What do reviewers don't like about Palm?
What do reviewers don't like about Palm?
Before I get to Palm review myself, I read the great reviews on this phone and try to summarize the most fundamental criticisms I have found in reading.
summary of complaints
When I read all this, the following comes out to me:
missing nfc chip
missing jack connector
missing volume buttons
worse camera
life mode not only switch off notifies notifications but also WiFi and LTE
small phone size
messaging applications are unusable due to keyboard size
low battery capacity and low battery life
older versions of Android OS - 8.1 Oreo
high price
It seems to me that many experienced reviewers do not know what they want from such a phone. Before I go to the review, I will have to play with the phone, try out the possible use scenarios and maybe come to that.
Anyway, I recommend reading all the linked reviews and viewing the photo galleries because the view of Palm is truly breathtaking… d8-D
However, what was upsetting was how much power drained when the phone was in standby mode. Overnight, I could expect at least 20 to 30 percent of the battery to be gone if I didn’t plug it in.
The Palm Phone’s cameras get the job done, but don’t take it with you if you want to capture high-quality memories.
The screen is too small to be comfortable with modern apps that expect more real estate—things get cut off, and typing is awful. TCL's attempt to make the experience minimalist with features like the launcher and Life Mode fall flat, too. The Palm Phone is fun to play with for a few minutes, but I can't imagine regularly taking this thing with me on a night out instead of my real phone. The awful camera alone is enough to put me off.
What are you supposed to use this for? Is it a new-age iPod? A smartwatch alternative? A smaller phone to take on your fitness activities? It's not really good at any of these things.
First, the $350 price tag puts it firmly in smartwatch territory, which is a huge problem for justifying a lot of Palm's supposed use cases. You can get an Apple Watch Series 3 with cellular access for $380. You can also get an LTE-equipped Wear OS or Samsung watch for around this price.
Palm calls this phone a "wearable" and sells a variety of cases, armbands, and lanyards designed for easy portability, but nothing is more portable than a smartwatch. So, if you're looking to travel light, just get the smaller device.
The Palm phone isn't a great music player thanks to the lack of a headphone jack and physical volume rocker. Sure, you can pair Bluetooth headphones to it, but you can also just pair Bluetooth headphones to your smartwatch, which is going to be smaller and more portable.
The Palm phone also can't beat a smartwatch for fitness activities, since a watch is going to be lighter and easier to carry. Plus, a watch will do heart-rate tracking. Maybe you want to bring a real phone, because you hate the lack of a keyboard on a smartwatch and don't want to speak to your device in public—but the Palm phone is too tiny to comfortably type on. The body is so skinny that you can't hold it with two hands, and the keyboard on this skinny screen is so small that a fingertip presses about four keyboard letters at once. You're relying on autocorrect so much that you might as well use Wear OS' tiny keyboard.
Plus, a smartwatch has one more major feature that the Palm phone doesn't support: NFC. If you're out for a jog, you can run into a shop and buy a drink with your smartwatch. You can't make a payment with a Palm phone.
No. The Palm doesn’t offer any value. The camera isn’t good, the battery won’t last you more than a few hours while you’re out, and it’s frustrating to type on. You’re better off saving yourself $350 by simply tapping on the ‘Do Not Disturb’ button on your (already expensive) Android or iPhone and going about your day.
The Palm seemed like it could be the right device at the right time: it’s a tiny, secondary smartphone for times when you want to be more present in the real world. To the company’s credit, its namesake phone is a beautiful, well-built conversation starter. Unfortunately, the Palm’s size will make it too difficult for some to use, while some compatibility issues and poorly executed features are sure to frustrate others. Ultimately, Palm’s ambitions were admirable, but its first device feels like a half-baked answer to a serious problem.
Even though I didn't find the Palm as good at its job as simply adhering to those habits (and others), I'm still compelled by the idea and think it could be improved. I can live with its slow performance, but I'd like to see an even better camera and a more robust battery. Those enhancements would certainly add to the cost, but I feel that's not such a hard sell, and a more accurate picture of the Palm idea: I don't want a crappy phone, just one that's better suited to being more present IRL.
The idea of having two phones isn't insane. You might already have a work phone and a play phone, for instance. I've seen that as far back as Nokia's fashion-phone line from 2005. I personally wouldn't mind a tiny weekend phone. I'm the guy who's been asking for smaller smartphones for years now. The Palm phone, beautifully designed and tiny, should be the phone of my dreams.
But it fails to function well. I can forgive a low-cost phone for not having a Pixel-quality camera. The Pixel 3 costs $800. But the Whatsapp and iMessage problems, the weak Wi-Fi, the scratchy call quality, the tiny keyboard, and the lack of volume buttons all add up to a phone that's irritating, not relaxing, to use. Many of these annoyances are probably fixable with software updates, which just puts the Palm phone on the list of products that had to come out in November, whether or not they were ready.
The Palm Palm, or whatever you’d like to call it, is a great effort by a company whose head seems like it’s in the right place, but not quite going the right direction. When I first imagined that this Palm device, I thought it was sort of absurd. I thought it was ridiculous mistake.Now I’m convinced that it was a really great effort put toward a device that might be sorta doomed.
Especially considering the cost of the phone, there can’t possibly be a large enough population of users ready to toss down cash for the privilege of having a phone for their phone. Imagine paying $350 USD for a phone that’s only able to act as a second phone for the phone you’ve already got in your pocket or purse.
We all need to spend less time staring at our phones, so at least there's a good idea behind the Palm. But part of the problem is that the phone lacks the courage of its convictions. If we're supposed to use the Palm only intermittently, why preload it with apps that are contrary to that mission? And, why let people add even more apps that can potentially suck away time and attention? Features that do serve Palm's stated mission, like Life Mode, could stand to be fine-tuned, and it should be easier to control the phone's volume.
Then there's the matter of the Palm's $350 price tag — which isn't insignificant at a time when the prices of fully featured smartphones are on the rise. It's tempting to compare and contrast a companion phone like the Palm to an LTE-enabled smartwatch. You'd certainly pay more for the watch — the Apple Watch Series 4 starts at $499 if you want LTE connectivity — but you'd get a device that offers the same features as the Palm in a form factor that's better suited for at-a-glance uses. And the watch throws in health and fitness tracking features not found in the Palm.
The core of that ethos is something they call “Life Mode.” (Or, because the founders are dads, hashtag dad mode.) More than any other feature, the Life Mode on the Palm phone is what makes this a “time well spent” minimalist phone. When you turn Life Mode on by tapping a palm tree icon, it enables a set of Do Not Disturb and Low Battery settings.
In Life Mode, your notifications are obviously turned off, but Palm is also turning off the wireless radios. The cellular and Wi-Fi radios will only turn on when the screen is on. (Bluetooth will also turn off but stay on if you are connected to headphones.) It’s a much more aggressive way to turn off notifications and deny incoming phone calls. Palm specs the phone at eight hours of normal use without Life Mode on, so if you toggle it the Palm phone is expected to last a super long time on a charge.
Oddly, the Palm phone is not running the latest version of Android which has a bunch of Digital Wellbeing features built right in. The company tells me that they didn’t want to conflict with those Android 9 Pie features. Perhaps an update will come in the future, but it’s a miss for now.