Why You Can Trust CNET Palm Pre Plus (AT&T) review: Palm Pre Plus (AT&T)
Palm Pre Plus (AT&T)
Palm Pre Plus (AT&T)
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Editors' Note: Portions of the Design and Features sections were taken from our review of the Verizon Palm Pre Plus, since the phones share a number of similarities.
The Palm Pre Plus for AT&T has been a long time coming. It was first teased at CES 2010 and then officially announced at the CTIA spring show. Come May 16, you'll finally be able to get your hands on one. There aren't a ton of surprises here since the smartphone is largely similar to the Verizon variant. Obviously, it's got a GSM/UMTS radio instead of a CDMA one and supports AT&T's services, but otherwise the hardware and software remain the same.
Of course, we would have preferred new hardware (guess we'll have to wait till after the HP acquisition), but the Pre Plus finally exposes AT&T customers to the great capabilities of WebOS, most notably, true multitasking. Its well-rounded set of features and general ease of use makes it one of the better touch-screen smartphones in AT&T's lineup right now, since the Motorola Backflip failed to impress and the LG Expo and HTC Tilt2 skews more towards business users. It's certainly one of the top alternatives to the iPhone, but we think it's priced a bit too high.
At $149.99 with a two-year contract, it's hard not to look Verizon's way and see that the same phone costs $100 less and includes free Mobile Hotspot service. AT&T's limited time offer to throw in a free Touchstone dock (normally $50) when you purchase the phone at one of its retail stores is a small consolation, but with the next iPhone also just around the corner, the price is enough to make one pause. The Palm Pre Plus is a great smartphone, but knocking even $50 off would make this a more attractive option for people. We can only hope AT&T reconsiders in the future.
Design
At first glance, there doesn't seem to be a noticeable difference between the Palm Pre Plus and the Palm Pre. The Pre Plus shares the same pebble-like shape and slider design and also features a gorgeous 3.1-inch HVGA multitouch screen. However, Palm made some slight changes to the design of the phone that really improves the overall look and feel of the device. To start, it removed the center knob that takes you to the Deck of Cards view. The function is still there, but as with the Palm Pixi, it's integrated into the gesture area so you have a more streamlined look, not to mention a smoother experience when you're swiping your finger from right to left to return to the previous screen.
Palm also revamped the keyboard. Generally speaking, it's still small and will probably give people with larger thumbs some initial problems. However, the company increased the key travel space and the buttons now give more tactile feedback, instead of feeling gummy like the original Pre's, which made a huge difference when typing. We didn't feel dragged down by squishy keys, allowing us to compose messages faster and with fewer mistakes. We asked a couple of Pre owners in the office to try it out, and they definitely noticed a difference and had a hard time hiding their jealousy. That said, it would still be nice to have a virtual keyboard for those times when you're using the smartphone in landscape mode and want to enter some text.
On somewhat of a related note, the slider mechanism feels more solid on the Pre Plus. In its closed state, the front part of the phone doesn't move around as much or feel rickety, and there's more of a spring-like action when you slide the phone open.
One final design change is that the Pre Plus now ships with an inductive back cover, so it's Touchstone-ready right out of the box. Of course, you still have to buy the charging dock ($49.99), but you won't have to get the backplate as well. As an added bonus, the phone just feels more substantial in the hand and doesn't have that plasticky feel of the original Pre. With the inductive cover, the Pre Plus weighs slightly more at 4.89 ounces (versus 4.76 ounces), which contributes to a more solid feel, but it measures the same at 3.96 inches tall by 2.35 inches wide by 0.67 inch thick.
The rest of the smartphone is pretty much the same. The camera and flash are located on the back. On top of the device, you'll find the power button, silent ringer switch, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. A Micro-USB port is on the right side.
AT&T packages the Palm Pre Plus with an AC adapter, a USB cable, a wired stereo headset, a soft carrying pouch, and reference material. As we noted earlier, for a limited time, AT&T will include the Touchstone dock for free when the smartphone is purchased from one of its retail stores. For more add-ons, please check out our cell phone accessories, ring tones, and help page.
Features
The Palm Pre Plus brings all the features we've come to love about WebOS, including the Deck of Cards multitasking function, Synergy, and Palm's notification system. In this section, we'll focus on what's new with the Palm Pre Plus, but for more information about WebOS, please read our full review of the Palm Pre for Sprint.
Most of you may be wondering what the difference is between the Verizon Pre Plus and the AT&T Pre Plus. For the most part, they are the same, but the AT&T version runs on the carrier's GSM/UMTS/HSDPA network and offers quad-band world roaming capabilities. The smartphone also ships with WebOS 1.4.2 out of the box, so you'll immediately get new features and enhancements that came with the WebOS 1.4.1.1 update, including video recording/editing. Unfortunately, Adobe has yet to deliver the Flash 10.1 plug-in to the Palm App Catalog, so there's no full support for Flash content within the Pre's browser right now.
In addition, the smartphone is preloaded with several AT&T services, including Yellow Page Mobile (YPMobile), AT&T Navigator, and support for the carrier's new cloud-based Address Book service. If you've used the latter to back up contacts from your previous phone, then you'll be able to sign into that account via Synergy and sync it back to the Pre Plus.
Unfortunately, the one service that we wanted to see carried over from Verizon's model is not supported on the AT&T Pre Plus and that would be Palm's Mobile Hotspot utility. This feature would have allowed you to turn the handset into a mobile Wi-Fi router for use with up to five devices, but alas, this will remain a Verizon exclusive. As some consolation, AT&T has added support for its Whisper service so the Pre Plus will automatically connect to any of the carrier's Wi-Fi hotspots nationwide.
Aside from that, the hardware and software on AT&T's Palm Pre Plus is the same. You get double the Flash memory of the Pre, bringing it up to 16GB, with about 15GB available to the user, and it also has double the RAM, paving the way to run more apps and produce speedier performance.
Performance
We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900;UMTS/HSDPA 900/2100) Palm Pre Plus in New York using AT&T service and call quality, for the most part, was good. We enjoyed clear audio quality with minimal background noise. At no point during our review period did we have a problem carrying on a conversation, and we didn't experience any dropped calls. On the other side, our friends said they could tell we were using a cell phone and occasionally complained that the ends of our sentences would cut off. Otherwise, sound quality was satisfactory.
Speakerphone calls were a bit soft even with the volume cranked to the highest level, so it was difficult to carry on in louder environments. There was also a bit of a hollow tone. We had no problems pairing the handset with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth Headset or the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.
We were able to get a 3G signal throughout our testing period here in Manhattan, and the network provided fairly good speeds. CNET's full site loaded in 28 seconds, whereas CNN and ESPN's mobile site came up in 10 seconds and 12 seconds, respectively. Downloading a single track from the Amazon MP3 Store took about 1 minute, and downloading and installing the a free version of Asphalt 5 from the App Catalog took 2 minutes and 26 seconds. Streaming YouTube videos over 3G took a few seconds to buffer, but once loaded, the clips played without interruption. Of course, for best results, we recommend using a Wi-Fi connection whenever possible. It should also be noted that you can be on a call and have a data connection at the same time, unlike with Verizon.
The Pre Plus has the same 3-megapixel camera as the rest of the Pre family, which is fine by us as it has always impressed us with great picture quality, and the results are no different this time around. Whether we were shooting indoor or outdoors, the images came out sharp and with vibrant color. Video quality was also quite decent, and the editing process couldn't be any simpler.
The Palm Pre Plus uses the same processor as the original Pre, but as we mentioned earlier, it has double the RAM so the smartphone felt somewhat snappier. We noticed there was less lag when transitioning between cards and menu screens, and we had multiple apps running in the background (at least a dozen at one point) and didn't get a message alerting us to low memory. That said, there were still some delays when launching apps.
The Palm Pre Plus features a user-replaceable 1150mAh lithium-ion battery with a rated talk time of 5 hours and up to 14.5 days of standby time. We are still conducting our battery drain tests but will update this section as soon as we have final results. Anecdotally, with moderate use, we were running to charge our device by the end of the day, so we'd recommend carrying a charger with you at all times and/or a second battery. According to FCC radiation charts, the Pre Plus has a digital SAR rating of 0.923 watt per kilogram.