talkingDigital

My first smart phone

Adam Cochran here – I am anxiously waiting for the release and availability of the Palm Pre. I see those as two separate events. I hope too get one on release day, but who knows how the Sprint store in Grand Junction, CO will handle the distributing on release day.

I have been in the store three times in the past three weeks and each time I have been given a different story on how they would be distributed. First come – first serve, invites only, special Friday night event…

I am hoping for the first come – first serve scenario. I plan on being in line early Saturday morning. 

Gadgets are wonderful, but unlike the crew at CNET, I don’t have the opportunity to buy each new gadget that comes out. I must carefully wait until just the right gadget comes along. That is not to say that I am a stranger to gadgets, I read all the tech news, listen to the podcasts and encourage my friends to buy the gadgets I am unsure about so that I can gadget by proxy.

Smartphones have always been a favorite gadget of mine. My first smartphone was one of the first smartphones – the Kyocera QCP-6035. It was awesome! I kept it around and replaced it a couple times but didn’t replace it until the Palm Treo 600.

I debated switching to a Windows Mobile device but hated the Windows look and feel. I didn’t want to go through all the menu systems to get everywhere. I debated going with Blackberry, but it felt clunky. So, I stayed with my Palm devices. I loved them for their simplicity and their agility.

When the iPhone came out, I bought an iPod touch. I compared plans, data, text and decided that I had to stick with Sprint for my budget’s sake. Sprint is about 25 percent less than AT&T for my uses. I am also very happy with the Sprint data network in my area.

It is important to clarify that no carrier is superior in all areas of the country, but Sprint has always preformed well for me in every area I have lived or vacationed. With prepaid plans so easily accessible now, if I did vacation somewhere that Sprint’s coverage was shoddy, I could always just buy a temporary phone and number.

I have used my iPod Touch for surfing the web, listening to music, watching movies, and running a variety of apps and games. I love the iPod Touch and I can see the beauty of an iPhone. However, the iPhone has four major hangups that prevent me from even considering it…

1. No tactile keyboard – I can touch type with my Centro. I don’t care if the keyboard is cramped and difficult to use on the Pre – at least it has a keyboard. You can’t tell me that the iPhone keyboard is less annoying than the Pre keyboard. I have written rather lengthy emails on my iPod Touch. I make a mistake about every three words on average. I can type three or four sentences on my Centro keyboard without making an error.

2. Background processing – I want to be able to keep an IM program running while I check my email. I want to be able to look up a contact, then map it, then go back to the contact and make a call without having to go to home screens or restart apps in between. 

3. It’s on Sprint – I don’t get any deals from Sprint. I buy the plans at regular rates and with standard contracts. I pay $200 for 4 phones with unlimited data, text, picture mail, protection plans, and 1500 minutes shared between phones. Go ahead and compare – the next cheapest plan will likely be $30/month more. I have considered leaving Sprint at least three times until I did the math.

4. It’s not an iPhone – Last year we must have seen at least half a dozen “iPhone killers.” They all failed. Whether it was the Blackberry Storm, the HTC Touch Pro or the Samsung Instinct, they all failed. You can’t take on the iPhone by simply resembling the appearance of an iPhone. The Pre is not trying to be an iPhone, it is something much different. Anyone expecting the Pre to be an iPhone killer should write their negative reviews now.

The iPhone’s strengths are the apps (developer base), the sexiness, and the fact that it is made by Apple. Pre touches on these things, but it also is presented as an entirely different phone. I don’t want a Palm Pre because I want it  to be an iPhone or because I expect it to be better than an iPhone. I am buying the Pre because I expect it to be different than the iPhone.

I don’t need a device that will download 200 different tip calculators or run countless apps. I want a device that is small, versatile and capable of combining all of my means of communication. I communicate on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, email, and a variety of Google services. The concept of the Pre fits my needs more than the iPhone. I plan on buying the Palm Pre because I want my money to go to the guys willing to take on Apple by creating a device that targets the weaknesses of the iPhone directly.

I don’t expect it to work perfectly at launch and the Pre 2.0 will certainly be a better device, but you have to admire Palm for making so many gutsy moves with the Pre launch. In many ways, the Pre is similar to OS X. Palm has reached a point where their product, both hardware and software, has become stale. They had two options, they could try to fancy up the existing product (the Microsoft approach) or they could reinvent themselves as Apple did with OS X.

Reinventing your image is always much more risky, but the payoff is much higher if successful. Palm has tossed backwards compatibility aside and told all old developers (whatever developers there are left) that their existing skills would no longer be useful. In what appears to be a dangerous move on the surface, is seens as a very necessary move to users, geeks and analysts who follow the smartphone market.