It’s ludicrously tiny but the Palm Phone is seriously overpriced
Palm Phone
£350, vodafone.co.uk
Few gadgets have the Palm Phone’s ability to reduce people to hysterical laughter, and I speak as a man who once tested a pair of metal-detecting sandals.
It’s a smartphone, but ludicrously tiny. In an age where Apple and Samsung have blasted through the 6in barrier without looking back, this 3.3in phone just looks hilarious, like someone has blasted iPhone XS with a shrink ray.
The idea is that you don’t spend three-quarters of your day staring at other people’s holiday photos on Facebook
It’s barely bigger than some of the more corpulent smart watches.
My wife chortled helplessly while asking: ‘Is this supposed to be the future of phones?’
The idea is actually laudable: the Palm (a reboot of the ancient handheld computers) has a very stripped-down home screen with a few icons (mail, phone, text, camera). The idea is that you don’t spend three-quarters of your day staring at other people’s holiday photos on Facebook. So, Palm hopes, you’ll tear yourself away from your phone… by buying another phone.
It’s cute, and the LCD screen is actually pretty good, but after using it for a few hours, you realise it’s not hugely different to other Androids – just smaller, and more expensive. You can get powerful 6in Android phones such as the Honor 8X for £239 – but the Palm is a whopping £350. Given that the screen is so small, the battery life of the Vodafone-exclusive gizmo is also shockingly poor.
It’s cute, and the LCD screen is actually pretty good, but after using it for a few hours, you realise it’s not hugely different to other Androids
I enjoy fishing it out, simply because it’s nice to spread a bit of laughter – but at this price, the joke’s on you.