The last few years have seen immense growth and intense competition in the mobile phone market. Mobile phones have passed countless hurdles since their inception, hurdles both technological and conceptual, and have done an amazing job of making the impossible possible over the years. Where once, ringtones that actually played the song they used to approximate seemed impossible to attain, as did the vision of playing video games on a cellular phone, nowadays both are common sights to see in the modern mobile landscape. Mobile phone manufacturers and service providers have worked overtime, and still do, to make new things happen even as they revisit older models and add new features to produce excellent new breeds that continue to serve their increasingly-versatile purposes well.
Mobile manufacturer Palm has excelled at providing flexible and affordable units that are both user-friendly and dependable. Their latest effort, the Palm Pre Plus, debuted alongside the Palm Pixi Plus – and has outdone its less expensive cousin in the eyes of many reviewers. The Palm Pre Plus holds its own well against competitors from other brands, as the small tweaks made to the original Palm Pre add up and combine with a breezy user interface to provide users with a better overall mobile phone experience. As before, the Pre Plus boasts a large, high-resolution display and a great QWERTY keyboard, and the “Plus” in its new moniker comes from the added storage space – 8GB has been doubled to 16GB of built-in flash storage. Sadly, there is still no option for expansion, but with 16GB of onboard storage space, it’s unlikely that such a thing will be missed by many.
That display continues to be a strong selling point for the Pre’s Plus edition release, as the sharp, bright and well-saturated display remains vibrant and attractive with 320×480 resolution similar to the iPhone’s. The ambient light sensor adjusts screen brightness, and the internal accelerometer works well with the apps it’s restricted to [a short list which includes the web browser, video player and photo viewer]. Beyond just looks, the Pre Plus packs considerable connectivity with Bluetooth 2.1 EDR and EVDO Rev A 3G. The latter ensures that webpages and emails download quickly; YouTube also plays reasonably well although it lacks the resolution of the HTC Touch Pro’s player.
The Palm app store has also gained strength since the Pre’s last go-round, with plenty of apps ranging in price from $0.99 to $4.99 [with a few more involved ones hitting the $9.99 mark]. Ordering is somewhat clunky because of the lack of carrier billing support – you’ll have to use the App Catalog and your credit card – but these apps run well on the Pre Plus, and are mostly worth the hassle. The Pre Plus can effectively sync to a variety of sites, including MS Echange, Facebook, Yahoo and LinkedIn, and it also supports POP3 and IMAP email formats. All this runs well on the webOS operating system, which hasn’t lost a beat and still delivers a user-friendly browsing and control experience. The accompanying applications, suich as Google Maps, a solid photo viewer, and the aforementioned YouTube player all run as smoothly on webOS as they ever did.
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