Family, travel, mom blog | Theme Park Mom (Leigh Caldwell)

It’s the last day of March, and that means my month of reviewing the Verizon Palm Pre Plus is over.

When I started this process, I have to admit that I expected to use the phone for a month or so and then head into the Verizon Wireless store and switch back to my trusty pink crackberry.

But today? I’m going to stick with the Palm Pre. So how do I love Pre? Let me count the ways…

• In using this cell phone, I have learned to love a touchscreen, which is something I always hated before. This one is very good at knowing exactly where I’m touching the screen, and Palm’s “gestures” make navigating very easy.
• Palm’s webOS is just fabulous. I love the integrated search it offers, and I love the way it handles Web pages.
• And I know I’ve told you about this phone’s multimedia capabilities. The ability to stream Pandora Radio or use the Stitcher app to listen to a radio show makes my phone the only device I need to carry back and forth to the gym.
• I also like the smart notifications on the Verizon Palm Pre Plus. I like that it shows me the subject line of an e-mail, or what time I have the alarm set for, at the bottom of the home screen without having to open an application.
• And I like the keyboard feature that allows me to lock the phone into symbol or all caps mode. Aren’t we always on the lookout for little tricks that will save keystrokes?
• A growing number of apps for the Palm Pre make the phone more useful every day. I especially like Tweed for using Twitter and the Facebook app for keeping up with my social media life.
• And finally, call me shallow, but I love the way the Verizon Palm Pre Plus looks. It is black, sleek and rounded. Last night, my 14-year-old baby sister picked it up and pronounced it “awesome looking.” Does this mean I’m finally cool for once in my life?

There are, of course, a couple of things I would like to see improved. For one, battery life – the most common complaint of smartphone users – needs to be extended. I have trouble making it through the day without charging my Verizon Palm Pre Plus. And I wish the keyboard had the traditional “send call” and “end call” buttons — you have to use the touchscreen to hang up, which isn’t always convenient.

But overall, I think this is a great phone for moms, travelers and just about anyone. It’s been a great experience trying out the Verizon Palm Pre Plus, and I’m pronouncing it a keeper.

Disclosure notice: Verizon paid for my Palm Pre Plus and is paying for one month of my service in exchange for me trying the phone and posting about my experiences on my blog. I’m still thinking for myself, though, and you can count on me to provide my honest opinion of this product.

I worked for the New York Times Company for most of the past decade, and I spent a surprising amount of that time sitting in conference rooms, listening to different discussions about what the future of media was going to be. The one thing that everyone always agreed on was that someday, all media was going to be in the palm of your hand.

And that day is certainly getting closer. The Verizon Palm Pre Plus smartphone has a host of features that truly make it a multimedia device, and I have found that I am feeling the need to carry additional devices (such as my iPod) less and less. Here are the 5 reasons why:

• The Verizon Palm Pre Plus has 16 GB of memory in this shiny, black pebble-shaped package. Sure, that’s not as much as many mp3 players have these days, but it’s plenty to carry hundreds — make that thousands — of songs around with you.
• The audio quality on this smartphone is quite good. The built-in speaker can be turned up to a good volume level without sounding distorted. And you’ll get even better sound if you plug headphones into the device.
• Palm’s webOS is set up so that you can play music on your phone or stream audio in the background, while you also use your phone to surf the Internet or use other applications.
• The Pandora Radio app comes already installed on the Verizon Palm Pre Plus. I have been a Pandora fan for years. If you haven’t used it before, I definitely encourage you to try it. You sign up (it’s free), and start telling Pandora what songs or artists you like. Pandora learns these preferences and creates a streaming radio station just for you, with a mix of the songs you have told it to play and others that are similar.  Pandora on the Palm Pre works just like the Web site. You can sign in with your existing account and it will already have all your preferences.
• But it’s not all about the music. You can also download Stitcher from the app catalog on your Palm Pre. While Pandora has your music covered, Stitcher is a talk radio app that allows you to stream podcasts and radio shows.

Disclosure notice: Verizon paid for my Palm Pre Plus and is paying for one month of my service in exchange for me trying the phone and posting about my experiences on my blog. I’m still thinking for myself, though, and you can count on me to provide my honest opinion of this product.

I’ve been testing the Verizon Palm Pre Plus for more than a month now, and I continue to find cool features that are really useful on this phone.

The Web browser in Palm’s webOS is just fantastic. I can load any Web page I want — the device has no problem dealing with scripts or Flash. The highlight for me is that it loads the entire Web page onto my screen at once. It doesn’t try to break it up into columns like many mobile device browsers do.

Then when I locate the area of the page I want to read or take a closer look at, I simply double-tap it on the screen, and it zooms into that area. This makes browsing on the Verizon Palm Pre Plus much faster than other phones, where you would have to scroll through screen after screen of sidebar material before getting to what you are looking for.

So, here’s the latest cool trick I found: You can add Web pages that you look at frequently to the Launcher. This allows you to go straight to the site you want, without having to load the Internet and then find the bookmark or type in the address.

Since I write for a couple of different Web sites, I have added them to my Palm Pre Plus Launcher screen, so that I can pull them up to monitor them quickly. This would also work great for sites that moms might visit frequently when they are out running around, like a weather site or a site that lists movie times.

To add a Web page to the Launcher, call up the page you want to add in the Web browser on your Verizon Palm Pre Plus. Tap the Web menu, then “Page,” the “Add to Launcher.” A dialogue box will come up asking you to confirm that you want to add the page to the Launcher, and that’s it.

Disclosure notice: Verizon paid for my Palm Pre Plus and is paying for one month of my service in exchange for me trying the phone and posting about my experiences on my blog. I’m still thinking for myself, though, and you can count on me to provide my honest opinion of this product.

I know, I know. I can’t stop talking about the webOS operating system on the Verizon Palm Pre Plus smartphone. But it’s just so different than the other cell phones and mobile devices I have used before.

In the broadest sense, I would say that my old smartphone was compartmentalized, while this new one is integrated. Everything on the Palm Pre seems to work together. This is particularly impressive (and useful!) for moms in two areas:

Integrated search. I can slide open the keyboard on my Verizon Palm Pre Plus and just start typing. I don’t have to have the address book or the Internet open at all. If I type “Stefanie,” she is found in my address book and my Facebook account. I can e-mail, call, send her a Facebook message or text her right from the same screen. If I type something that’s not in my address book, say “Six Flags,” I am presented with the choice to search for that phrase on Google, Google Maps, Wikipedia or Twitter.

This feature is such a time saver for me! I will admit that I simply don’t have room in my brain to have a bunch of phone numbers memorized, so I am constantly looking up my contacts. On many phones I have used, it seems like you have to go through three to five different screens just to look up a number and place a call. The simplicity of this is beautiful.

Also beautiful? The calendar on the Verizon Palm Pre Plus. Once again, the word of the day is “integrated” kids. I am a Google calendar fanatic. I keep my work calendar, family calendar, and editorial calendars for my blogging all separately on Google. With one step (one step!) I gave the Palm Pre my Google sign-in and password and voila! all those calendars are integrated on my phone. I can easily add to them and edit them directly from the calendar feature on the Verizon Palm Pre Plus.

And that group Yahoo! calendar that I have to monitor separately on my laptop? It’s integrated here, too. In fact, I have pretty much stopped working with these calendars on my laptop and use them exclusively on my phone, because it is actually easier there.

I don’t know about you, but for me, there will never be enough time in my day. Give me a device that’s going to save me a few seconds here and there, and it’s worth a mint to me. I am finding the Verizon Palm Pre Plus to be a major time saver.

Disclosure notice: Verizon paid for my Palm Pre Plus and is paying for one month of my service in exchange for me trying the phone and posting about my experiences on my blog. I’m still thinking for myself, though, and you can count on me to provide my honest opinion of this product.