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I know this should be a picture of the Pre, but instead it's a picture taken from my Pre...of my 7 pet rats

It suddenly dawned on me that if I wanted to get a review of the Palm Pre up, it had to be this afternoon, before Stu gets his when he comes home tomorrow and beats me to it.

That’s right,  if you hadn’t noticed me talking about it incessantly, I got a Pre. It’s been 5 days now, and I am finally able to put it down for at least 10 minutes at a time, just long enough for me to start eating., and hopefully long enough to write this post.

I won’t bore you with the specs, those are easy enough to find and have been re-hashed dozens of times already. I’m going to talk to you about what really matters – does this phone make the 10 month wait worth while?

The Good

• This phone is a lovely size, I have teeny tiny hands, but it feels really comfortable to use.
• The touch screen just works, I don’t have to tap 10 times, or with atomic precision to get things to work
• The aps that are there are really useful. My favourites so far are Tweed, which is really easy to use and has some great little features, like being able to mark where you were up to when back reading tweets, and Accuradio which had me bopping to 80’s classics for most of the weekend.
• Multi tasking is also a breeze on this phone, I can have a text message, web page, email and music all open at the same time, and flick between them in seconds. If you’re as scatterbrained as me, this is a real god send.

The Bad

• Ok so there aren’t a lot of apps at the moment, and there are a few that I would really like to see over the next couple of months. Don’t let that put you off though, the things you really need are there, and  the more people use the phone, the more will be developed.
• Battery life is never going to be a strength with a phone of this sort, and the life on the pre isn’t bad. You will have to compromise between heavy use and a full day charge (mine can happily survive until about 7 with almost constant use throughout the day though)
• Back swiping, the pre uses quick swipes to assist navigation. Most of these are on the main screen and work fine, but to move back through screens there is a back swipe move that’s in the area below the screen. Now perhaps it’s me, but this swipe can be a little hit an miss.
• As I mentioned earlier, I have tiny hands, so I can’t really comment on the keyboard size, I find it quite comfortable, but I think if you’ve got big hands you might struggle with this, and there isn’t an on screen keyboard option.

The Ugly

I really can’t think of anything that I have found on the Pre that would put me off getting one if I had the choice again. I know that sounds corny, but I’m really enjoying this phone, and I have even surprised myself at the amount I have used it. If anything I think my poor little netbook is feeling quite neglected, as it is easier to check email and tweet from the pre then it is to log in to my pc.

My feeling is that this phone is perfect for people who want to do things. The iPhone has always seemed a little gimicky to me, like it felt the need to get people who weren’t really interested involved with little games and add ons that weren’t really of any use to any one. The pre feels like it was made for people who want better web access than the blackberry (I know they have come a long way of late but they have a lot further to go in my opinion) but without the toys that come with the iPhone.

So has anyone else had a chance to play with a Pre yet?