HP Veer 4G Review - Getting Us Excited for Pre 3

So I think it’s time to finally talk about the Veer’s small size and about how that actually works in practice. It’s an incredibly tiny phone, and Zoolander jokes aside, can indeed feel considerably awkward to hold if you’re coming straight from one of innumerable substantially larger phones. The first couple of calls I made on the Veer were slightly challenging because of the phone’s minuscule size. 

First up is how the Veer looks side by side with some other devices. The most obvious comparison is the Palm Pixi. The Veer is unfortunately a bit thicker to accommodate the slide out keyboard system, but preserves the same width and also is a fair bit shorter. 

Next is how the Veer compares to the Palm Pre Plus and HTC EVO. Here you can get an appreciation for just how small the phone is compared to a growing list of comparatively gargantuan >4” display phones. 

I also got an opportunity to take photos of the Veer next to the Pre 3 and a black Veer.

The difference in aspect ratio between the Veer and the Pre 3 is pretty dramatic, which does make me worried that developing good applications that work well on the Pre 3 and Veer using the same binary could be challenging. 

Already there are Pixi-specific versions of some applications in the WebOS store, and the difference between the Pre aspect ratio and Pixi isn’t all that great. The difference between Veer and Pre 3 will likely cause even more of this, especially for games. For example, there’s currently a Pixi specific version of Angry Birds that works fine on the Veer as well. 

With the keyboard slider closed, it’s understandably a bit unnerving to hold the Veer to one’s head. There’s an impulse to want to have all five fingers on the phone, when realistically your pinky will hang off, otherwise the grip is fatiguing. In reality, that’s not a big problem since the pinky doesn’t add much grip strength at all - the problem is that it hangs out awkwardly, and as a result holding the phone to one’s head is like drinking tea in polite British style. 

The solution to this is actually pretty simple, with the keyboard slid out, the Veer is much easier to hold with a normal five finger grip. In addition, since microphone is located right next to the symbol key, there’s a chance you’ll get better voice quality this way. I tested with the phone open and closed and couldn’t detect any appreciable difference, so it’s clear that it’s intended to be used in either state, but all bets are off when talking outside in the wind. 

In the palm when in regular use the Veer is also a little bit awkward to hold, but only for the first couple of hours. After that there’s nothing challenging about holding the phone with the slider closed and doing anything normal. With the slider open, it’s easier to get a good perch and firm hold on the phone.