Hands-On with the Palm Pre’s Mirror

We learned a lot this morning here at D7 about Palm’s long awaited Pre. It will sync with iTunes. It will have an app store (though the public SDK won’t be released for another few months). It will pull in content from all over the Net into its WebOS. Oh, and it will also have a mirror on its back side.

While managing director of Elevation Partners Roger McNamee quipped during his talk at D7 today that “never before has a device like this been designed for a woman” in regards to the mirror, I can vouch that men and women alike have long used cell phone mirrors to check themselves out, or more popularly check their teeth for food. (One of my best friends and an ex-boyfriend used this phone as a mirror all the time!) Rightfully so, D host Kara Swisher blasted McNamee for saying the mirror feature was made for women by saying “Nice, Roger. Perhaps someday it will include a blow dryer as well.”

Regardless of how I feel about tech marketed to the extreme at women, I kindly nabbed McNamee’s Pre from him after the public demo for a few minutes to check out the mirror…er, I mean phone. The mirror is located on the back of the Pre and is only visible when you flip the screen up and the physical keyboard is exposed.

The mirror worked as well as any small mirror on a phone would work. I was able to see my teeth (which I may add were quite white and lacking any signs of food remains) and I even was able to maneuver it so I could see what was happening behind me (another great use of having a mirror in your pocket). I did notice there were a few scratches on the mirror itself from use and most likely McNamee’s repeated opening and closing of the phone.

Of course, I couldn’t just give the Pre back without checking out some of the phone centric features. I quickly swiped through the cards in the WebOS and tapped the Wikipedia button in the integrated search. I also watched the easy of which you can zoom in on Web pages with pinching. The OS and the hardware are even more attractive in person than on screen or in images.

Whether the integrated rear-view mirror was intended or not for women, it is a welcome feature and adds some pizzazz to the backside of the phone. And let’s be honest, there is no app for that.

More hands-on pictures of the Pre below.