PatrickMoorhead

With the recent release of the Palm Pre and the BlackBerry Storm 2, we are gearing up for a battle of the new smartphones. You are now spoilt for choice, so in this article, we take a look at the pro’s and con’s of the two latest hi-tech mobiles to hit the market place.

With the Pre, Palm could be back on track. Sale of this handset in the US has been pretty good, although some have said they did not meet industry expectations. Many technology analysts have also put the tag of iPhone killer on to the Palm Pre. I’m not going to read into that too much, because we have has a few iPhone Killers in the last year that have failed.

Its biggest selling point is its operating system, webOS, which was built by Palm from scratch, especially for this device. It aims to make it much easier for users to draw together social networking sites, disparate contacts, email accounts and other tools on one single platform, with what they call Palm Synergy. With Palm Synergy all communication takes place through one point of contact. For example, if you open your address book, you won’t just find a phone number and email address, you will also have access to there IM handle and will tell you if they are online to chat through say Facebook. The Pre is definitely an excellent handset, but there are a few issues to deal with.

No the downside the keys are very small and are place to close to one another and the whole keypad sits too near to the device. The Palm Pre is definitely aimed towards those who are after a BlackBerry type of user experience, but I don’t think it has managed to do this. It’s a real shame, because the touch-screen device boasts a delightful user interface, and a virtual, on-screen keyboard would have worked really well. The mobile app store has been criticised, because is sparsely populated, with around 100 apps to choose from. But give it a break, it a new phone and OS, so you can’t really expect too many apps straight away.

Right, so BlackBerry needs to make amends for the mistakes that were made about a year ago when they released the original BlackBerry Storm. The Storm was another phone that got tagged as the new “iPhone Killer” contender pre-release. Users just couldn’t get to grips with the SurePress touch-screen interface, which forced users to “click” the entire screen to confirm an action.

Things are looking better second time round with the Storm 2.  It has Wi-Fi, (something that was annoyingly left of the first Storm handset), improved battery life, and a more sophisticated and easy-to-use interface. The “popple dome” has been replaced with SurePress technology. This is based on an electronic system that provides the user with tactile feedback when the touch-screen is pressed. The new system responds equally to gentle pressure applied anywhere on the surface of the screen. Typing on the Storm 2’s virtual keyboards is easier, more comfortable and more accurate.

As you would expect from a BlackBerry Phone, it offers the sort of seamless push-email experience that people who use a mobile for work crave. The BlackBerry remains the best mobile email device on the market and Blackberry seem to have managed to put together a touch-screen interface with those all-important productivity capabilities.