Palm Pre Life Expectancies

Let’s discuss the Palm Pre’s Life Cycle and Expectancy in 3 ways: battery life, hardware life expectancy, and Palm’s sale cycle of the Palm Pre.

Palm Pre Battery Life Expectancy: Neutral Rating

One of the Palm Pre’s few weaknesses is the short battery life. This weakness in-part is derived from one of its strengths: a powerful and truly multi-tasking OS: Palm webOS. The Palm Pre’s battery life expectancy is usually around 5 hours of talk-time if you’re not drawing on the workings of several apps at once (same as iPhone 3GS). If you are using the Pre to its full capacity without phone functionality, but with Wifi or 3G, GPS, constant email syncing, web surfing, and other apps that require inbound/outbound communication, you can expect a mere 6-7 hours of total usage.

Keep in mind, these amazing multi-tasking feats are essentially barely (some would argue if at all) short of an $800 netbook’s ability. Taking a look at a comparison of netbook battery lives, the Palm Pre smokes some models and is on par with others, including the more popular Acer and Asus models. Six to seven hours of course doesn’t compare to 9 hours of internet use on iPhone 3GS. Of course, some would argue that you get roughly the same amount done considering you can only do one thing at a time typically with iPhone 3GS.

An extra note: Palm.com does not break down battery consumption times for different activities the way Apple does. The only mention of the Palm Pre’s battery life hours on Palm’s site that I could find was here. Apple clearly states usage times on their site here for iPhone 3GS and other models.

Palm Pre Hardware Life Expectancy: Looking Short

My view on the over-all design of the Palm Pre is that it was a good idea, but a poor execution in a few (but not most) ways. I’m having two problems with the physical construction of the Palm Pre itself: the front panel (which carries the touchscreen as opposed to the sliding back panel that houses the keyboard) is ever-so loose. It was solid the day I got the phone and after about 3 weeks it started getting loose on me. It isn’t that noticeable all the time but I can twist the top panel clockwise or counter-clockwise by a fraction of a millimeter.

My Palm Pre's Top Half is a tad wobbly these days by a fraction of a millimeter, but enough to notice occasionally.

The second problem I’m having is with the charge port (again). This time, it isn’t the big clumsy twisting port dust cover that feels like a wishbone that gets weaker and weaker every time you open it, but a small plastic sliver pictured below (it is sticking out diagonal over the micro USB charge and sync port). This little sliver of plastic is what used to be snuggly attached under the micro USB port, but since the only way to open the wishbonesque port dust cover is by sliding the keyboard out and using the edge of your fingernail to pry it open, I also occasionally pry off that plastic sliver. It’s currently still attached; it tucks easily back in place. I only pull it out once every couple days.

My Palm Pre's Broken Port Trimming: It's the sliver of plastic partially covering the charge and sync port, going at an upper-left angle.

So how long is this phone going to last? Still no truly debilitating or chronic constructional defects, so I’m guessing, a year to a year and a half.

Palm’s Expected Sales Life Cycle for the Palm Pre

At least back in March, this was leaked from Palm (PDF Link), listing the expected sell span of the Palm Pre to possibly be 24 months. This would outrun all iPhone models in an endurance sell span endurance race. Only time will tell I suppose.