Palm Pre Plus review

We loved the first Palm Pre, thanks to its slick webOS operating system, and despite its nascent app store. But we're having a hard time maintaining our enthusiasm eight months later, now that Android phones are going from strength to strength. Nevertheless, the Palm Pre Plus improves on the excellent Pre, with an even better keyboard, and more power and memory.

You're looking at top-of-the-range pricing for the Pre Plus, starting from free on a £35-a-month, two-year contract. Currently there's no pay-as-you-go or SIM-free price available.

Smooth and slidey
Everything that made us give the Pre an Editors' Choice award in October 2009 is alive and well on the Pre Plus. (Check out our full review of the granddaddy of webOS phones to read about it in more detail.) That means the innovative, smooth user interface, the stunning 79mm (3.1-inch) screen and the handy Qwerty keyboard are all present.

The Pre Plus' keyboard is good, but may not be suitable for those with sausage thumbs

The keyboard has been tweaked slightly to be clickier and less rubbery, although the keys are still very small. We enjoyed typing on it, despite its size, but you may want to give it a spin before committing if you have huge thumbs. There's still no on-screen keyboard, so you're out of luck if you want to type with the phone closed or in landscape mode.

The Pre Plus has ditched the Pre's nubbin-like home button and integrated its functions into the touch-sensitive area underneath the screen. This change makes the phone look even more streamlined, and it's easy to get used to. The backwards-swipe gesture that returns you to the previous screen is as addictive and intuitive as ever.

We found the slider on the original Pre to be rather wobbly, with sharp plastic edges. On the Pre Plus, the slider feels more solid, and it has more spring when you slide it up with one thumb. The edges feel slightly smoother, but they're still sharp.

Memory monster
Besides beefing up the hardware, Palm has also pumped up the brains of the Pre Plus. The memory has been increased from 8GB to 16GB. That's especially handy since there's no memory-card slot, which means you can't expand the memory yourself. Happily, transferring your music and other files onto the phone using the USB cable is straightforward, so we don't think you'll miss having a memory card that you can swap in and out.

It's been a while since webOS first emerged, but we're still impressed by its slick and user-friendly interface

The Pre Plus also has more RAM than its predecessor, which means it can handle more apps running at the same time, and even zippier games like Need for Speed. We found that apps only took a moment to load, compared to the longer load times on the first Pre, although the phone still takes some time to boot up.

The Pre Plus doesn't offer much longer battery life than the Pre. Unlike the Pre, however, it comes with an inductive back cover for use with the Touchstone wireless charger. You can buy the charger online for around £17.50. Otherwise, you'll have to charge the Pre Plus via a USB cable, and lifting up the USB cover to access the socket is surprisingly annoying. With intensive use of battery-hungry features like Web browsing and GPS, we found that the Pre Plus needed to be charged at least once a day.

Abortive app attack
Sadly, the Palm App Catalog hasn't grown up with the hardware, and it's lagging far behind the iPhone App Store and Android Market. We can forgive this in the case of a comparatively inexpensive phone focused on social networking, like the Palm Pixi Plus, but it's a big disappointment in a top-of-the-line smart phone with a price tag to match.