Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Palm Phone hands-on: an Android phone for your phone”.
Hey everybody, I am Dieter Bohn And if you are of a certain age you know that means that I am the Palm guy.. I used the Centro I used Pixi. I used the Pre. I founded precental.net. I was all about webOS.
I was all about Palm.. Then it died, but now it’s back., Not the company, but the name Palm.. It’S coming back as this little thing that I was hiding in my hand.. It’S a tiny little phone to go along with your big, huge honking phone..
Well, what’s all that about ( upbeat music )? So this is the Palm phone and the basic idea here. Is you don’t want to carry around your big giant phone.? So you can have this little weekender phone and it uses Verizon’s dual number system.. So you pay an extra ten bucks a month and that allows you to have this phone share your phone number and also share text messages.. So you can leave your other phone behind, which is a great idea except there’s a couple of caveats.
If you’re an iPhone user, your iMessages obviously won’t come over. If you’re an Android user, you’re gon na need to use Verizon’s custom text messaging app instead of the Built in Android messages in order to get your messages., The other question, you’re, probably asking is: what’s the deal with this phone? Well, it’s an Android phone and the basic navigation works. This way. There’s a single solitary button on it., You press it.
It turns the screen on you swipe up to unlock it.. If you double tap it, it will launch the Google Assistant and it will listen to your voice and you can do voice stuff.. They did that because they figured it’s a lot faster, you’re gon na wan na be doing a lot of voice stuff.. Now there are no soft buttons on the bottom, and so there’s this one single solitary button and it works one of three ways..
So if you tap it once it serves as a back button., If you double tap it, it goes home and if you long press it it takes you to this overview. Screen. They have built in a custom, face unlock feature into the camera, but I’m sure it’s nowhere secure as Face ID on the iPhone.. So you can just use a standard unlock pattern.
If you want. The screen is 3.3 inches and it actually looks pretty good.. It’S not too bad and for the basic stuff that it’s meant to do. It’S relatively fast., Although it is Snapdragon 435 processor, with 3 gigs of RAM and 32 gigs of storage..
So this isn’t exactly a powerhouse in terms of specs.. As far as Palm the new Palm is concerned, you really are just gon na be using a few different apps with the same bopping in and out., So it can run any Android app because it’s running Android 8.1, but really they expect you’re just gon na use. It for music, maybe a little Facebooking navigation, that sort of stuff., Really simple: weekender phone stuff. ( upbeat tempo ).
Now there is a camera on this. It’S a 12 megapixel camera on the back and I’m sure it’s no great shakes.. We haven’t looked at it on a big screen, but on this tiny screen it looks fine.. There’S our conference room.. If you wan na adjust volume, you need to go into the quick settings thing. Now.
The other thing I’ll notice, when I’m in the quick settings things here is there is this Palm button.. This is where we start to get into why this is a little bit more like an old Palm phone, at least why they claim it is.. So when you turn on Life Mode, which is what they call it, this basically acts as both battery saver and do not disturb at the same time.. So when this mode is on, you turn the screen off and no notifications will come in.
And in fact they turn off the radio. So not even phone calls will come in., So this thing should last a very very long time in this mode.. It’S only got an 800 milliamp battery in it, but if you have this mode on, the thing will probably just hang out: it’s inert forever., The other sort of cute little Palm thing is they’ve made this shortcut on the lock screen where you swipe up, and you Get this little graffiti area with four buttons on it., Then you can do a search for C.
If you wan na, do the clock. Or you can jump right into the camera or messaging whatever. The home screen here it is just an app launcher.
There’S not two different things, and it’s in this honeycomb pattern.. You can of course move stuff around drag it around install it., You’ll notice. Here I long pressed on an item that brings up shortcuts to jump directly into things inside the app.. It’S a really underused feature in Android and I’m really glad they sort of foregrounded it here.
That even works from that lock screen. So if I were to go here and write an S, it’ll jump into different shortcuts inside the app., So jump right into scan inside the camera, app, for example, or the drive app.. So that’s kinda, neat. ( upbeat tempo ).
I know what you’re thinking Dieter. Is this really a Palm phone? I mean it’s got sort of a Palm logo on it, but it’s not running webOS and the only really Palm thing about it is that a bunch of other Palm phones have been tiny.. Yeah you’re right.. You should almost think of this more as a really big Smart Watch than a really little phone..
You can’t buy it on it’s own. It’S actually sold on a connected device plan. So it’s an extra 10 bucks, a months., It’s 350 or you can get it on 15 bucks a month on a installment plan.. It can do more than a Smart Watch’cause.
It can run every single Android app, but it can do less than your phone ,’cause. It’S got a tiny screen and you’re, not gon na wan na spend that much time on it., That’s kinda. The whole idea here is this is meant to be a time well spent phone., It’s a phone that you turn on. Do a couple things turn off and ignore.. You can even turn on that Life Mode thing and completely ignore it entirely.. So it’s sort of like a back up plan to your phone.
Is that worth 10 bucks a month, Maybe. (, soft, techno, music, ) Thanks! So much for watching we’re gon na have a whole lot more about this thing, including a review when it comes out in November.. In the mean time you should subscribe to the website now. ,’Cause we’ve got a whole bunch of Pixel 3 content. .