Palm Pre 2

Editor's Review of the Pre 2

The Pre 2 is the first Palm-branded handset to launch since HP's high-profile takeover of the company back in 2010. While its specs may struggle to get the pulse racing, HP's first foray into the smartphone market is certainly a good one, and a vast improvement on Palm's previous releases. It may be nothing revolutionary, but can the Palm Pre 2 finally make people pay attention?

Design & Build

At 59.6 x 100.7 x 16.9mm the Palm Pre 2 is hardly the most compact handset on the market, but what it carries in bulk, it makes up for in style. Its curved rear sits comfortably in your hand, and its matt black battery cover is certainly a looker, albeit a fingerprint magnet. Unlike Palm's previous efforts, the handset sports a flat glass front, which not only looks better, but is 10 times easier to operate.

At 3.1 inches, the Pre 2's 320 x 480 resolution touchscreen is hardly one of the most capacious panels we've ever seen, especially when pitted against the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S and HTC Desire HD. Still, the Gorilla Glass-toughened display has no reason to be huge, especially considering the handset's lack of onscreen keys. Instead, it packs a slide out keypad, although its backlit QWERTY keys are still as tiny as ever. We soon got used to the tightly-squashed keys, although those of you with sausage-sized digits may not have the same luck.

In terms of build, the most impressive factor about the Palm Pre 2 is its 1GHz processor under the hood, doubling the speed of its predecessors.

OS & Interface

The main focus of HP's webOS 2.0 interface is its intuitive "cards" system, as found on the original Pre handset. For Palm newbies, this transforms any app you open into a minimized "card", enabling you to flick through all of your open applications straight from the homescreen. HP have included an all-new "Stacks" feature on the Pre 2, which now allows for cards to be grouped together. Arguably, its one of the best multitasking systems on a smartphone, and is miles ahead of the iPhone 4's efforts.

With webOS 2.0 onboard, the Palm Pre 2 ticks along much faster than the original Pre and Pixi too, and looks more refined in the process. It also has its plus points for social networkers, offering email, Facebook and LinkedIn intergration.

JustType is also included on HP's latest platform, acting as an evolution of Palm's Universal Search. By simply typing into webOS 2.0, it will begin to find relevant content, be it a Facebook contact or Google web search.

Multimedia & Storage

The 5 megapixel snapper on the Palm Pre 2 is a vast improvement on the 3 megapixel camera found on the original Pre, although its still lacking in advanced features. It may come equipped with an LED flash and geotagging, but colours still tend to look dull and lacking in detail, delivering mediocre images at best.

Just like the quality of our snaps, Palm's media sharing options struggled to match up to Android's deep social network integration, only enabling users to share snaps via email and MMS.

Video is captured at VGA resolution, although despite the onboard flash, it cannot act as a video light. The footage wasn't as bad as we were expecting however, and audio quality was crystal clear.

The onboard music player is functional, and easy for first-time Palm users to operate. However, in terms of quality, the music sounds flat, even with a decent set of headphones plugged in. This could be helped with an onboard equalized, although HP haven't provided one.

Everything Else

The internet experience was central to the original Pre, and HP webOS 2.0 takes this up a notch with the inclusion of Flash 10.1 support. Despite its HSDPA and WiFi speeds, it has to be said that the web browser itself really does need to work before Adobe's plug-in can take center stage, with content struggling to load on the basic client.

Conclusion

While we're not convinced it's going to be a hit, we really enjoyed playing with the well designed, intuitive Palm Pre 2. It's media features may be lacking, but HP's webOS 2.0 offers one of the smartest interfaces we've ever used, offering fantastic social networking integration and super-slick multitasking. Let's just hope this time around, people stand up any pay attention.