Texting

30 Days Came And Went

All good things have to come to an end, with that said I would like to throw out one final thanks to groups of people that have made this all possible. First Of all I would like to thank Palm, Sprint, And CNET for making all of this possible by working together to help promote this great phone and WEBOS as one. I would also like to thank everyone at SmartPhoneJunkie SPJ and PPCGeeks PPCGEEKS for bringing this opportunity to my attention as well as convincing me to try placing in my "application" for this contest. Without all of the above being a part of this I would not have been able to test this great device and blog about many of the useful features, how the device works, the size factor, etc. And finally thanks to the readers because without you none of this would have been thought of since the user themselves are the people that make a blog or webpage what it is and as a Co-Founder of a site i can't stress that enough. But without further ado here is my overall thoughts on the device. The form factor and overall look of the device is amazing for the most part. The solid gloss black color screams for the consumer to pick it up, the bright clear screen draws you in with the millions of colors, the slideout qwerty keyboard screams to be pressed, ans the great angled slide grabs the attention and keeps the eyes focused on it. In a design for a device you cant ask for more than that, but with the good comes the bad. When the device is slid open revealing the keyboard it exposes a semi-sharp cheese like slicer that overlaps the recessed keys so they don't make contact with the screen when closed. This to the frequent phone user is troublesome since the keyboard is a huge thing on a device and having an imperfection there can be the beginning of the end. The only other flaw with the general make-up of the device is the "Oreo Problem" that many users have faced. The oreo problem is where the phone can move quite a bit from side to side as if you were un-twisting an oreo. (you can check this out i the video below and sprint does replace these devices with new ones.)… Read more

Final Post: Looking Forward

In this final post, I would like to say a little about what I look forward to in my Pre experience and express my appreciation for this opportunity to share my experience and ideas about the Palm Pre.

What I Look Forward to Most

As I have said and implied in many of my posts, I love my Pre. I have had mostly positive (mostly very positive, actually,) experiences with the phone since I got it. It works with me seamlessly for the most part and has allowed me to stay in contact with the world in ways I either could not or could not enjoy with my Blackberry Pearl. I am thrilled to be a Pre user now, and I expect many positive future Pre experiences.

Like any good consumer of technology, however, I am always looking forward to the next fun technology-mediated experience. So, in that spirit, I would like to note a few, as yet un-had, experiences I am looking forward to with my Pre:

External Notification Light

The feature I think I would most like to experience on the Pre in future is being able to tell that I have a message without having to wake up the phone to check over and over again. Ideally, the home button might light differently for different kinds of notifications--for example, blue for voicemail, red for SMS, and green for email--but I would be thrilled if it lit up at all to indicate there was a notification I needed to review.

Visual Voicemail

I hope this is in the works 'cause this would be a great feature on the Pre--one I have have only heard about as a cell user and never experienced except for my limited experiments with Google Voice. The Pre is a phone that already excels at messaging and notifications in many ways, but without visual voicemail and (another missing feature I mention below), there are limits to how excellent the phone can be for messaging.

Forwarding SMS/MMS Messages

As it is, I do a lot of SMS and MMSing and I love doing both of these on my Pre, but I really look forward to being able to forward SMS/MMS messages.

Copying and Pasting More Easily

Yes, there is a way to copy/paste currently. But it doesn't work in all fields (received SMS's, for example) and it's kind of a pain to have to hold two keys down and drag. I don't do it very often because it's a bit too complicated, but I would do it a lot if it was made more easy. WebOS 1.1 has apparently got an easier method enabled in Memos--a way that involves some tapping for whole word and paragraph selection. This is the kind of thing that qualifies as "more easily" for me.

Selling the Pre: Happy Pre Users Offer Ideas

As this test drive winds down, I find myself wanting to provide some closure to these posts. And how better to provide closure than to look forward?

So, in the spirit of moving forward with the Palm Pre, I have collected the following ideas based on happy Pre user experiences. Some of these are pretty great.

Maybe Sprint/Palm should have another contest for the best Pre marketing idea?

PreCentral member "Meriweather" describes one possible TV commercial:

Have a series of ads that play on the use of cards and multi-tasking--an arena where Palm has an advantage over the iPhone. For example, an ad with a street magician saying, "pick a card, any card" to a throng, and you pan in, and he flips through a series of apps on the Pre, showing calendar, Pandora, email, photos, TV, whatever you want to show off. People in the crowd are oohing and aahing, and shouting out, "we want pandora", "play a video" "check email", etc. Then the magician says, "no problem we can do all of them. All at the same time." The crowd cheers, except one guy with slumped shoulders, who slinks away.

"Ronlongo" describes his idea:

How about an ad where they show all of life's things going on all over the place (meetings, tasks lists, emails, etc.) like a jumbled chaos maybe as separate (but live) images moving around at random on the screen and the actor going crazy trying to manage and remember it all.

Then swap to another actor. Suddenly all the activities resolve into a deck of playing cards again with live pictures on them. For example, one depicting a meeting at work going on, another showing Little Pete's baseball game, etc. the actor shuffles through the cards with ease managing them with complete ease. The meeting card depicts the meeting come to an end and the actor discards the card.

Finally the actor pulls all the cards together into a stack. Touches the top of the stack (where the Pre's power button is) and the stack resolves into a Palm Pre.

A BIG HIGH FIVE TO YOU, PRE

I had an interesting evening one night last week. I was with a friend who has the Blackberry Storm and we were comparing phones so I asked him to go to a web-site and see if the Blackberry Storm could play the video. Well, when we reached the web-site we clicked on the video. Then, the Palm Pre, with the circle going round and round on the screen, started opening up the video while the Blackberry Storm was trying to open the video but a box popped up and ask to save the file. A few seconds later the Palm … Read more

Moving Around Text

I mentioned in my Centro comparison post that I wish the hardware designers had worked a way into the Pre to better facilitate moving the cursor around. It did turn out that there was a supposed keyboard shortcut to do this, holding down the orange button would turn the touchscreen into more of a 4-way touch wheel.

Now, as a hack, that works out okay, but it comes across as far inferior to a good native solution designed around the intended functionality. For one, the cursor still jumps around too much for my tastes. I am most often using it … Read more

Threaded Messaging

One of the features I did like about my old Instinct was threaded messaging. With Sprint's service being very unpredictable in our area there are days when texts and calls seem to get lost, only to show up hours after they've been sent. When you're sitting on your porch and you get a text from a friend that says "What aisle are you in now?" it's nice to have it show up right under the text you sent them two hours earlier that reads "Cool! I'm in Walmart too!"

The Palm … Read more

Palm Pre vs. Samsung Instinct

I think it's about time I write my comparison post. I've had the Pre a while now and I've officially said goodbye to the Instinct. I could call it a bunch of bad names now and not have to worry about it throwing a fit and refusing to work...

Not that it ever needed any encouragement.

The past year of my life has been filled with ups and downs in our relationship. For the first month or two I loved the Instinct. Coming from a flip-phone that had very basic capabilities, I felt empowered with the Instinct. … Read more

WebOS 1.1 Emerges!

A quick post to comment on my early impression of WebOS 1.1.

First of all, thanks to Palm for updating WebOS so often and so quickly. The rate and pace instills a great deal of user confidence in the future of the Pre and in your dedication to making it a phone users stay excited about. Thanks!

What's New?

The Palm official list can be found here. The compiled list of the "tons of undocumented features" can be found over at my home away from home, Pre Central.

From the looks of it, there are lots … Read more

Chatting and Texting

More than anything else on a phone, the messaging service is what I make the most use of, at least up to this point though the Pre's excellent web functionality has it gaining in market share of my mobile time use. For the most part, messaging works unobtrusively on the Pre, but as always, I am here to offer a few suggestions on how it could be better in my opinion.

Along with text messaging there is built in support for instant messaging platforms as well, but only AIM and GChat. My first suggestion is obvious, add more platforms. … Read more

Notifications: The Good, The Bad, and The Pretty

My impressions of the Pre's notifications.

Quick post today to comment on the Pre's system of notifications. Generally speaking, I love it. It's clear, accurate, and subtle without being coy--if that makes any sense.

The Good

Notifications appear as they are registered on the Pre at the bottom of the larger viewing area--stacked if there are multiples. They minimize to (very) small icons in the bottom right corner if they are not immediately acted upon. Tapping a mini-envelope (mail), speech balloon (SMS/MMS/IM), phone (call), or tape (voice msg), brings them back to the stacked view. … Read more