Introducing the ‘Palm’, a Tiny New Android-Powered Smartphone

From the makers of Palm, the company behind those handheld PDAs that were so prevalent in the 90s, comes a tiny new Android-powered smartphone called the ‘Palm’, that has been designed to supplement your current handset.

Akrales 181008 3004 0152

The Verizon-exclusive Palm costs $349.99 and will be available in November only as an add-on to your existing smartphone plan, offering a way to stay connected when you don’t want to lug around your primary smartphone, especially if it’s as big as an iPhone XS Max.

The folks over at The Verge have gone hands-on with the tiny new Palm device, which shares your phone number and runs a full version of Android 8.1 and all the apps from the Google Play Store. “It’s like a phone for your phone”, as they put it, features Gorilla Glass 3 both at the front and back, and features a single multi-purpose power button.

Akrales 181008 3004 0056

Akrales 181008 3004 0101

At just 50 x 97 millimeters, it’s not much bigger than a credit card, has a 3.3-inch, 445-PPI LCD display, a 12 megapixels rear camera as well as an 8-megapixel selfie camera, and offers 32GB of storage.

“There’s a single virtual button on the bottom. You tap it once to go back, twice to go home, and long-press it to get to the multitasking screen. Since there are no volume buttons, you need to swipe down the quick settings panel to adjust that. And since there’s no fingerprint sensor, Palm wrote a custom face-unlock feature that uses the 8-megapixel front camera.

More than any other feature, the Life Mode on the Palm phone is what makes this a “time well spent” minimalist phone. When you turn Life Mode on by tapping a palm tree icon, it enables a set of Do Not Disturb and Low Battery settings. 

In Life Mode, your notifications are obviously turned off, but Palm is also turning off the wireless radios. The cellular and Wi-Fi radios will only turn on when the screen is on. It’s a much more aggressive way to turn off notifications and deny incoming phone calls.”

Check out this quick hands-on video of the Palm and share your thoughts with us in the comments section.

YouTube video

P.S. - Like our news? Support the site with a coffee/beer. Or shop with our Amazon link. We use affiliate links when possible--thank you for supporting independent media.