The world in the Palm of your hand
Size does matter, and the long wait for a compact, but fully functional smartphone, is finally over
BIG is supposed to be beautiful, but don’t try telling that to the makers of the new Palm smartphone.
It has one massive feature – it’s tiny.
I’d be tempted to say you could fit one in the palm of your hand, but that’s not strictly speaking true – you could fit more than one in the palm of your hand. Did I say it was small?
Palm is, of course, an illustrious name in the history of technology.
Before everyone was carrying smartphones with calendars, notepads, and contacts lists in them, Palm was making the Palm Pilot – what they used to call a PDA (personal digital assistant).
The only thing those devices lacked compared to today’s phones was mobile internet connectivity – they were essentially smartphones without the phone bit. So you could say the mobile phone tech today owes as much to Palm as it does to Apple and the iPhone.
Sadly, or not, the original Palm company went the way of the dodo in 2010 when its efforts to keep up with Apple in the new world of the iPhone proved to be too little, too late.
HP bought the company name and started producing Palm branded phones in 2011, but soon put a stop to that when sales were disappointing.
The Palm brand name was sold on by HP in 2014 to a Chinese company called TCL, which makes phones under the name Alcatel – and they said they’d be bringing the Palm brand back to the smartphone world.
Then all went quiet. Until now. The new Palm smartphone is made by a start-up based in San Francisco, financed by TCL and, in what you might call an odd twist, NBA basketball player Stephen Curry.
So it’s not really the same company at all – different people, different technology.
But I have to say, the phone itself won’t dent Palm’s reputation as an innovative company that makes useful technology.
It’s a curious device. One thing you can say for certain is that it’s different from the other smartphones on the market.
In the US it’s marketed as a go-anywhere companion device, like a smartwatch, that is supposed to be paired with a larger phone and taken places you wouldn’t want to take your big phone – like the beach or the gym.
With its 3.3in display (compared, for example, with the Samsung Galaxy S9’s 5.8in screen) perhaps Palm doesn’t see anyone using it as a day-to-day phone. But I would beg to differ on that – especially if you’re the kind of person who would like to use their phone a little less.
Because it does everything a regular smartphone can, using a full-version of Android that’s modified only slightly – the home screen icons are arranged in a scrollable grid to account for the smaller screen size.
You might struggle a little if your eyesight’s a bit off, granted, but you are not going to plump for this phone if you’re going to be reading or writing lots of text.
Even intensive social media hounds will find it uncomfortable.
But if you’re dashing off short text messages, reading the odd email, checking out the odd tweet, listening to music – you’ll be fine. You’ll also be fine if you’re under 40.
As if to emphasise the point, the phone has a special setting called Life Mode, which effectively turns it into a passive device with zero notifications – it won’t even ring if someone calls you, and you’ll only see what’s been going on if you wake the phone up and look at the screen.
I can almost guarantee you will have missed nothing important. There’s a pair of decent cameras, too – 12MP on the back and 8MP on the front, so you can still snap those perfect selfies.
Other features include the Google Assistant, facial recognition for unlocking, water and dust resistance, and battery life of about eight hours with typical usage.
So it’s a cool-looking and rugged device, which can run all your favourite apps, but is designed for more mindful usage.
I could get used to that.
You can get the Palm exclusively from Vodafone at the moment, free from upfront cost on plans starting at £30-a-month. Vodafone is currently only offering the Palm as a standalone device, but is expected to add pairing with a standard-sized smartphone later this year.