One week after its launch, the Palm Pre appears to be a modest success for the struggling handset maker and its carrier, Sprint.
Despite problems with supply and consumers who are disappointed by the device’s puny battery life, the companies together sold enough smartphones — helped in part by a well-orchestrated publicity campaign — to put the Palm Pre well on the road to success.
“Palm has launched the device without any major snafus so far,” says Jonathan Goldberg, an analyst with Wall Street brokerage firm Deutsche Bank in a research note. “This is a big change from the Palm of the past and the company deserves credit for improving its execution abilities.”
So how well did the Palm Pre do? Here’s a quick score card.
Launch: Since the iPhone, the Palm Pre has probably had one of the best debuts a phone could ask for. Sure, there weren’t any long lines outside stores as with the iPhone but the device built up tremendous buzz on the internet. From its near-flawless press conference to introduce the Pre to the closely managed access to the phone before its retail debut, Palm seemed to have put its past as a bumbling yet well-intentioned company behind it. Instead a confident and aggressive gadget maker seemed to emerge.
The Pre seems to have lived up to its initial billing. The phone garnered favorable reviews and has put Palm back in the game. There’s a lesson here for Research In Motion with its botched launch of the Storm, the touchscreen phone on Verizon that was marred by poor reviews and visible lack of excitement over its launch.
Grade: A
Sales: Sprint or Palm aren’t ready to disclose any numbers yet but the Palm Pre is a hit, says Sprint. Last week, Sprint announced it to be its best selling phone ever.
The Pre sold about 50,000 units in its first two days, estimates Paul Coster, an analyst with J.P. Morgan. It’s a good beginning for Palm and if it can keep up the interest in the face of the new iPhone 3G S and the now cheaper iPhone 3G, then Palm can boast of having a real blockbuster on its hands.
Still, it is no iPhone 3G, which sold a million phones in its first weekend. The T-Mobile HTC G1 Android phone reached the million mark about six months after its release.
Grade: B
Supply and production: Since its first glimpse at the Consumer Electronics Show in January’s year, the drumbeat over the Pre’s arrival has been steadily building up. But Palm seems to have stumbled a bit in its efforts to keep up with demand.
There have been reports of a Pre shortage immediately after the launch of the phone and a recent report suggested that Palm may have some problems with production of the hardware.
“The Pre is probably a little more complex than the iPhone 3G in terms of its production,” says Aaron Vronko, CEO of Rapid Repair, a site that has taken the Pre and the iPhone 3G apart. “The Pre uses some new chips, one of which is likely holding up production.”
The slider design of the Pre allows the device to offer both a touchscreen and a physical QWERTY keyboard. But the design also splits the phone’s build into two sections and adds another element to the process that the iPhone 3G doesn’t have to contend with, says Vronko.
But it is the advanced chips and processors in the Pre that are likely to pose the biggest challenge for a company looking to scale production effortlessly. The Pre is the one of the first major consumer devices to use Texas Instruments’ new TI OMAP 3 system-on-a-chip processor. The iPhone 3G uses an older processor from Samsung, says Vronko. The Pre also has 256 MB of system memory compared to the 128 MB in the iPhone 3G. (The newer iPhone 3G S also has 256 MB of system memory, according to reports.) “It could be an issue of how these new chips in the Pre can scale up to production and yield quality,” Vronko says.
So far Palm hasn’t commented on any of problems relating to production. The only way for the company to silence its critics will be to get the Pres cranking out fast and furious.
Grade: C
Battery life: The Pre’s poor battery life is proving to be in its weakest link. The Pre’s multi-tasking capabilities and fast processor take their toll on the device’s battery. Wired.com’s Pre review showed that the charge on the phone lasted less than 12 hours. Twitter and Palm’s own message boards are full of complaints from users who say they have seen the battery on their Pre die with just few hours of use.
“We don’t think the Pre is a phone where you can get away with charging it just once a week,” says Paul Cousineau, director of software product management, webOS, at Palm. “But we do agree with the user expectation that they get at least a full day’s worth of battery from their phone.”
Palm says it has found a bug with its support of the AIM protocol that draws a lot of power, especially if users have a large number of buddies. “This bug will be fixed, at which point the power draw will be much less,” said Palm in a statement. “For now, we recommend not using AIM until this power draw issue is resolved.”
And contrary to popular perception, Palm suggests that users turn on the Wi-Fi setting on their phone since the Pre is “very efficient at doing data over Wi-Fi.”
To Palm’s credit, the company is moving fast to fix battery life issues. “We are turning the crank relatively quickly to take care of it,” says Cousineau.
Last week, Palm sent out its first over-the-air software update for the Pre to improve on the battery life. And there are more on the way. Cousineau says Palm is working with AIM and Hotmail to resolve issues that impact the Pre’s battery.
Grade: C-
Hardware: Though there have been some reports of problems with the Pre’s screen, the overall build quality of the Pre is excellent. The device feels as comfortable as a bar of soap in the hands and it is well constructed, says Vronko. The Pre’s touchscreen is responsive and Palm uses some of the latest hardware and processor to keep its phone at the top of its peers, he says.
Grade: A
Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com
