The Palm is a Phone for your Phone

Smartphone addiction has become a serious topic of discussion in recent years, which presents something of an ethical dilemma for phone makers. How do you continue to make money in a market that’s so intrinsically tied to technological addiction? The consensus seems to be smartphone accessories that pull you away from your phone and Palm is the latest brand to take a stab at it.

The Palm, which is the confusing name for the latest phone from Palm (is it like a self-titled album or…?), is credit-card sized. A 3.3-inch display is powered by a Snapdragon 435 SoC, 3GB RAM, and an 800mAh battery. You’ll get 32 GB of storage, a 12-megapixel rear camera, an 8-megapixel front camera, IP68 water and dust resistance, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, LTE, and USB-C. The whole thing is packaged in an aluminum body with gold or silver accents. It runs a custom build of Android Oreo.

Oh, and it’s not a phone. It’s a phone “companion.”

Available exclusively through Verizon, the Palm is designed to act as a companion to your primary phone. As a matter of fact, you can’t even use it on its own. Like a smartwatch, while it can act as a phone, it’s an accessory and can’t be used as a primary device. It is a phone, though. Is this real life?

The goal of the Palm is to get you away from your main screen. The idea is that you leave your primary phone at home when you’re going somewhere where you’ll want to be more attentive and less buried in your smartphone. While the Palm can run all your favorite apps, the idea of playing Candy Crush on a 3.3-inch screen isn’t very appealing and that’s exactly the point.

The problem, however, is that when the Palm is released in November, it will cost $349.99. That’s a lot of money to spend on top of the constantly-rising costs of flagship smartphones. So you’re dropping a grand on your phone, then dropping an extra $349 on a tinier version of your phone to make sure you don’t spend too much time on the phone you spent a grand on. I’m not trying to be reductive about the problem of smartphone addiction, but there has to be a better way.