Palm's $350 credit-card sized smartphone is supposed to liberate you, but it's got some big problems
The Palm phone synchs up in real time with your main phone — but that phone needs to be a Verizon phone.
The phone really is about the size of a credit card and is incredibly lightweight. The home screen setup is simple and aesthetically pleasing — any wording or more clutter on the screen would seem overwhelming.
The phone is only 3.8-inches tall and 1.9 inches wide, with one-inch wide bezels on the top and bottom.
Despite it's small size, the phone can run the same apps available for normal-sized phones. With a scant 3GB of RAM though, it's relatively easy to overload the phone's storage and affect the device's performance.
The smaller device and smaller screen dramatically alters the appearance of the websites and apps that you're familiar with, and it takes time to adjust.
Headlines on news articles would often take up the entire screen, and a lot of scrolling was involved to get through a webpage. Gmail was difficult to read, and sorting through my Google Calendar was almost impossible.
The keyboard is a real pain to use. The keys were close together and it took me a while to complete messages, even with the help of autocorrect.
The setup of the keyboard looks a lot like the complete keyboards found on older PDAs from Palm and BlackBerry, but the ability to press physical keys on those versions meant you could be a bit more confident in what you were writing. Typing out messages on the new Palm's cramped on-screen keyboard involved lots of spelling errors that I had to navigate through and fix.
Making phone calls on the tiny device feels awkward at first.
Having a phone conversation on the slim, and tiny Palm phone feels a bit weird at first, especially compared to holding a larger smartphone in your hand and up to your ear. But once you get used to it, the Palm performs just fine as a phone.
Palm's 12 megapixel camera is the same quality as the cameras on other popular smartphones. However, you have to trust the picture you're taking looks good, because the picture's quality and detail are hard to decipher on the small screen.
While some newer phones have better cameras, popular smartphones with 12MP cameras include earlier iPhone versions, as well as the Samsung Galaxy 8.
The phone can charge really fast. However, the battery life also runs out quickly.
Palm says its battery life is about 8 hours, which isn't amazing. In my experience, however, the Palm's battery life drained in much less time, even if I spent large amounts of time off of the phone. The phone was fine for a night out, but I would not rely on it for longer periods of time.
One of Palm's signature features is its "Life Mode," a mix of Apple's "do not disturb" and "low battery" features. Life Mode is indicated by a little palm tree in the menu bar and, when activated, won't ping you with notifications and messages.
Palm claims the phone can last a full day when in Life Mode. In my experience, I got about 8 to 10 hours in Life Mode.
Palm has created various accessories so that the phone can be tailored to different lifestyles.
In an interview with Business Insider in November, Palm's founders said they didn't see Palm having the same exact role in each customer's life. The company's accessories offer a vision that people can use their Palm phones to meet their personal interests and make their experiences unique.
There are sports armbands for working out, Kate Spade wristlets for going out and simple lanyard to loop around your neck for everyday use.
The phone did little to curb the amount of attention I paid to my phone.
Instead of shooting a quick text out on my normal iPhone, I found myself struggling to read what was on the screen and having to carefully type out messages. It became more of an inconvenience than anything to have the Palm phone on me, dangling off my wrist on its short lanyard.
For some, the Palm phone could be used for bike rides and gym workouts when regular-sized smartphones could get in the way. For others, Palm could act as a hub to hold someone's extensive music collection that can't all fit on their regular phone.
But these are things you technology has already made available to us, but for much cheaper. IPods have long been storing large quantities of music for listeners. More recently, the dozens of smartwatches out there have already adopted the idea that a smaller screen could act as an intermediary window into what's going on, without having to take out your phone at all.
Palm's $350 pricepoint isn't far off from what Apple sells its latest Watches for. So if you have an Android device, you're on the Verizon network, and you have the $350 to shell out for a second phone, the Palm phone is great. You're sure to find it of use.
But if you're looking to Palm to help ween yourself off of reliance on technology, it's unlikely to be effective in that sense.
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