Over the past few weeks, we here at Recursive Awesome were able to get our hands on the 2 mobile devices Palm is currently offering on the Verizon Network – The Palm Pre and Palm Pixi running their WebOS operating system.

Thanks to @albertmaruggi, @karenvzw and @rshidla

At the end of the day, I must say I am fairly impressed with their offerings.

It wasn’t difficult to give them back and return to my Nexus One, but they definitely do a fit a certain niche in the market and I’m a little surprised that the Palm WebOS sales have slumped as bad as they have.

On one hand you have a major carrier like Verizon doing a fairly good job of promoting the device, both in stores and in print advertising. I can’t go more than a day or so without seeing another Palm commercial, billboard or sign on a bus or at my local light-rail station stop. It would seem that there would be a lot more excitement over the device with it’s somewhat unique design, flip out keyboard, snappy interface, multi-touch (Android just got this in its latest release), and now supporting video capture and Flash. It seems like the time would be right for Palm to make a major move in to the market. Alas, though, that may not be the case.

What’s To Like

The first thing that struck me when using both of these devices was the performance. Despite their small size, they both felt very responsive and able to do multiple tasks at the same time without much lag. In comparison to some of the smaller Android devices and first generation iPhones, Palm has a very good start. They seem to have done their homework in optimization of  WebOS and keeping processes lightweight and execution times short during launch and usage.

Speaking of execution of apps, WebOS allows the user to run multiple application at the same time very easily. The Palm devices have a “flick” type of gesture support that you perform on the area below the screen. If you want to jump out of an application you swipe your finger (or thumb) vertically and you are presented with a scrolling list of applications that are running. You then can swipe side to side to select the application you would like to jump into. I found at first this a little different and cumbersome, as I was used to looking for an actual button to get out of an application (i.e. the home or close buttons on iPhone or Android). However, after playing with the phone for a hour or so, it actually became very easy to master and was a feature that I got very accustomed to and liked a lot. Interestingly , it seems that Palm agrees and realizes that it might take users some time to try out this swipe feature ( when you start up the phone for the first time, they force you through an entire tutorial and exercise on how to use this gesture feature ).

Another nifty feature is what Palm calls “Synergy”. It links together all of your contacts into one list, with calendars, and status updates pulled in from all of your various accounts (GMail, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Exchange, etc.).

I also personally like the fact that WebOS is built on top of the Linux operating system and all things being equal will support a company pushing the use of open source software over their own proprietary software and lock-in model.

What’s To Dislike

So, I’ve given a pretty good list of the likes, but what about some things that should be improved? Much of my dislikes revolve more around the hardware than the actual operating system itself. It might be because I’ve now gotten used to having a 3.7″ AMO-LED screen on my Nexus One, but it felt to me like the device was pretty cheap and not very sturdy. The screen seemed small and the device felt at times more like a toy than a true smartphone that would stand up to the test of time.

Another issue I had was with the keyboard. Neither of the Palm devices offer a virtual (on-screen) keyboard, so you are stuck using the physical keyboard on the device. While adequate I found the keys to be very small and difficult to use at times. They again felt cheap and found myself having to hunt for a number of different symbols and punctuation marks. Additionally, since the Palm Pre’s keyboard is hidden behind the screen, this requires you to pop the screen out vertically to access the keyboard. While this worked well, when the screen is open the device felt very top heavy and made using the keyboard not as nice as it could be, since I felt like the device was going to slip out my hands.

Finding and opening up the slot for the micro-USB plugin was not at all easy to use. Maybe over time the small plastic cover would be easier to open, but I found myself almost breaking the cover off trying to get access to charge and plug-in the phone.

Finally, and the most largest flaw with Palm (and probably the one that will ultimately prove to biggest hurdle) is getting application developers to create apps for this platform. At Recursive Awesome, we have done some work developing applications for these devices when it was first launched last summer, but since that time, none of our clients have been asking much at all about WebOS. If there are no applications being developed for the platform, end users certainly will suffer from lack of functionality of the device and certainly will start looking to other options of smartphones that they will purchase. While I have not seen any statistics on the true number of applications available, most think the number is in the few thousands, as opposed to the tens, or even more than one hundred thousand found on iPhone and Android.

Conclusion

So, who does this device work for? The prime target I see these devices working for are my parents generation. People that are not technology savvy users, that want a basic web experience with out all of the bells and whistles. I could see myself recommending this device to my mother or even grandmother for that matter. It still feels like a PDA however in some ways. Basic interface, somewhat intuitive to use (one you learn the gestures), and allows you to have all of your contacts and email in the palm of your hand.

In the end, it’s nothing really groundbreaking, but really an extension of some of the old palm devices I have owned in the past. That’s not to say that Palm is out of the game, but with the Windows Phone 7 coming out later this year, Palm will have a lot of competition on its hands. It already is a distant 4th on the smartphone circus behind iPhone, Android, Blackberry and without an injection of applications and buzz around the devices, 2010 might be the year that Palm is bought (or withers away in to the ether). Which is kind of too bad, since I do think that their WebOS, does provide some very useful and new ideas when it comes to interface design.