Palm Pre - Hands-on

Phone Arena is testing and reviewing mobile phones for you. This video focus' on the Palm Pre.

Female: To kind of give you just the quick spill on the core features I think from a UI perspective well actually, let me start from the outside in. From my hardware prospective, nice and small, I don’t want to—there’s a curved angle to it and obviously with the easiest slider. You can see the curve in the whole device which is really, really nice when kind of holding it up to your face. So what was really important throughout was to maintain this really nice clean look from the outside in, so from a UI perspective that was really one of the focuses was and how do we get rid about the button and how do we get rid about the menus and how do we get rid of you know the clutter I guess. But at the same time you know. If you look at the Treo’s and way back to the Palm Pilot, you always have this quick access buttons which people loved and which you really don’t want to leave it. So what we did was we created this quick launch bar which has your phone contacts calendar e-mail; and then you’ll launch this in the screen. And that’s kind of your—your really your favorite. So full touch screen so if I want to my contacts, quick touch there, it will open up my contacts. Again within each the application is really maintained kind of that really convenient look, so super simple yet the pictures there if you want to add a contact. You don’t need the menus aren’t like that which you would do click at the contacts. You can scroll through and you get a nice momentum going, scroll back everything is really, really great and everything as there but open up Sophia. You know again, information is laid out really nicely and really, really clean. The one thing that’s really in one of the things that’s really, really cool is that obviously the touch screen was active but so is this area below it which we call the gesture area. So one of my favorite gestures which I’ve missed terribly and a lot of the reason home devices is the back gesture and Sophie has contact information now. If I want to go back to my main contact list just do a quick back swipe on the gesture and it brings me back to the main side. And you see that it’s difficult to see but there’s a little light underneath that, so it’s actually is recognizing your gesture and it’s kind of ambidextrous, so if I'm left handed or if I want to do it with one hand or if I want to do on this side. Whatever it maybe—well my battery is dying. Then it’s just kind of really, really simple thing. Male: And if you didn’t have this light on then you’d be able to see those lights better. Female: Yes , exactly, another kind of great gesture to know is the full swipe from the bottom brings up your typical launcher screen right, so every phone has a launcher screen. Its you know—reminiscing some kind of diesel on these guys so you can tap on photos then really, really easy if I want photos. Fold those up and then if I want to go in and look at the photos click on here and click on the photo and then it’s just like slipping through a photo album. So really, really kind of intuitive gestures, again if I want to go back, there we go. If I go back it will bring me to this stage. One thin that’s also very, very cool is that so it feels and sees that as I mean these applications. I’ve lost that quick launch bar there just talking about with my favorites because again we don’t want to clutter right? But I can get it back really easily. If I drag my finger from the top, from the bottoms up slowly, you can see it here, so my quick launch bar is back. So we’ve kept it off the screen. Male: Could you anchor it on the screen if you want too? Female: Not when you are in the applications. As there was soon as you’re here and let’s say you know— Male: No— Female: I have no applications running then it’s always there. The wall in the apps is always just below the screen and I pull it up there we go and then we go back here and then pull it up and fold that over here. Excuse me and I pull it up and I click wherever I leave it will; land so if I leave on e-mail it will run on an e-mail and all would be good. One of I think hands-down the coolest things about this device is what the center button does. So the center button does—well basically what we wanted to do with the platform as a whole is to be able to all those replicate what you can do on your desktop. You know when your desktop, you have obviously your task bar at the bottom. You can have a million applications open at the same time if you want. Nobody has been able to do that in a mobile, right. You have some labels of multitasking environment but they are just the layer. You can’t see them. You don’t know what you are doing. There’s at all open at the same time eating up your battery life and you’re not really doing anything on it. Male: That’s a very easy— Female: What this does is we’ve changed kind of how that works. This is the center button that brings you to your card view which is all of your open applications. And these are actually active live application, so for example if I want to pull the contacts that—excuse me I’ve got a dry throat. If I pull my contacts that means I’m just trying to show you that just to show you that they are active. I give in a big swipe, I move back and it is still moving. So these are actual live updates and they’re not frozen in time and put at the back. So this is really great when you’re starting an e-mail you know like a typical. I'm here right now. If I start an a-mail and all I need is this one. Save this draft, close it, go to my e-mail, open cap—its chaos right now I just click my back button and jump over to the next applications and it does it all for me. And then when I'm in this view, I can move them around so I can say, “Okay, bring this guy here or bring this guy over here.” If you have some sort of logical sequence, or you want to vote, or I can close that just by swiping on them all. It’s super easy and intuitive. Now, the next coolest thing about the play and the Palm as a general rule is the concept called Synergy. So Synergy is a new feature that we applied to contacts, calendar, messaging and e-mail, so let me start with contacts. So synergy is all based on this idea that—okay today, not everybody your information was all of this right? So I have my EAS account or my Outlook Account Network that has all my work contacts. I have my gmail account that might have my personal calendar and my friends from where and then I have my 200 friends on FaceBook and my calendar events there. So in the olden days, Pre Palm you have to if I say okay I want to call Sophia okay and I'm thinking that her phone number well. I think the phone number that I want is on her FaceBook account. I’d open up my FaceBook account; I’d go and find Sophia as like as a friend and then I can drill in and get the phone number. What Palm does with from palm Synergy feature is it actually pulls from all those data sources and it pulls it all together. So if I go into Sophia here, you see that she has some stacked photos. That means that she has more than one contact in here. You see the little tools that she is too. You click on that and I’ll show you that current information is being pulled from my Outlook account as well as my channel account, so but when I look at it, right? I don’t think—at the end of the day if I want to call Sophia. I don’t really care if her phone number is stored in gmail or Outlook. I just want to call Sophia, so when it comes to this it doesn’t really matter but it’s keeping the silos on the web that you want to keep. So it’s just kind of really thinking about, okay how do I contact the person versus a person silent about the topic, so that’s Synergy in contact. So if I want to look at Synergy on the calendar, pull out my calendar here. We’ve also done the same thing, so we pull the calendar information from different sources from your EAS, from your personal calendars on gmail from your FaceBook calendar. You can subscribe to public calendars on gmail so I might have the weather counter and I might have the sports teams’ calendar, events calendar or whatever it may be and it layers them all into one view. So you can actually see where your free time is and still the same, “Okay I’m free at work but I have another engagement” and jumping off to one calendar to the other. So I click up here on a little and s show me all my account and so I have my EAS Account at the US Holidays layered on there. I have the stark shark’s calendar at the weather and I have my personal feminine encounter. If for some reason I'm just really busy and I'm at work and I just want to look at my work account during the day, click on and highlight the Palm EAS account and It’ll just show me which ones are my work account. But the cool thing is that you see up here, there are some diagonal lines there. What does diagonal lines mean is that that time is taken up and one of your accounts as well. So you are just looking at that even though you don’t have the details of the other calendar, you see that well they are in front to their furnish of the book. Another really cool thing—so that’s all done kind of again through this concept of Synergy of pulling on in which the other. Everything is just really cool. I think is that in order to again with the kind of it, is to try to de-clutter the UI. We am—I’m going to a typical calendar right now, if you have four hours free in the afternoon you just see white space and you would be scrolling back of all and then going up from one to the other. Right now, we’ve done as it come it according to end it right? So it says okay I'm three hour s free and if it is okay I wanted to open that up. Click on that, stretch it open and then I can fill in the data. So just try and maximize your screen. Tiny little things that you usually do, so that is your day view, your week view and then your monthly and circle means today and s, when it’s black, it actually shows that you do have appointments. It’s just that different shade. You can see slightly different shading on the device. So whatever is talking about something called the universal search which is one of my hands down favorite things on the device. For example, if I want to go today and find something on the website, I would open up my launch screen, I’d click on the web application and go to www.google.com, I’d type in whatever and then I search it. With universal search, regardless to where you are, you can just type it so from here and then I start typing. It’s going to the first of all search the device, so search it and it says okay we have a search type to BL. So there we already have an application that that corresponds to that. I also have a couple of contacts of course about that the first search on the right. If I keep typing, it’s going to narrow a little bit for me. It’s going to expand out my Google clues in case I really want to call them and if I keep typing. It will see if I want with these searches. So I can do Wiki I can do Google. If I do Google, just post out directly to the search results, so it’s really kind of taking with you typically a four five of the process and putting it into a couple of simple tasks. And it’s the easiest way honestly, I’ve do a lot to find all my applications instead of using the launcher. Anything that’s outside of my quick launch bar, I use the universal search for everything. You pop up the back and pop it off, the place looks barren. Male: I want to get this too for this is to set on the other and prove it. Female: Prove this in place of what? Male: That’s one of this day. Female: Oh really? Male: Yes. Female: Yes I know. It is absolutely irreplaceable but like I said, we are doing everything they can to make sure that it will last as long as humanly possible. Male: And can you show the album where you flip the images in? Female: Sure! I know that you could take that thank you, so if I look at my photo album, I can pull this up, you got the photos, and its battery is charging. One thing that is fun is obviously a kind that I can flip through them. I can run it horizontally, so I can shift it that way or kind on one of my favorite things is that they find speaking to somebody instead of going, “Oh look at this picture!” I can just flip it. So there’s just kind of fun. Again a kind of back center button out, throw it off the screen. This is the palm touch tone. Male: That is not in here right? Female: No it’s not. No it’s a separate accessory, so what this does is a charger via inductive charging technology. So no cables, no—you’ll notice its really clean on the outside and you don’t have these little guys that stuff gets stucked in. So throw it on that, it all comes when you buy and you have to change the battery door as well. Magnets in there, just snap it on and then it charges for you. Male: So if you had a cover or something you couldn’t use that, like when you had a— Female: I'm not sure how strong the magnet is, so that if it is covered and probably the thickness requirement. You can run that either on landscape mode or in portrait mode and the great thing is that it recognizes it in the device. So you can still run video and watch it while its charging. If it’s in the charger and you get a phone call, you can ask the phone call because it automatically switched on because it knows that it’s on the charger, so just again something that’s kind of the outcome of us doing the hardware and software. You can get some of this great integration that you really want. Male: Does it take longer to charge? Female: So like charging on here or charging directly plugged on the wall area on the— Male: What about two initiation, if you have to synchronize it with the PC? Female: You don’t have to synchronize to the PC, so everything is done over the hour right? So that’s kind of the beauty of the Web OS is that that kind of activity, so that everything, so everything is kind of there for you. There’s really not ever a reason to plug it into your PC. One thing you might plug it into your PC for is that you can use this as a USB kind of MAC storage mode. So if you want to transfer a whole chunk of photos, or whole chunk of music over, plug it into your computer and it appears like just a fun drive and then you can just transfer anything. Male: So there’s the USB? Female: Yes there is. It’s right here on the side, so one thing that’s actually worth telling is of course the music and well, we are talking about music. Male: And the videos as well. Female: Yes sure, so kind of this is what your music library is on so you get all the album marked as well that you want as well. It has a great speaker on it, and it’s kind of tough to hear in here. Male: Where is the speaker? Female: It’s on the back, so I can have—the cool thing is I can have this playing in the background and I can kind of keep on doing what I’m doing. So I go back to my e-mail or whatever it maybe and you’ll see that the music now you get this little music note. So it’s now o my dashboard right, on my notification dashboard. So if I want to change my music, I don’t need to go back and open up my music player. I can just tap on this below and it pulls it up here, so here’s kind of—here’s a notification that I missed earlier and then throw away. Here, I can go on to fast forward. You can see the music are here on the album mark kind of in the background. So I can just manage it without actually stopping what I'm doing or canceling out what I'm doing. You are looking for some video. Let’s see what’s on here. I think we have two videos on here. There’s the trailer and there’s the Tenth Elegance. Somebody’s personal video of elegance. Male: Prayerful. Female: Yeah and that was nice. Male: And it is always in landscape. If you flip it over, would it—does it always know which the bottom so to speak? You know what I mean? Female: You’ll know that in video but I think—I'm not really sure to do that as I can try it on another application if you like. Male: No thanks, is there an audio? Female: Yes there is. Yeah. Male: The maximum on here is as much to put on the speaker. Female: This is the maximum. It is tough I here but let me put this video on. Male: Can you make voice calls? Female: Yes. This is the trailer but— Male: Does it take what kind of video formats? Female: Yeah there’s a long list video formats that I personally don’t know it’s on the top of my head. If you do go to our website, there are all kind of listed. It is such a very good speaker. Again, it’s a big room but it’s a pretty loud speaker and it’s not tiny at all which is really nice. Male: Do you really know you have two hours on the battery? Female: I think it’s either 1150 or 1200. Its on the top of my head and as far as battery life and a kind of still working out , kind of working it through kind of testing and certitification but we want to make sure we maximize at least on the day.