I got this note in from Mark who’s having some trauma with o2 and Palm. Have a read…

Hi Ewan,

I have been a fan of Palm for many years starting back in 1996 with a US Robotics Palm 1000 and over the years have purchased many of their products. Through blind loyalty I even replaced a Treo 650 with a Centro despite being ridiculed by my mates who at the time were all buying iPhones. When the Pre was announced it was fantastic news as I finally had a device to counter some of the stick I was getting from the Apple fanboys. After the long wait between announcement and UK availability I signed up for an 18 month contract on o2 the morning they become available here in the UK (Nov 6th?).

So impressed was I, that when my wife’s Nokia came out of contract in Feb 2010 I immediately convinced her to go for a Pre on an 24 month contract on o2.

We were happy Palm Pre users for months.

Recently though the power switch on my wife’s Pre stopped functioning correctly. It responds if pressed with herculean effort but doesn’t work otherwise. My wife assured me that it just stopped working and she hadn’t dropped it or damaged it anyway.

A bit of googling found that others also reported similar problems:

http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pre/202448-pre-power-button-not-functioning.html

http://forums.palm.com/t5/webOS-Hardware/Pre-power-button/m-p/257899

http://gdgt.com/discuss/power-button-not-working-recently-i-5vp/

Especially interesting is this post which claims Sprint acknowledge it is a known hardware problem:

http://forums.palm.com/t5/webOS-Hardware/Broken-Power-Button/m-p/241625

“I am bumping this thread to report the same problem. I took the phone into Sprint on Saturday and they told me that this is a known hardware problem. They said Palm is aware of it as well and they are replacing the phone with no questions asked. ”

So I took the Pre to an o2 shop, explained that it was broken and required fixing under warranty.

A week later I get a call saying that the phone is damaged and that a repair will cost 117.5 GBP. When asked for an explanation of the damage there was a very vague explanation of “crack behind the screen”. The screen does not have a crack in it (although this is also a common problem with Pres – see http://forum.o2.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=30038) so I do not understand the comment nor the relevance to the power button.

I asked for the phone to be returned so as to check its condition. The letter that came with it simply said the phone was damaged and would cost 117.5 to repair which I had declined. No details of damage were given. I (admittedly not a trained phone engineer) cannot see any problem with it.

It seems that many other Pre users have experienced similar problems with o2 refusing to accept liability for a phone repair under warranty due to cosmetic damage of the phones:

http://forum.o2.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=50595

http://forums.palm.com/t5/webOS-Hardware/Palm-Pre-repair-service-in-the-UK/td-p/312993

http://forum.o2.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=48955

The fee is always the same – 117.5 GBP

The justifications are often vague.

It appears that o2 are hiding behind a blanket “It is damaged” response as a simple means of not having to cover the cost of repairs themselves and if so, this is unacceptable.

I do not have a problem with Palm – I still love it. I bought 2 Palm Pres from o2 and think they have a duty of service to provide me with a handset fit for purpose and free from manufacturing defects. If they believe my phone fault is as a result of damage then they should provide a detailed explanation in their rejection of the warranty claim. Are o2 simply giving up on Palm and unconcerned if they piss of handset owners? Are o2 hoping people will give up trying to get a problems fixed by o2 and go to Palm direct instead?

I have asked @o2 several times via Twitter for info about justification for repair estimates but have yet to receive a response. Thought you might be interested in this and possibly have some insight into the problem.

/Mark

Next time, Mark, get her to buy an iPhone. Because as long as it’s in warranty, you can avoid all this tossing around. It’s simply too much hassle. That’s why Apple instructs and empowers their team members to take one look at the issue and — provided you’re in warranty — get you a new one from the back. It’s simply not worth winding up the customer. And the amount of to-and-fro just ends up costing everyone more and more money. I wish more organisations adopted a can-do approach.

In the United Kingdom, however, we don’t generally get this, do we? Instead we all arse about with weeks and weeks of back-and-forward.

But who’s at fault with this specific issue.  What do readers recommend Mark does next?

And it’s far too good a story for most pundits not to have written, me included. The truth, of course, is a little less dramatic but significant nonetheless.

While the Palm Pre is undoubtedly the company’s comeback device, the big bet is the accompanying webOS that powers the Pre along with the subsequently released Palm Pixi. In fact since the second device running webOS was unveiled, Palm have announced that, moving forward, they’re dumping Windows Mobile to pursue a single OS strategy. Thanks Redmond for easing the transition away from the dying PalmOS to the newly born webOS. But make no mistake, that’s all you were good for.

It’s in this context that when reviewing the Palm Pre it’s more tempting than usual to consider the phone’s hardware as separate from the operating system it runs on. So that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

(Spoiler: The hardware is OK but webOS is where things get really exciting.)

Hardware

As iconic as the iPhone’s industrial design has become, the Pre largely attempts to carve out its own distinctive cues unlike the raft of ‘slate’ copycats churned out by LG, Samsung and others.

Aside from the portrait slide-out and arched QWERTY keyboard (more on that below), when closed the device follows the natural lines of a pebble or so the marketing fluff goes. Think chubbier and heavier than the iPhone and with curvier lines to match.

It’s also smaller in width and height due to housing a 3.2 inch (rather than 3.5) multi-touch capacitive touchscreen. That’s MULTI-TOUCH and CAPACITIVE. I hope Nokia is reading.

The overall effect is that the Pre is really comfortable to hold, much more phone-like if you will, although it could be a tad lighter.

In terms of build quality, the Pre is certainly plasticky and the slide mechanism does wobble a little but I haven’t found it to be the deal breaker that some reviews have elevated it to. However, this particular Pre seems to suffer from the loose battery problem that others have reported online, which means that the phone occasionally shuts down involuntarily. (Tech historians will know that a very similar problem plagued the original Palm Pilot PDA). The remedy, apparently, requires the contact pins to be bent back into shape or the insertion of a thin piece of foam below the battery.

Next up, let’s deal with that QWERTY keyboard.

I’m disappointed.

It’s not that it’s rubbish but it’s definitely a bit of a let down. I want to love it, I really do as it ticks so many boxes. It’s a real keyboard. It’s portrait not landscape. And I have no issue with it being a slider.

But as much as I’ve practiced, I still can’t get up to the typing speeds I achieve on my Nokia E71 or a BlackBerry or even an old PalmOS-powered Treo. The keys on the Pre are too stiff and the top row too close to the protruding edge. There’s also not enough error correction built into the software and no auto-completion either, both of which could have helped to mask the keyboard’s deficiencies. However, for those who like me don’t get on well with an onscreen keyboard, it’s still preferable having a real one.

The Pre’s call quality proved to be good, although the speakerphone is a bit shrill, and despite O2′s reputation for having it’s network hammered by iPhone users, data connections held up well. I also haven’t experienced any problems joining various WiFi hotspots.

In terms of battery life, the Pre is probably its own worst enemy, such is the device’s always-on and multitasking capability (see below). That said, there’s certainly room for improvement. With moderate use of WiFi for web browsing, 3G pulling in email, a few tweets and calls here and there, you should be good for a full day. The temptation, of course, is to do a lot more, more of the time, in which case you won’t want to be too far away from a charger. However, this is where the utterly brilliant Touchstone comes into play.

The Touchstone is the Pre’s optional (and pricey) desktop ‘inductive’ charger. To charge the Pre you place it face up onto the Touchstone – it snaps into place via a magnet – and the device ‘wirelessly’ begins charging. The phone also sits at a slight angle, perfect for viewing emails and incoming messages while the Pre’s battery is getting a top up. Of course, unlike a certain popular smartphone, the Pre’s battery is also user swappable, so carrying a spare is another option.

The Pre’s camera is mediocre. It’s 3 megapixels and fixed focus, with a single LED flash. There’s no dedicated hardware shutter button – it’s a purely onscreen affair – and like most smartphones, the camera app takes a few seconds to launch, after which, however, shots can be taken in fairly quick succession. In summary, picture quality is passable but the Pre is certainly no camera phone. This is most evident by the complete lack of video recording capability.

To summarize the Pre’s hardware, Palm have made some really smart design choices. The non-iPhone copycat design, the bright 3.2 inch capacitive touchscreen, multi-touch, a physical portrait QWERTY and the optional Touchstone ‘inductive’ charger. But execution, in places, is poor. The wobbly slider, sub-par keyboard, and smallish and poor fitting 1150mAh battery immediately spring to mind.

However, the Pre’s software or specifically webOS tells a very different story.

Software

I’m going to shoot from the hip. Based on its ease-of-use and in particular the way multitasking and notifications are handled, Palm’s webOS has the best User Interface of all current mobile operating systems. It’s a contentious thing to say I know and I’m admittedly discounting Maemo 5 as the N900 has yet-to-be-released but I have lived extensively with all recent flavors of Symbian S60, Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone OS, INQ and a whole bunch of dumbphones.

OK I’ll admit that getting to grips with webOS takes a little longer than iPhone. Yep, all ten seconds longer, less than the time it takes to actually sit through the interactive tutorial that ships with the Pre.

The additional learning curve mostly involves getting up to speed with the gesture area and the card system that webOS uses for multitasking. Otherwise, the Pre borrows many of the UI ideas that we first saw on the iPhone, such as kinetic ‘flick’ scrolling or the use of an inverted pinch to zoom in on web pages, images and other documents. There’s also the usual grid of app icons and these, like the iPhone, can be re-ordered and organised across multiple screens, accessible by swiping left or right.

It’s all perfectly finger-friendly, as you’d expect, and the visible feedback given with each finger press in the form of an onscreen ripple is particularly helpful.

One of the most refreshing aspects of webOS is that essential toggles and settings are brought to the surface in the form of a dedicated app for each instead of being buried in one gigantic kludge of a menu S60-style. Examples include discrete apps for WiFi and Bluetooth, adjusting screen brightness and time-out, and toggling GPS on and off. Accessing preferences within each app is also consistent via a finger optimized drop down menu. The result is that I rarely wasted time hunting for a particular setting, something that can’t be said of most mobile OSes.

The card system employed by webOS to support multi-tasking is GENIUS.

It’s one of the UI designs that is deceptively simple and after you’ve used it, you’ll find it hard to go back to the old way of doing things. To switch between running apps, you press the hardware menu button and the Pre zooms out to display each instance of a running app as a card side by side. You then swipe left or right until you’re focused on the card displaying the app you want to switch to, tap on it and webOS zooms in and that app is brought to the front. It’s not dissimilar to Mac OSX’s Expose feature and is almost identical to the way Safari Mobile on iPhone handles switching between open web pages.

Notifications on webOS are equally well thought through. For example, when a new email or text message arrives, no matter what app is in the foreground, a notification area pops up at the bottom of the screen. These can then either be acted upon, such as reading the full email, or dismissed with the swipe of a finger. If there is no interaction after a set period of time the notification is minimized. It’s a very efficient but non-obtrusive system. Far, far better than iPhone’s push notifications and and still an improvement over Android.

A flagship feature of webOS is the way it plays nice with third-party Cloud services, something Palm is calling Synergy. That means syncing with Gmail, Google Contacts and Google Calendar, along with similar support for Facebook. I’ve found Synergy to be reliable and, as noted previously, dead easy to setup (see my Day One impressions: “In some ways the webOS-powered Pre is the Google phone I was always hoped Android would be”).

Palm’s biggest issue with Synergy, however, is that it’s no longer a unique feature. Almost all of Palm’s competitors are now offering or talking up a unified address book that pulls in and converges data from Facebook and other Cloud services – HTC, INQ, Motorola,Google (Android 2.0) and Vodafone (360).

The latest version of webOS also adds LinkedIn to the list supported by Synergy but the UK is currently at least one iteration behind.

You read that right.

Despite getting the Palm Pre three months after the US, we’re saddled with an out of date version of webOS. Palm plans to eventually offer parity between US and UK versions, but again, we’ll have to wait a while. Currently, along with Synergy support for LinkedIn, UK Pre owners are missing much better cut ‘n’ paste and overall speed improvements. I did, however, find a really nice LinkedIn app in Palm’s own app store.

Talking of apps, this is one area where webOS is far behind the iPhone. On the Pre, the app cupboard is fairly bare but it’s slowly filling up a little.

The two questions I’d ask: does the Pre have 1st or 3rd party apps for the features you need? What does the future look like? i.e. is webOS attracting developers?

As for essential features, for my own needs the Pre has most apps covered. YouTube, fantastic web browser, push email, Twitter client, weather, Google Maps, Flixster (movie reviews), PDF and Word viewer, Instant Messaging, Podcasts etc. I’ve also noticed many new apps being added on a daily basis, even in the week or so that I’ve had the Pre.

By the way, the webOS web browser is very, very nice, at least on par with the iPhone, which helps to fill some of the gaps in third-party apps e.g. Facebook.

I also think webOS will/is attracting developers in sufficient numbers and I’m very optimistic about the future of third-party apps. For evidence look no further than the vibrant homebrew community that, like the iPhone’s original jailbreak development community, started before Palm released an official Software Development Kit. And about that SDK, it was only made public and widely available a few months ago. Palm also recently made two smart hires to boost its developer relations.

In other words, it’s early days but on the app front the signs are good.

And that pretty much sums up webOS. It has a very bright future if technology and UX is to win through. Whether or not Palm can sell enough webOS devices to remain cash positive in the meantime – the Pre is a good start and the Pixi should do well – only time will tell.

I do hope so.

- – – – -

Steve O’Hear is a tech journalist and consultant based in London. Steve writes the blog last100 and has written for numerous publications, including The Guardian, ZDNet, ReadWriteWeb and Macworld. He also wrote and directed the Silicon Valley documentary, In Search of the Valley. You can follow Steve on Twitter here.

I’d been instructed to meet a PR called Greg at a secret location in London’s Soho. Once there I’d receive a short briefing and handover of Palm’s much anticipated smartphone, the Palm Pre. The device goes on sale in the UK today exclusive to O2 and priced to match the original iPhone 3G. It wasn’t enough to send a review loan by courier or recorded post as is the norm with these things. No, on Palm’s insistence, this had to be done in person to talk me through the Pre’s setup.

Paranoid I thought.

I wasn’t really all that surprised, however, remembering that back at January’s CES where the Pre was first unveiled, none of the invited journalists were allowed to hold the device. And perhaps even more bizarrely, at a London press event where I got my first brief hands-on with the Pre, we were told not to film or take any photos. This was nine months after the Pre had been announced and three months since the CDMA version had gone on sale in the US.

All of which did add to the mystery of Palm’s comeback smartphone, a device that, along with webOS, may well represent the beleaguered company’s second coming.

In other words, this seemingly paranoid press strategy was either that. Paranoid.

Or pure marketing GENIUS.

Either way, I was more than willing to jump through the necessary hoops. You see Palm and I have previous form. I grew up using the Palm Treo line of PalmOS smartphones (Treo 180, 600 and 650). And through nostalgia tinted glasses, I’ve openly declared that I’m rooting for the company’s renewed success. I also get the impression that I’m not alone in the wider tech press. Hell, the smartphone world needs a viable competitor on the UX front to keep Cupertino in check.

The handover was swift and painless. It was later explained that the reason for insisting on a face-to-face was so that I experienced something similar to customers who purchase a Pre in an O2 store, which is interesting in itself and mirrors the point of sale program that Palm and Sprint have designed for the US.

I setup a webOS profile, a registration process that undoubtedly enables Palm to own a large part of the customer relationship (a la Apple) and gives the user a place in the cloud to store their crucial data and settings, making life easier if they lose their Pre or upgrade to another webOS phone in the future (regardless of carrier). It’s a win-win proposition for both Palm and the customer, although where it leaves carrier O2 in the value chain, in the long term anyway, I’m not so sure. As phones get smarter, the pipes seemed destined to get dumber.

Next I was presented with a short interactive demo video that auto plays explaining crucial elements of the Pre’s UI, from basics like the multi-touch screen to the more subtle gesture area. All very nice, all very Palm. In fact the Pre’s setup and initial use felt so intuitive, the presence of an overlooking PR was a little awkward.

Finally, Greg suggested that I launch the contacts app and start entering in my Gmail and Facebook credentials so that Palm’s Synergy feature could start its work converging my various contacts into one unified and cloud-savvy address book. However, alert to the fact that the battery indicator was in the red – that’s how it was given to me – I declined and would get to that bit as soon as I was back home. Besides I didn’t want a dead battery otherwise I couldn’t continue playing with the Pre during my commute from Soho to north London (the Pre’s battery life is a potential sticking point based on most reviews).

And that was it. With a certain sense of satisfaction and excitement knowing that, finally, I have a Palm Pre, at least for the next ten days anyway, and after a brief conversation about the virtues of twitter (follow me @sohear) I bid farewell to the helpful PR and I was on my way…

Once back home, setting up Synergy was equally straight forward. After entering my Google credentials into the Pre, the phone’s email client sprang to life, as did calendar and contacts. In some ways the webOS-powered Pre is the Google phone I was always hoped Android would be. Google integration is more or less on a par with stock Android but has a far superior UI. The Pre’s calendar is one example, with multi-calendar support and a nifty accordion metaphor to utilise screen real estate when part of the day is empty.

Importing Facebook contacts, avatars included, also worked as expected, and merging any duplicate contacts between Google and Facebook, for the most part, happened automatically. Manually linking contacts that Synergy had missed was also trivial.

Anyway, you get the picture. I’m impressed so far.

Besides, I’ve already more than exceeded my self imposed word count for this debut MIR column and frankly I better get my skates on for a press event I’m attending tonight. Think gadgets and canapés, you know the deal. Talking of which, I’m really looking forward to goading all of my journo rivals with this shiny new Palm Pre in hand. Although perhaps not. Knowing my luck I’ll lose it.

Who’s paranoid now.

And just before I go, here is the device in all it’s glory:

- – - – -

Steve O’Hear is a tech journalist and consultant based in London. Steve writes the blog last100 and has written for numerous publications, including The Guardian, ZDNet, ReadWriteWeb and Macworld. He also wrote and directed the Silicon Valley documentary, In Search of the Valley. You can follow Steve on Twitter here.

A “credible source” tells WebOS Arena, that Best Buy would be hosting a 60 days exclusive deal for retailing the Palm Pre. The Pre, which will be launched on Sprint’s network in the US would be the second phone to be available exclusively at Best Buy, following the Samsung Instinct which was touted to be highly anticipated and better than the iPhone.

Of course, as it is with the tons of rumors floating out there, there’s a huge cloud of uncertainty surrounding this one too.

[Via PhoneArena]