Palm Pre (US version) review

The Pre's music sound quality is good. We're happy that Palm included a standard headphone jack, although it might have been better placed on the bottom of the device. We tested the phone with a pair of Radius Atomic Bass earphones and Bose On-Ear headphones, and, while there are no audio settings or EQ presets, songs sounded rich and there's a good amount of bass. Music is muted for any incoming calls.

The Pre's equipped with a standard 3.5mm jack so you can plug in your favourite pair of headphones

MPEG-4 and YouTube clips, via the dedicated YouTube app, play back smoothly. We were impressed by the clarity of YouTube videos.

Camera
The Pre comes equipped with a 3-megapixel camera and an LED flash. The camera functions are about as basic as you can get. Flash options include on, off or auto. To take a photo, you can either press the green on-screen button or use the space bar. There are no effects, or options to choose from various image sizes or resolutions. Also, there's no video recording at launch, but Palm has alluded to adding this feature in the future, which can be done via an over-the-air update. With the integrated GPS, however, the Pre can geotag photos.

On back, you'll find the Pre's 3-megapixel camera and LED flash

To review your pictures, you can head over to your photo roll. From there, you'll also be able to share images with friends via email, multimedia message or by uploading them to photo or social-networking sites like Facebook. A picture can also be used as your background image or for photo caller ID.

We were impressed with the camera's picture quality, although it takes some time for photos to render on-screen

Picture quality is impressive, although we thought otherwise at first. It takes a few seconds for pictures to render on-screen, so, immediately after taking pictures, photos look extremely blurry. In reality, they're extremely sharp and colours are vibrant and rich, without any weird orange or greyish tones. Also, there's barely any lag from the time you press the capture button to the moment the photo is taken.

Applications
Due to the success of the iPhone and Apple's App Store, applications are quickly becoming just as important as the hardware and operating system when choosing a smart phone. Google, RIM, Nokia and Microsoft have followed suit by launching their own app storefronts, and now so has Palm.