Tapping on the Launcher icon takes you to the applications area. There is a noticeable lag in opening apps. It’s not terrible, just noticeable. There are three pages of applications, each represented by an icon. You can easily scroll between pages by swiping your finger across the page. This work seamlessly on the Pre, just as it does on the iPhone. However the Pre is limited to three pages of icons. This means that once you have more than three pages of icons, which can happen very quickly, you will have to scroll both horizontally and vertically to find the app you need. If you look at Figure 15 closely, you will see two white lines on the right indicating that there are two more pages in that direction. You will also see a small down arrow above the quick Launch bar that shows you that there is more to look at if you scroll down. This scrolling in both directions is confusing as well as aggravating. Luckily, as long as you can remember the name of the application you can also type in the first few letter of the apps name and have universal search find it for you.

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Figure 15: The apps screen.

You can only search for and download applications for the Pre on the phone itself. At this time, there is no online store like there is with some other mobile phones. Although currently the Pre App Catalog is sparse compared to the Apple App Store, it is sure to grow. You can search through the App Catalog easily and can often jump to the website of the manufacturer for more information. The only thing that we had trouble with was in trying to figure out how much any given app costs. Although there is almost always a try before you buy button, you are often not clearly told how long the trial will last or how much the app will cost when the trial is over. We tried several apps, but didn’t actually purchase any. Our assumption is that you pay each manufacturer for each application. If that’s true, it is a far cry from the ease of purchasing an app from the Apple App store.

On the Pre, you can also make an often used contact appear as an app. This is a useful feature. In Figure 16, you can see that I have created an App called “Sandy Berger” which appears in the upper left corner of the screen. Tapping on this icon will take you directly to the Sandy Berger contact page where Synergy has collected all the information about Sandy Berger.

The Pre’s browser is excellent. Most pages are rendered just as you would see them on the computer screen. The small screen does make browsing a bit more difficult than on a larger screen, but you can zoom in and navigate easily.

The Pre works with Google maps, just as the iPhone does, but the Pre does it much better. The Sprint navigation system is much better. The Pre gives you turn by turn instructions and has voice instructions that even include text-to-speech, so the directions tell you to turn not just at the next street, but include verbally giving the name of that street.