Palm tweaking Pre for better quality

As Palm has done in the past with most of their devices, they're making subtle, small hardware tweaks in newer revisions of the Palm Pre.  As PreThinking posted in a mini-survey of sorts and as much-discussed in our forums, it appears that Palm has taken some steps to correct the physical maladies that affected earlier Pre phones.

The most notable correction comes in the battery compartment, where Palm has affixed a small foam pad opposite the power connection points to provide a more snug fit for the battery. This seemingly inconsequential addition is to combat the slider-related crashes that plagued many early units, including this blogger’s own phone. In fact, I recently picked up a newly refurbished Pre to replace mine after a bizarre failure, and it too has a foam pad inside. The foam pad is a more elegant (and less flammable) variation on the tiny paper inserts some users were resorting to.

Newer Pre phones also have a more silvery center button instead of the somewhat pearlescent button that early models had. There is also considerably less wobble to the slider and none of the surveyed new owners had experienced the maddeningly mysterious spider web cracking that so many others saw. There also seems to be a slightly modified battery in newer phones (the pegs on the rounded end are hollow), though the reasoning behind the change is not known.

So we at least know that Palm heard our cries for help and set out to correct the problems that some early adopters faced. And those of you who have gotten a replacement Pre and are curious if it’s a refurbished device can open the phone app, type in ##786# to bring up the Reverse Logistics Support card. This is full of useful information, including your phone’s configuration, initial activation date, MSID, recondition status (yes or no) and the date on which your phone was reconditioned. As Dieter noted in our PalmCast podcast, it’s not necessarily a sad thing if you get a refurbished phone, as that means somebody has taken the time to go over it and make sure it’s in good working order.