Palm Pre Teardown

Welcome to another exciting teardown brought to you by iFixit. Today we will be disassembling the newest sensation in the mobile phone market, the Palm Pre from Sprint.

You can write a teardown just like this! Take something apart and wow the world with what you find!

We arrived at the Santa Barbara Sprint store at 2am and were first in line!

Two blocks down the street at a local shoe store were 18 people stolidly entrenched in line for Kanye West's new Air Yeazy shoe. Some of them had been in line since Monday!

By the time we got our Pre at 8 am, there were about 25 others waiting.

It took several tries to activate the phone (about five minutes total), but no where near as bad as Apple's iPhone 3G launch activation woes last summer.

We tested out Sprint's 3G EVDO network on the road home and didn't notice any interruptions. Uploads and downloads were fast, and Pandora's application ran like a champ.

WebOS is so cool! We love how natural it feels to swipe between applications and multitask with Web, Twitter, AIM, and Pandora.

Contents of the box:

• Palm Pre phone
• AC Phone Charger, Standard Li-Ion Battery
• Stereo Headset, Carry Pouch
• Micro USB Sync Cable
• Get Started Guide and Features Guide
• A prepaid plastic recycling envelope in the box, making it easy to recycle your newly obsolete phone. This is a fantastic move on Palm's part, but of course recycling is a last resort if you can't fix it.
• And a partridge in a pear tree...

Users preferring physical keyboards will be satisfied, but iPhone veterans may be left disappointed at the lack of a software keyboard option.

Revealing the keyboard feels awkward and interrupts the smooth WebOS experience. Try before you buy, because this keyboard could be enough to deter picky users.

The Pre comes with a stylish and rugged case, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, earbuds and USB cable.

The Pre is "Inspired by and designed in California," while the iPhone is merely "Designed by Apple in California."

The battery came only partially charged, and we managed to drain it on the 1.5 hour drive back from Santa Barbara.

We'll just charge it briefly with the MicroUSB connector before ripping it apart. :)

You get a full one year warranty on hardware, but for software Palm only promises "software will perform in substantial conformance to their program specifications for a period of ninety (90) days."

The lineup: Apple iPhones vs. Palm Pre

We love the feel of holding the Pre in our hands. In its closed position, it feels much more comfortable to hold than the iPhone.

Notice the extra thickness of the Pre compared to the iPhone (17mm vs 12mm). Not only does this allow the engineers more flexibility in designing the physical layout of components, but it also makes the Pre conform really well to our palm.

To see your face better while taking photos for MySpace, the Pre includes a mirror on the back.

Unfortunately, the mirror distorts everything in sight-- it conforms to the slight curve of the phone. It also gets easily covered in fingerprints. Your digits will gravitate to this region while holding the phone open.

Cheese does not cut Pre. Evidently it only works the other way around.

The 3 megapixel camera does take great pictures though (we took the last photo here using our Pre in the car).

The back panel snaps off easily to reveal the battery.

The Pre's battery capacity is 1150 mAh, exactly the same as the iPhone 3G, though the Pre is reported to have slightly worse battery life due to its background process capability (but we don't mind).

Though Sprint will eventually sell replacement and/or backup batteries, our store did not have them available today.