So I got an email from Eric at Phonescoop with the message “WHAT THE FF****KK!” and a link and I opened the link and I read a strangely stilted review of the Palm Pre by a site I’ve never visited. Go ahead and read it. It doesn’t say more than we currently know – just that lots of stuff doesn’t work yet – but it is, before god and country, the first real live review of the Palm Pre in the wild.
Does it matter? Sure it does. The review offers a glimpse at a phone that avoids the traps set by most carriers. There are no janky music, navigation, or television apps bolted onto the OS. There is some sort of TV available, sure, but it sounds like it’s OK. They’ve also added Amazon Music downloads, which sounds great, and the app store should have a number of solutions for various problems including, presumably, fart apps.
arring any last-minute snags, which seem unlikely at this point, we’ve reviewed the final version of the Pre. There is the potential, as previously reported, that Sprint could pull their escrow of the firmware if they find anything show-stopping. We doubt that will happen at this point, and expect the device to be sold in early June.
Minor Update: Hours after posting this review, Sprint confirmed the June 6th launch date for the Pre.
We are holding off on casting judgment on a few areas, which we outlined previously. Palm’s App Catalog is not open yet, and we won’t touch the sync servers for calendars and contacts until they go live. MechaWorks is intimately familiar with cloud computing, and we understand that it is in an active state of development still. We aren’t even using those apps yet, so we don’t get any first impressions from servers that aren’t final.
Clearly Phonenews got a “final” model in that it came in a box and would emulate what we’ll all see on June 6. However, their review is a little premature. Like wresting a quiche from the oven before it is done, Phonenews has succeeded in creating a flat, eggy thing full of bacon. Sure, the bacon tastes good, but at what price pork?