Mobile Hotspot App
Something inherent to Pre Plus and Pixi Plus owners on Verizon is the Mobile Hotspot App. This free app essentially turns either device into a mobile hotspot that you can connect up to five devices to. It’s ridiculously easy to setup and use. Changing the network name and adding a password is dead simple – tap either one and alter at will. You’re alerted to any and all devices that connect to the hotspot, too. It’s a battery suck, though. And the pricing is high – $40/month for 5GB of data ($0.05/MB over that).
The Bad
The Pre Plus boasts the same CPU as the iPhone 3GS and, yet, I find myself tapping my fingers waiting for certain apps and basic features to fire up. Palm promises speed improvements in v1.4 of webOS and I know the guys in Sunnyvale are working hard to remedy the situation ASAP. I can’t help but wonder how webOS would run on hardware like the Nexus One and it’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor. Look, I get it, Palm, I know webOS devices multi-task, but enough is enough. I shouldn’t have to wait a few seconds for the dialer to pop up when nothing else is going on in the background. And those demos from EA at CES ’10 certainly didn’t help. Those games were flying on the Pre Plus and I can’t help but think that webOS has a lot of fat that needs to be trimmed. But I’ll wait until v1.4 before I say anything else. The updates for webOS have been coming fast and frequently since June of ’09.
(More on Techland: The Best of CES 2010)
I was really hoping for brand new hardware at CES this year because the Pre and Pixi are too tiny when you look at all the other devices that it competes with. The iPhone and the most recently released Android devices like the Nexus One and Droid have large screens. And then you have those full QWERTY BlackBerrys like the Bold 9700. I would love Palm more if the devices were bigger.
Others are just now reporting this about the GPS, but there are some serious issues. I don’t actually think the Pre Plus has a faulty GPS chip, but something isn’t meshing well with Google Maps. An easy way to circumnavigate the Google Maps issue is to launch VZ Navigator, which has no problem locking onto my location, so I’m pointing the finger at Google Maps. We’re still investigating this one and will report back.
Conclusion
Palm has clawed its way back to the big kid’s table in the last year, but they’ve still got some work to do. The catalog of apps is sparse and nothing compared to Apple’s App Store and the Android Marketplace but now that Palm has opened things up, we should see a flood of apps this year. webOS is probably the best OS available on any mobile device, but it desperately needs to trim the fat to compete with its speedier competitors. I’ve heard rumors of new hardware in the pipe for this year, so I’m hoping for big things down the road.
Part of me wonders whether or not Palm will implement webOS on devices other than mobile phones. Android tablets were the rage at CES this year and then Apple released the iPad. I wonder what webOS would look like on a tablet.
(More on Techland: Gallery: Hits and Misses from Apple So Far)
Anyway, if you’re on Verizon and looking for a Napolean-like (you know, small but powerful) device then snatch the Pre Plus immediately. While I prefer the form factor of the Pixi Plus (this lil guy now has Wi-Fi), the Pre Plus is the cream of the crop from Palm.
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