Pre reviewed in Germany and UK

The fine folks over in Europe are finally getting in on the review fun that we had over here during the summer. Over at Golem.de they got some extended quality time with the phone, long enough to write up a 20-page review that covers just about every aspect of the phone. The conclusions are pretty much the same as ours, though there seems to be little difference between webOS 1.1.3 on O2’s Pre phones and the 1.1.0 version that we had on Sprint and Bell before webOS 1.2 hit. It is worth noting that webOS 1.1.3 does not come with the iTunes sync fix that 1.2.1 brought, so the Pre will be hitting Europe sans out-of-the-box music synchronization. An update to correct that and “bring parity” with the North American Pre is expected some time next month.

Heise.de aren’t the only ones that got their hands on the GSM Pre, as Trusted Reviews also put the phone through its paces. Their extensive review covered a lot of nitpicky items, but it’s the sign of a good product (or at least a product with good potential) when nitpicks are what take up space on the page and not huge glaring problems. Strangly, O2 sent United Kingdom-based Trusted Reviews a QWERTZ (i.e. German) Pre for their review. Slashgear did take a look at the UK edition and found no surprises.

Generally the reviews have come to the same conclusion as most stateside observers: the star of the Palm Pre is webOS. The build quality still leaves something to be desired, though we can easily point to the moving parts slider design as the culprit in the feels-flimsy category.

Thanks to Gizmo21 and Terry for the tips!