The new Palm phone began life late last year as a Verizon exclusive device that you used as a companion to your regular smartphone. It was recently updated to work as a standalone smartphone, meaning you no longer need an existing phone to pair it to, and now it's no longer exclusive to Verizon.
You can now pre-order an unlocked Palm smartphone. It's priced at $349.99, and each pre-order comes with a free leather case with neck and wrist lanyards. Pre-ordered units are expected to begin shipping in August.
The unlocked Palm phone is compatible with Verizon as well as GSM networks like AT&T and T-Mobile. It includes support for 4G LTE bands 2, 4, 5, 12, 13, 17, and 66.
As a refresher, the Palm phone features a 3.3-inch HD LCD screen, making it one of the smallest phones on the market. It's got 12MP rear and 8MP front cameras, comes with 32GB of built-in storage, and is equipped with an octa-core Snapdragon 435 processor and 3GB of RAM. Powering the phone is an 800mAh battery that'll get you around 8 hours of use with full connectivity, but when you enable Life Mode that'll silence incoming calls and notifications when the screen is off, Palm says you'll get all-day battery life.
The Palm phone runs Android 8.1 and comes with full Play Store access. There's a custom Fleksy keyboard that'll let you use gestures and voice-to-text to type on the small screen, and a button on the side of the Palm phone can be double-pressed to launch Google Assistant.
With many smartphones coming to market with 6-inch and larger displays, the Palm phone offers a small screen option for folks who miss the days when the HTC HD2's 4.3-inch screen was considered massive. It may not be the most powerful phone around, but its small size makes it easy to carry when you go out, take with you when you exercise, and more, and because it's got Play Store access, you can still have all of the apps you're accustomed to when you need to stay connected.
Now that it's available unlocked, are you thinking about buying the Palm phone?