Launched in 2009, the Palm Pre’s biggest disadvantage was its app store, which had only about a dozen apps, compared with over 40,000 for the iPhone. There were only a handful of buttons, and these were rubbery and protruded too little from the body, making them hard to press unseen. The power button was clumsy to use when the keyboard is open. Plus the Pre’s autocorrect system, for instantly fixing mistyped words, is puny. Even with a physical keyboard, people make typos, and Palm only fixes about 2,500 common words, like “the.” By contrast, both the BlackBerry and iPhone have tens of thousands of autocorrections built in, including fixes for long, complex words.
