New Palm needs much more than nostalgia
It’s not exactly a trip down memory lane.
And yet Palm’s past found me wanting to embrace the newly reborn Palm, an adorable and, yes, palm-sized $349 smartphone stand-in on sale Friday as a Verizon Wireless exclusive.
Too bad I couldn’t.
I have fond memories for the original PalmPilot, the first truly successful personal digital assistant. And equal affection for the Palm Treo, a smart early smartphone. I was even a fan of the Palm Pre, a phone with software that was, in hindsight, ahead of its time but couldn’t escape the iPhone’s shadow.
Alas, the tug of nostalgia goes only so far, and I have real reservations about the new Palm handset I’ve had a chance to review. It was developed by a small San Francisco startup that has licensed the Palm name.
Palm says it’s not a phone
The new Palm company is trying to position this rounded titanium or gold device not as a throwback but as something between a connected wearable and a smartphone. In so doing, Palm wants to create a new ultramobile market segment pitched to an active, youthful crowd. They’ve enlisted the help of Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry in their efforts.
The way I see it, Palm and Verizon may have been onto something had they peddled the new device as a tiny standalone Android smartphone that was just that, rather than a near mini-me clone of your current smartphone.
I still run into people who tell me they prefer diminutive devices, belying the trend toward phones with “phablet-sized” screens. The new Palm is, indeed, a cutie, small enough to get lost in a coat pocket or handbag or strapped on your arm while you’re working out. You might mistake it for one of Apple’s older iPod Nanos.
The problem here is that while you can leave your regular Verizon smartphone (iPhone or Android) behind when you’re out and about – and that is really the point – having that regular phone in the first place is a requirement, as is the requisite Verizon data plan, on top of which you’ll pay $10 a month for Palm. In essence, you’re spending extra for a functional device whose functions, for the most part, duplicate what your regular smartphone already does. Only not always as well and in a far smaller form factor.
I mean it makes calls, lets you text, snap pictures, listen to music, even summon the Google Assistant with the familiar “OK, Google” voice command. If that’s not a phone, what is?
But with apologies to Steph Curry, I think Palm’s odds of success are closer to an air ball than slam dunk.
Sharing a number
To review the new Palm, Verizon also sent me a Google Pixel 3 XL, the device with which it was paired. Palm syncs up your regular phone through a feature known as NumberShare, which allows you to make or receive calls and send and receive messages using the same phone number. Both the Palm and Pixel rang when I got a call.
Incidentally, you can be on a call with your regular Verizon phone at the same time that, say, a family member is separately gabbing on your Palm.
During the setup, I downloaded the Verizon Messages app onto the Pixel and scanned a QR code using a camera on the Palm so that the two devices were simpatico.
You’ll see the same texts across the Palm and an Android phone. If you have an iPhone, however, a pretty big drawback is that you won’t see any iMessages on the Palm, only SMS text messages because of the tight grip Apple keeps on its iOS-only messaging service.
Speaking of messaging, given the small size of the onscreen keyboard, I found it hard finger-typing while sending texts on the Palm. That’s why you might well choose to use dictation instead.
Since you’re sharing the same account, you have access to the same apps on the Palm as on the phone, and you can shop the Google Play Store from the Palm, too.
The layout of icons on the small 3.3-inch touch display loosely resembles an Apple Watch screen, and you can otherwise navigate through gestures and shortcuts that I sometimes found confusing.
The new Palm doesn’t adopt the Graffiti shorthand language recognition system used on the Palm PDAs of yesteryear. But you can draw a letter with your finger in a gesture pad to jump to on-screen menus that begin with that letter – write an “S” to get to Spotify, Settings and Storage, for example.
I couldn’t always get to this gesture pad, however, which you’re supposed to be able to access only from the lock screen.
Leaving the Pixel behind, I hit the noisy streets of Manhattan with the Palm to make calls – the sound was OK through the small speaker held up to my ear, but Bluetooth headphones are a better bet. I also took a few pictures with both the 12- megapixel rear camera (with flash) on the Palm and 8MP front selfie camera. Those shots were decent, but nothing to write home about.
The tinny speaker in the Palm isn’t great for listening to music, either – so I paired up AirPods while listening to Spotify – again, Bluetooth is the way to go (there’s no headphone jack). I even watched a bit of video on the Palm, though I can’t imagine doing so for for any reasonable length of time, given its diminutive display.
One feature that worked just fine: unlocking the screen with my mug through facial recognition.
Palm is promising all-day battery life – I didn’t do a formal test – at least when you’re using a feature it calls Life Mode, which is like putting the device in a deep slumber. You won’t be bothered by calls, texts and notifications when the screen is off, though you can catch up on these at any time once waking it up.
There’s something to be said, I suppose, for the digital minimalism Palm is practicing here, and the device certainly works as advertised.
But as long as your megasized regular handset remains in the picture, even if it need not be with you all the time, then I think Palm and Verizon face a tall challenge persuading you to invest in a smartphone understudy.