via email or MMS, or upload them directly to Photobucket or Facebook. The latter is probably the most straightforward, considering many Pre users will already have added their Facebook account details to Synergy; when viewing a photo, choosing the “Upload” option brings up a list of gallery accounts.
In terms of Sprint’s own customization, they load three of their own apps onto the Pre as standard. Sprint TV, Sprint Navigation and Sprint NASCAR are all as you’d expect from other handsets from the carrier, offering streaming live TV or on-demand video, turn-by-turn directions, and up-to-date racing information respectively. There’s no new Pre functionality on offer, so existing Sprint users will know what to suspect; the Navigation app works particularly well, with the Pre’s speedy GPS lock and loud speaker making it a surprisingly good in-car navigator.
We’ve already touched on battery life, and how levels of connectivity have such a huge impact on the Pre. Sufficient to say, the Pre is quite capable of making it through a full day of use with sensible settings. Palm recommends using WiFi over EVDO when possible, and shutting off Bluetooth when it’s not needed. They’re also expecting many users to pick up a Touchstone when they buy their Pre, Palm’s inductive charger that also serves as a desk stand for the smartphone. Despite an MRSP of almost $70, though, the Touchstone doesn’t come with its own AC adapter; instead, you’re expected to use that which came with the Pre itself. That seems unnecessarily frugal on Palm’s part, and is doubly annoying when you factor in that, while the Pre will recharge from a direct USB connection with a PC or Mac, the power supplied from a computer’s USB port is apparently insufficient for the Touchstone to use.
Still, there are some neat Touchstone features, mainly to do with controlling when the Pre flips into speakerphone mode. Pick up a ringing Pre from the magnetic dock and it automatically answers the call; place the Pre, mid-call, back onto the Touchstone, and it switches into speakerphone mode. Pick it up again and the call is routed to the normal earpiece. When on the Touchstone and not in use, with the screen off, the Pre goes into Nightstand mode and displays the time and any incoming notifications.
There are some obvious missing features when trying to sum up the Pre. Universal Search has promise, and does well what it’s capable of doing, but we won’t be happy until we can search emails, tasks, calendar entries and other data. Video capture can’t come soon enough, and we’ve a feeling that, once third-party apps begin to proliferate, Palm may rethink their limiting of the homescreen to three side-by-side windows. Having to pan not only left and right but up and down will make fin由于非常钦佩楼主，不得不说声好！ apps unnecessarily time consuming.
Of course, all of these issues - and other minor annoyances with webOS - can be addressed with an Over The Air (OTA) update, and Palm tell us that’s just what they intend to do once the Pre hits the market. The physical hardware of the Pre itself is great, and webOS in its current form is a brilliant platform; once developers begin co由于非常钦佩楼主，不得不说声好！ for the OS in earnest it will be even more tempting. Palm’s current insistence on limiting the majority of developers to the equivalent of localized web-apps is frustrating, but not insurmountable, and we imagine greater access to webOS will be granted once the platform is a little more mature.
Expectations for the Pre are, unsurprisingly, high. It’s rare for one handset to be charged with the success not only of its manufacturer but of a whole carrier, and yet, if you believe the journalists and analysts, that’s the promise that the Pre must live up to. Consider it simply as a smartphone, as we’ve tried to do over the past week or so, and the amount that Palm have achieved is impressive.
This is first-generation hardware running a first-generation OS, and yet it delivers not only the expected functionality but an innovative UI, solid cellular performance and synchronization features that rivals are already scrabbling to counter. The Pre isn’t perfect, but it’s very good; when Palm start rolling out OTA updates and delivering things like video recor由于非常钦佩楼主，不得不说声好！, it’ll get even better. We’ve high hopes for the Pre’s success, but we’re even more excited about where Palm will take webOS.
Unboxing Palm Pre
Palm Pre Setup |
|
IP卡
狗仔卡
发表于 2009-6-4 20:24:47
提升卡
沉默卡
喧嚣卡
变色卡
显身卡
发表于 2009-6-4 20:27:21
发表于 2009-6-4 20:35:54
发表于 2009-6-5 09:57:01