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Today’s the big day! Palm unleashed the Pre upon the world. Read on to find impressions of launch day and the device!

Palm Pre, here we come! I live in San Francisco, but my girlfriend lives in the East Bay. There are a few Sprint stores in San Francisco, and there’s one in Emeryville. We decided that there are too many nerds in San Francisco and that we’d have a better chance of getting a phone in Emeryville. 6:30AM was the agreed upon time to get there. About a year ago, I waited early in line at the 34th St AT&T Store in NYC for my iPhone. Luckily, this line wasn’t nearly as bad. When we arrived, we were 5th in line. I went to get some bagels for us, and as I was gone, the line got longer, but not that much longer. At around 7:30AM, 30 minutes before opening. The line was 16 people long.

While I was gone, my girlfriend was counting the number of employees coming into the store. I think she counted a total of twelve. On my way back, I got the following humorous text:

We ate our bagels, waited and waited. Finally around 7:55AM, a couple Sprint employees came outside to brief us on the process. The manager said they had “about 60″ Palm Pres and at this time, there were about 30 people in line. She assured us all that there would be enough phones for everyone. She also mentioned that people could buy up to five phones that day, but that all phones had to be activated in the store. I assume this pertained to those with family plans.

As a rule, I really dislike cell phone salesmen. I find them a notch below gym membership salesmen. However, all the Sprint employees were very friendly this morning. Of course, there were plenty of unintelligent comments, as always. For example, the salesman suggested that my girlfriend buy a screen protector for her Pre. Great idea! Do they sell them or make them yet? No! They also insisted that after activating, they walk us through the opening sequence of the phone. Dude, I know how to operate a frickin phone. I already paid. Let me go. All told, it was a pretty smooth experience! We were out and about for a total of less than two hours, had the phone activated and in hand, and we were ready to go home. Contrast that with my iPhone 3G experience last year… the line was twice as long… the activation broke… I waited in the store for 30 minutes just to NOT get it activated… It didn’t activate itself til like 5PM that day… UGH. Hopefully Apple has a better experience for us this year.

So… My first impressions! I’m an iPhone user so most opinions will be a direct comparison to the iPhone. I’ll try to stay ubiased.

The phone itself is a very elegant device. It looks like a shiny, polished stone, when off. The screen is sharp and bright. It doesn’t seem to “pop” like the iPhone screen does – maybe the iPhone uses a higher quality glass (is the Pre screen made of glass?). But short of the iPhone, it’s one of the nicest screens I’ve seen to date on a phone. I don’t like how the edges of the screen are rounded. What’s the point? It cuts off text on browser windows. So if you’re reading this post on a Pre browser, you would have to scroll down just a little further than you would on an iPhone browser to see the top left of the text. A small quibble, no doubt, but they should add an option for turning on those extra pixels.

For those coming from an iPhone, you’ll notice immediately that things don’t scroll quite as smoothly. The maps seem a little bit sluggish to move with your finger, web pages don’t scroll quite as smoothly, and even swiping the menus in the OS just aren’t as fluid. Now that being said, I still may prefer Maps on the Pre to maps on the iPhone. The maps load faster when you double tap and scroll. To clarify, even though the motion isn’t as fluid, the load times seem to be less. But in general, Google Maps on the Pre is mostly the same as Google Maps for the iPhone.

The browser is great. Web sites seem to load faster than they do on my iPhone, by a second or two. I don’t have the beta 3.0 OS so I can’t compare to that, but on the most recent public firmware of the iPhone, it lags a bit. But once a site is open, I think I prefer the browsing experience on the iPhone. Clicking links isn’t as easy on the Pre. You don’t see where you’re clicking until after you lift your finger. It’s easier to mis-click.

The biggest disappointment is “synergy.” What a crock. What “synergy” means is “we will dump all of your google on your phone.” Great – so every person I’ve ever emailed is now a “contact,” even if they don’t have a phone number associated with it. Can you manage this? Nope. It’s all or nothing. I’ll choose nothing.

WebOS seems very promising. The cards system for changing apps works really well. Really really well. Its very satisfying to click the button, see all the apps zoom out, swipe from side to side, etc. Navigating the menus is okay. To get a feel for it, picture the iPhone icons. Now make them smaller. Make them able to scroll up and down. Make the icons a bit uglier. Add more gratuitous, worthless icons. Bam! Pre menus system . I don’t like that there isn’t a global “Settings” application. If you want to change settings for email, you load up the email program and click the button in the top left, then navigate to preferences. Actually, for those of you familiar with the old PalmOS, this is how it was done there. So it seems they didn’t throw EVERYTHING out when coming up with WebOS.

The Touchstone charging dock is great! Placing the phone on the charging dock brings up a little mini clock. It’s magnetic so the phone won’t fall off. You can actually turn the Touchstone upside down and the phone still stays attached. The Touchstone has a very nice weight to it. The bottom is sticky so it won’t slide around. To me, this is the best hardware innovation with the phone. The keyboard is pretty good, but I’m perfectly happy with my virtual typing skills on my iPhone, so I don’t care too much about this. However, my girlfriend is a better judge, as she is migrating from her Centro. She finds it to be slighly better, with the keys less “bumpy” than the Centro, and slightly more spaced.

I’ll post again in a week or two, after I’ve spent more time with the device, but I wanted to share my first impressions. At this point, I like the phone. It’s a great alternative for those who, for whatever reason, don’t want an iPhone. If you have to have a keyboard, go for it. I would much rather have this phone than a blackberry, especially when it comes to things like web browsing. I think the experience is inferior to that on an iPhone, and that’s before OS 3.0 comes out and before they releaes new hardware in 48 hours. So if last year’s iPhone is more compelling than this year’s Pre, overall, then who knows how the story will play out for Palm. I really enjoy the device, though. But… There’s no ‘wow’ factor here, if you’re coming from an iPhone. Once again, these are all just initial impressions – so I will update with more thoughts in the near future!

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