Palm Phone hands-on - an Android phone for your phone

Introduction to Palm and the New Phone

Hey everybody, I am Dieter Bohn, And if you are of a certain age you know that means that I am the Palm guy. I used the Centro, I used Pixi, I used the Pre. I founded precental.net, I was all about webOS, I was all about Palm. Then it died, but now it's back. Not the company but the name Palm. It's coming back as this little thing that I was hiding in my hand. It's a tiny little phone to go along with your big, huge, honking phone.

The Basic Idea of the Palm Phone

So, what's all that about? The basic idea here is you don't want to carry around your big, giant phone. So, you can have this little weekender phone, and it uses Verizon's dual number system. So, you pay an extra ten bucks a month, and that allows you to have this phone, share your phone number and also share text messages. You can leave your other phone behind, which is a great idea, except there's a couple of caveats.

Caveats for iPhone and Android Users

If you're an iPhone user, your iMessages obviously won't come over. If you're an Android user, you're gonna need to use Verizon's custom text messaging app instead of the built-in Android messages in order to get your messages. The other question you're probably asking is, what's the deal with this phone? Well, it's an Android phone, and the basic navigation works this way. There's a single, solitary button on it.

The Navigation System

You press it, it turns the screen on, you swipe up to unlock it. If you double tap it, it will launch the Google Assistant, and it will listen to your voice and you can do voice stuff. They did that because they figured it's a lot faster, you're gonna wanna be doing a lot of voice stuff.

The Button Functionality

Now, there are no soft buttons on the bottom, and so there's this one, single, solitary button, and it works one of three ways. If you tap it once itserves as a back button. If you double tap it, it goes home. If you long press it, it takes you to this overview screen.

Face Unlock Feature

They have built-in a custom face unlock feature into the camera, but I'm sure it's nowhere secure as Face ID on the iPhone. So, you can just use a standard unlock pattern if you want. The screen is 3.3 inches and it actually looks pretty good. It's not too bad, and for the basic stuff that it's meant to do, it's got a nice display.

Life Mode: A Feature of the Palm Phone

They have this feature called Life Mode which allows you to completely ignore your phone if you want to. You can turn on Life Mode and completely ignore it entirely. It's sort of like a backup plan to your phone.

A Smart Watch or Phone?

I know what you're thinking, Dieter, is this really a Palm phone? I mean, it's got sort of a Palm logo on it, but it's not running webOS and the only really Palm thing about it is that a bunch of other Palm phones have been tiny. Yeah, you're right. You should almost think of this more as a really big Smart Watch than a really little phone.

The Palm Phone: A Connected Device Plan

You can't buy it on its own; it's actually sold on a connected device plan, so it's an extra 10 bucks a month or you can get it on 15 dollars a month on an installment plan.