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Verizon Palm Pre Plus Review: It’s more than a phone

Posted by ThemeParkMom on March 30, 2010 | No Comments

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.