ZDNet has posted a hands-on review of the Palm Pre 2 and it attains a decidedly average outcome. It is not looking good for a 247 review of the Pre 2 anytime soon- will explain all next week, should make for an interesting explanation…
Regular readers know that I have a very long history with Palm devices, having started using them in 1997. Like many folks, I was very excited after seeing the webOS announcement at CES 2009 and stood in line to buy my own Sprint Palm Pre later in the Summer of 2009. I returned it after a couple of weeks because I just did not have great Sprint coverage in my area at the time (this has improved significantly over the last year). I missed the functionality of webOS and switched from a MyFi to a Palm Pre Plus on Verizon in early 2010. Sprint then released the EVO 4G and I gave my Pre Plus to my sister-in-law and dropped Verizon because the Pre Plus hardware was problematic, Sprint was much cheaper than Verizon, and the EVO 4G had everything I wanted in a single device.
I have to admit that I have been missing webOS and became even more interested in the platform after seeing the new features in webOS 2.0. Palm announced that the new Palm Pre 2 would coming to Verizon soon (likely early 2011), but I have no plans to leave Sprint and go back to Verizon. I was surprised by a Tweet last Thursday that a GSM SIM-unlocked version of the Palm Pre 2 was for sale at the HP store. I jumped over to the HP site on my Nokia N8 and ordered one for myself because I wanted to try out webOS 2.0 and also did not want to switch carriers. My Pre 2 arrived the next day and I have been using it with T-Mobile since then. Check out my image gallery and thoughts below on why I am pleased with my new Pre 2, but think HP still has some work to do when it comes to the hardware.
That is much better than average review, no?
You what?
Well, he says near the end that he is “pretty happy with it”..which implies a higher rating than your interpretation of “an average outcome”
He also says “webOS fans will likely enjoy the Pre 2, but even though there are some very nice hardware improvements the device still has a rather small display and keyboard and has a limited selection of applications when you compare it to the other major smartphone platforms.”