The Palm Pre was a good smartphone with a really impressive operating system when it was launched back in 2009. At the time I personally considered webOS to be the most slick user interface next to Apple's iOS. Android was starting to look more and more interesting, but the polish and the hardware just wasn't there yet. So I kept my eye on the developments at Palm while I started my journey down the path of iOS and the iPhone.
Fast forward to 2011 and the lineup looked pretty good. With Palm being purchased by HP, a titan of business and innovation, it looked like the webOS devices would have the weight behind them that they needed and deserved.
Unfortunately the opposite came true.
HP gave up on the Touchpad tablet computer only 49 days after it went on sale, and the Pre 3 was released for sale in some regions one day (!) before the announcement that HP was getting out of the smartphone and tablet computer business altogether.
The swan song of the promising webOS and Pre smartphones became the HP Pre 3, to this day the last mass produced phone made for the operating system that Palm crafted. Naturally, these aren't so easy to come by these days and even more hard to find at a good price.
So given the 5th anniversary of the event where the HP Veer, the HP Pre 3, and the HP Touchpad were unveiled, I thought it would be time to take a closer look at the Pre 3. I was most fortunate to not long ago to secure one after several years searching, finally enabling me to experience webOS as it was intended all those years ago. How does it hold up? Tag along as this long-time iPhone user dives head first into the best smartphone that HP could make in 2011.
One thing I love about the Palm Pre is the small size and pleasant shape. Described as "pebble shaped", I have always found it to fit perfectly in my hand with it's curvature and pleasant thickness.
The Pre 3 continues this tradition, but goes for a bigger display with higher resolution. Sure, compared to the insane resolutions of smartphones made in 2016, the 800 x 480 display isn't all too impressive, but it's still a nice step up from the original Pre's 320 x 480. Still very pleasantly rounded and nice to hold, the machine now packs both more screen real estate and a vastly improved hardware keyboard. The keyboard on the original Pre never "clicked" with me, but the Pre 3 is quite possibly the very best hardware smartphone keyboard I've experienced so far. It's quite amazing what those extra millimeters do, and the Pre 3 keyboard doesn't feel cramped.
Other improvements include the lack of a cover over the micro USB port. Yes, the lack of one is a step up in my book, as the flimsy cover on the original Pre served mainly to get in my way any time I wanted to plug the cable in for any reason. Not something the Pre 3 suffers from!
The better camera is also a nice touch, although its no masterpiece. Still fixed focus and all that entails, but fair enough, it gets the job done as long as you have adjusted expectations. The LED flash does a decent job for most shots, although it has a slight tendency to make skin tones a tad on the greenish side. It might be only my Pre 3, and it doesn't happen all the time.
Material choices are also good, eschewing the glossy finish of the Palm Pre in favor of a matte black texture that can slide around in your hand but not easily slip out of it. It's almost a rubberized feel, but it doesn't grab a hold of fabrics or other materials quite as much. Quite in line with the more business focus that HP chose to push after they acquired Palm.
The distance between the display half and the keyboard half is very slim and the whole device nearly looks like a monoblock when it's in the closed position. The slider mechanism is another very nice improvement compared to the original Palm Pre, and the old "Oreo effect" is so minimized I can't even detect it, if it even exists at all. As far as sliding keyboards go, this is really solid!
But let's dive into the meat of the matter and see how webOS performs on the Pre 3. Running webOS 2.2.4, last of the official versions available for the smartphones as far as I know, the basics are the same as on the original Pre. The launcher behaves in the same way, the apps start up and you multitask via the card metaphor, things just have an HP label instead of Palm. Yes, there are lots and lots of small refinements everywhere across the system, but by and large it's a very recognizable and highly understandable operating system if you are even a bit familiar with the earlier version.
One of my absolute favorite touches is the card metaphor multitasking, which I was incredibly glad Apple "was inspired by" for iOS 7, and most disappointed when they removed for iOS 9. Palm nailed it when they build webOS with this concept in mind, and the ease of switching between apps, quitting apps, and stacking apps together is easy as can be.
Gestures is still very much the central theme of how you interact with webOS, leaving more free space on screen as you don't have to have a dedicated "back" button. Just put a finger on the gesture area and swipe to the left. For those who want a bit more out of the gesture area, you can even switch on the ability to hop between your active apps by swiping from the edge of the gesture area to the opposing side. Easy, and clever.
Notifications are another thing I'd say webOS did really, really well far before anyone else did. They just calmly appear in the bottom of the screen, and you can dismiss them quickly and easily, they never really get in the way of whatever it is you are up to at the time. The customizability of these notifications are very small, but there are ways to change and improve on that.
Aesthetically I think webOS holds up quite well still today, not being too deep in the skeuomorphic designs of earlier versions of iOS, nor giving overboard with any gimmicky use of drop shadows, glowing edges, or gaudy color selections. It's just a reasonably minimalistic approach that get its own unique look and feel, and it serves the system well in my mind.
But all the software you want of course can't be built into the device from the start. That's why the app stores of the various systems were created, right? Naturally, there is one on webOS as well, but that's where things get quite different from all the others.
The official App Catalog was terminated nearly a year ago, and you can no longer get apps that way. Here is where the true strength of webOS starts to shine. Enthusiasts have taken it upon themselves to keep the spirit of webOS going, and still to this day apps are getting updates, new apps are being made and made available, and features of the core system is being changed, tweaked, and made to work in the modern world. It's all through the wonder of PreWare and webOSQuickInstall that you can keep getting goodies for the system that others have long since given up on.
I have seen very few other communities manage to continue going this long after the official support from the manufacturer stop, and what has been done is nothing short of astonishing.
The one thing nearly everybody has commented on when I have showed them the Pre 3 is how smooth the user interface is. Truth be told, it wasn't all that smooth when I got the device, but after installing a few tweaks and patches, restarting the user interface, called Luna, it's buttery smooth.
Browsing the web can be a bit of a pain with all the crap web pages love to toss out at the visitors these days, but for the most part the Pre 3 keeps up and displays what you expect. Most services work, and if you are insane you can even let the option to enable Flash stay on. Yes, you read that right, webOS 2.2.4 has Adobe Flash built in, and I would strongly recommend anyone to leave it off, simply because it's old and Flash has had more holes than a swiss cheese over the years.
So far, so good?
Naturally, just playing around with a phone for a while isn't enough to truly test its mettle. Thus, I'm going to make an attempt at using the Pre 3 as my main phone for one months time, and see how it goes. I'll be documenting my way through the experiment, and see what works and what I need to improve, if I can. Given that I come from the iPhone 3GS as my current daily driver, I have reasonably low expectations, but some things I really need to have working before the Pre 3 can replace it.
Given the somewhat unusual way both webOS works and what you need to get into it in the year 2016, I'll write up the process I went through to get my Pre 3 into usable shape. Might not be particularly useful as there aren't all that many Pre 3 devices around anymore, nor do I imagine that too many people will be getting one any time soon. But, hey, I'm into documenting my path down odd paths, and why not do it with this machine too?
Initial impressions of the Pre 3 has left me convinced that if HP had given all the 2011 devices a proper chance, pushed them to both companies and individuals, the smartphone landscape would quite likely look a bit different right now. The concepts are sound, the execution is very good, and it saddens me that webOS is no longer around on modern hardware. Don't get me wrong, the Open webOS ports are insanely impressive. I just lament that there is no new device build with webOS in mind, and vice versa.
And as always, just because something is old, doesn’t mean it’s not without its uses. In fact, most of this article was written on the Pre 3.
