talkingDigital

The title of this review is a little misleading. While I am celebrating my second full day of Pre ownership, I have not used the Pre exclusively for those two days. I am using both my Centro and the Pre. I am in the process of selling my business and the buyer is going to continue using the Centro and Agendus setup that I have been using for the past eight years until he gets a grasp of how the business runs, at which point he will likely change phones and scheduling systems.

So, I  am using the Centro for business but the Pre for personal, church and other professional projects I continue to work on.

While I haven’t used the Pre exclusively, I have had a lot of time to play with it and try to understand how to use it as a tool which is what I bought it for.

I believe that I made it clear all along that I did not expect the Pre to be an iPhone, nor did I want it to be an iPhone. I wanted a smartphone that had a practical edge and a slick interface. I have played with the Storm, the Instinct and the HTC Touch models and they all are very good at trying to look like iPhones in the marketing but failing miserably in reality. I would almost consider them bait and switch phones.

The Pre had attracted me from the beginning because it pays homage to the iPhone. But it also pays homage to the Blackberry and Palm.

Today I noticed the Pres imperfections but I also realized what may be its greatest strength.

Let’s discuss the Cons first…

CONS:

Web browsing is a little quirky -Pages do load fast and render very nicely. However, I do miss the iPhone’s ability to automatically zoom in on a given portion of a website. You do a lot of multi-touch pinching and sliding to get navigate through the page. It seems that you either zoom in or out too far. I think this is partly due to the smaller screen size.

The rendering of iGoogle and talkingDigital is pretty much horrible. The page is rendered into tall, thin columns. They can be read, but the pages are not pretty at all.

Copy and Paste exists on the Pre, but it needs a lot of fine tuning. It does not work at all in web browsing and holding the shift key while dragging feels odd. Remember the first time you tried to drag your mouse across text to select it and it seemed like you just couldn’t get it right? Remember that frustration? I feel that way when I try to copy and paste on the Pre.

That said, there is a lot to be said about having a tactile keyboard. Copy and pasting long URLs is one thing, but the main reason people needed copy and paste on the iPhone was because typing even a short sentence on the horid onscreen keyboard is a five minute task. With the Pre, retyping a few words is no big deal. I can type entire sentences without looking at the keyboard.

I miss the D-Pad – The touchscreen is great but how much harder would it have been to add a small trackball or D-pad to move the cursor around? Correcting typing mistakes is a little annoying when you can’t move the cursor back one character at a time. Even if it could be done using gestures, it would be better than trying to drag your finger to the exact spot. Typically, I drag the cursor within a couple spaces of where I make the mistake, then backspace a few characters and retype.

I would also like an undo option in the edit system. I don’t remember the exact reasons, but I have run into two situations where a CTRL+Z would be helpful.

The Pre powers off after the allotted amount of time to save power. The only way to wake it up is to tap the power button in the upper right corner, or tap the space bar on the keyboard. It would be nice if tapping twice on the “center button” would wake the device.

Now for my biggest gripe – the app catalog. Actually, the catalog itself is very nice. It shows a lot of promise as it is arranged nicely and every app offers the ability to try before you buy. Installing the apps also happens seamlessly and quickly. I think that the app catalog is a easy to use as the iTunes app store. BUT!!!! There are no prices listed anywhere. You have no idea whether an app is free or $1000. Currently the app catalog is in beta, but the lack of prices makes me extremely nervous to tap the download button.

The first thing you do when you setup the Pre is create a Palm account. Does this account tie you to a place where any apps will be billed to your Sprint account? There isn’t anywhere on the Palm or Sprint website or on the Pre itself to log into your Palm account to see what the Palm account settings are all about. It is very mysterious.

It may seem like I have nothing but gripes, but remember, that was the CONS.

Now for the pros…

PROS:

Background processes are beautiful – Go ahead, play halfway through a game, log into the forums on a website, create half a memo, Google how to spell something before you send it in a text message. You can keep as many apps open and running as you want. Today, I was monitoring Twitter via an app called Spaz, looking for answers on the absence of prices on the app catalog in the forums at Precentral.net and watching my Facebook. I think at one point, I noticed that I had five apps open and I was using them in the exact manner that I use the taskbar in Windows.

At this point I sent out a mini review on twitter, “The Pre’s ability to run background processes makes the iPhone feel like a palm.”

I had to laugh when I watched the video on Apple’s website about the new iPhone 3Gs. After just a day of enjoying the background apps, the iPhone video actually looked clunky as the demonstration showed that you had to hit the home key (button) in between each step. Background processing itself really is the Pre’s killer app.

My daughter beth with her new baby cousin - taken with Palm Pre and flash. Click on the image for full resolution shot.

The camera is also better than average – There are a lot of complaints about the quality of the camera. True, the camera is not that great, however the flash makes all the difference. Some people pick on it, but anyone who is expecting Speedlite performance from an LED flash will always be disappointed. I feel that, when compared to the iPhone 3Gs, I would rather have a flash than auto focus.

Over the next few days, I hope to learn a few more tips and tricks. I have read the manuals and watched the training videos on the features. So far, it is such a simple device to use, it appears that there isn’t much more to learn.

I will try to add some media files. We did watch some YouTube yesterday and that worked as well as it does on the iPhone.

I did have a problem reading a PDF attachment someone sent me, so I will try a few more similar tasks to see what the Pre’s current limits are, but overall it is better than I expected for a first generation phone.

When compared to the iPhone 1.o or the G1, the Pre shows that Palm has learned from their competitors’ mistakes. The Pre generally feels like a 1.7 device. It has its limitations, but every major problem I have (such as navigation,  the app catalog prices and selecting text) can easily be addressed with future software and firmware updates.

I expect big things from the Pre. Not just because I want Palm to succeed, but because the Pre is proving itself to be serious smartphone sweetness right out of the gate. I consider it equally as revolutionary to the future of smartphones as the Treo 600 was at its launch.

Well I was the first person in all  of Grand Junction, CO to own a Palm Pre. I have had a crazy day and very little time to actually work with the Pre, but I didn’t want the day to go by without a summary of my first day’s impressions.

Keep in mind that I have not discovered all of the Palm Pre settings and features, so some of these things may already be addressed, I just haven’t discovered them yet.

As the day has gone by I have felt more and more like this is an iCentro. A very nice combination of iPhone and Palm Centro. Most of the advantages of each device are incorporated. It may pretend to be an iPhone, but it has the soul of a Palm.

It feels very first gen both in hardware and software. That doesn’t in any way mean that it is a poor device. As you use it, you just keep thinking, “I wonder what they will add with the next update or the next model.”

Let’s go down the line and I will discuss a few of the feelings I had about it today.

Unboxing: I was dead tired from only sleeping about 2 hours in 15 minute increments most of the night. When I got home, I was ready to just put the box on the desk and go to bed for a few hours. However, my wife and kids all met me at the door and begged to see it. So, we unboxed it as a family bonding experience.

Two words describe the unboxing… orange, Apple. It is so obvious that Palm wanted the unboxing to be as Apple-like as possible. Clear plastic dividers, instructions that were dogeared and wrapped with orange paper bands, corrugated inserts that separated all of the pieces. Layer after layer of packing, plastic trays, weird pieces of clear styrene… It felt just like I was opening a next-gen iPhone with orange and white packaging. I was impressed and felt as good as Palm wanted me to as I unboxed it.

Charging: I have heard that the battery life is pretty poor, I am anxious for Palm to release replacement batteries. I did not buy the touchstone or other accessories yet as I really want to spend some time with the phone. I got a little flustered and actually had to pull out the instructions to figure out how to charge the phone.

As it turns out, the USB port is concealed under a little door that will break off at some point. You can’t open the door without sliding out the keyboard. Not a big deal, but a little weird. It seemed pretty obvious that Palm is tired of dirt getting up inside the charging port of the Centro and Treos and this must be to address that issue.

Keyboard: I will talk more about the interface, gesturing, OS, etc. once I get to know it more. For now, I will address the keyboard. Most reviews have reported that the keyboard is a little jammed. I am used to the Centro keyboard and, to me, the spacing of the keys actually made the keyboard feel larger than the Centro. Many reviews have pointed out that your thumbs hit the bottom of the screen as you type. That is a good observation, but it is still much faster than typing on an iPhone keyboard.

Pros: I love the screen. I really love it. Sometimes the transition hangs between opening apps, but nothing worse than any other phone out there. The hangs last only about a second at most and I don’t complain about one second hangs when my Centro and iPod Touch often take longer than that when they hang between apps.

The camera is really good. Some people will pick on me for saying this. Perhaps I should say, the camera is not as good as that of most point and shoots, but this is a phone – with a flash! I think that the complaints about the phone come from a simple formula that Apple lovers use when they review devices… If it is a feature not offered by the iPhone, find something negative to point out about it. 3MP and flash, beautiful colors, better than average low light exposure, I can’t complain.

I love the calendar and notification system. It will take some getting used to, but I really like it so far. I use two separate Google calendars and two Gmail addresses. No problem, they are all managed in a way that keeps them separate, yet easy to manage in one email home screen. It even brings across my Gmail filters and settings.

SMS, alarms, IM and other notifications are all done in a very small sliver at the bottom of the screen. Tap on the area that tells you that you have messages and it opens up to a cool area dividing all of the forms of alerts where you can tap on the alerts you want to give attention to first.

Cons: The contact system is weird. There are three ways that the Pre is setup to sync contacts, Outlook Exchange, Gmail contacts, or Facebook. If you just want to sync contacts off your standard outlook or old Palm desktop, you must first import them into your Gmail address book if you want them to sync. Rumor has it that there are apps in the works that will fix this, but they may not be free.

If you do sync with your Gmail contacts, make sure that Gmail isn’t adding every person you reply or send an email to into your contacts automatically.

I am disappointed that Palm went to so much work to integrate with Facebook, but there is no Facebook app available. I communicate heavily via Facebook. I make comments, upload pictures and video and send direct messages. Currently the Pre is setup so that I can recieve notifications from my Facebook contacts, but I have to interact with them from within the Pre. I would prefer a standalone Facebook app.

The Twitter app is good, but far more limited than most of the offerings for the iPhone. The app store is pretty disappointing by all accounts but that is a problem that the Pre is designed to address. It may be frustrating to think that there are only a handful of apps available for the Pre at launch, but the fact that it supports any apps makes it superior to the first generation iPhone at launch.

So far, I think that the Pre is a major win for Palm. I think that it ensures their presence in the smartphone market for at least another five years, even if iPhone comes to all major carriers within that time. It feels like a Palm with iPhone features and, as a 10-year Palm user, that is a very good thing. I think this phone will be less than impressive to most iPhone users, but Blackberry users may wet their pants when they see the Pre in action.

The saga continues in my six month quest to acquire a Palm Pre on release day. After my very public and targeted complaints, a few of the employees mentioned in my posts, tweets and Facebook updates have apologized and requested that I remove the posts.

I will not remove them completely, because the account is accurate and getting me a lot of traffic on my site.

Here is what I have found out. The local Sprint store or perhaps Sprint corporate, announced the waiting list policy that employees could be dismissed if they put names on the waiting list who were not present in the store.

I am guessing that the people who I have been pestering at the Sprint store for the past six months had no way of contacting me to let me know that the waiting list had started or that I had to come in to get on it.

I asked if they could move me up in the waiting list (many on the list are getting more than one phone) and they explained that there are no exceptions to the policy. I will believe that on June 7 if there are no Sprint employee/SERO folks who own a Palm Pre. I am betting that is a policy that they will find a loophole in.

I will remove the names of the employees from my posts as they have explained to me that Sprint will possibly fire them if they make any exceptions for me.

Also, even after all this mess, I have no intentions of leaving Sprint and I am not afraid to show my face in the Sprint store. I realize that policy comes before service in today’s business world and I no longer blame the employees for the problems I have had.

I will still acquire a Pre at some point – perhaps August when they are slated to be available to the masses and I will stick with Sprint as my cell provider.

Perhaps I will sponsor at meetup on June 6 at noon where we can either celebrate the fact that I was able to acquire a Pre or help those who were able to acquire one to celebrate.