Does the Pre offer a great way to interface with information over different web connected applications? Sure it does, but with all that connectedness comes a price, and a price that mobile users may not want to pay. Jared Miniman sent in a tip to an Ars Technica article analyzing the Pre’s battery life, and it looks not so hot.

Issue 1: Processor and hardware

Palm still hasn’t announced the processing speed, but it is known that the Pre uses a TI OMAP 3430 chip with an ARM Cortex A8 at its core. For techies, you can read more about the Pre’s chip and what all that means over at Ars Technica, but for the non-techies, here’s a snippet:

But my point in talking about the capabilities of the A8 is that, even though the 3430 is a 65nm part, you don’t get all of that hardware for nothing. The radio and the screen will be the biggest power draws in the Pre, but 3430 will definitely contribute its fair share when the SoC is under load and the 3430′s considerable dynamic power management features are more constrained in scaling back the core frequency or cutting power to one of the 16 different power domains.

All that combined with the Pre’s multitasking and graphics capabilities, multi radios, and bright screen will make the hardware drain the battery pretty quick.

Issue 2: Software

If only Palm would bring back native applications and limit some of the fun web-based connectivity instead of always pushing and pulling updates, it might help with battery. Palm’s Synergy engine constantly checks multiple websites–Facebook, GMail, and others–for updates and changes over a power-consuming CDMA radio.

Maybe, the saying “are you happy to see me or is there a spare battery in your pocket” is true. Perhaps Pre owners are not that social in real life and are attached to their connected internet world that they’ll never be happy to see you because there really is a spare battery in that pocket. Does Palm think that having the most current data all the time make us “binge” smartphone users where we crave updated contact and appointment data so that we can only use our device a few hours a day before it dies?