Check out the Dell Store on CNETPalm Pre vs. iPhone 3G: Which do you want?
The CTIA 2009 spring show is just a few days away, and there are sure to be new product announcements. HTC, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, LG--they'll all be there. However, there's one company in particular that's at the forefront of my mind, and it would be Palm. I'm sure you can guess why.
Palm Pre, where are you?
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET)Both Palm and Sprint will be in Las Vegas for the show, but the companies don't have any news conferences or major events scheduled--just an invite-only VIP Lounge where they'll have the Palm Pre on display.
I really hope we'll learn some new information at CTIA (ahem, pricing, release date), since we clearly didn't during their last Webcast. However, I fear it'll be more of the same and we'll come home none the wiser. Part of me also thinks that they'll wait till the last possible moment (June) to deliver on their "first half of 2009" promise, but I hope I'm wrong.
Palm and Sprint are running into dangerous territory right now. We said at CES 2009 that it was risky for the companies to announce the smartphone (though smart in many ways) back in January and they had to careful to deliver on their promise and not delay the phone.
On the one hand, I commend Palm for better communication with the public whether it be through its blog or Twitter feed, but there's comes a point where the canned responses get old and things like the Webcast look like a stalling method or shameless self-promotion. I think it's pretty safe to say, we're at that point, and the masses are getting restless.
Also, with the new iPhone OS 3.0 and all its new features, the Pre has lost some of its competitive edge. (The chart below gives you a side-by-side comparison of the basic features of the two smartphones.) Plus, there's a chance we could see a new iPhone at WWDC in early June and that could certainly steal some of the Pre's thunder.
Am I still excited for the Palm Pre? Absolutely, 100 percent, but I can still be annoyed by the lack of information. What about you guys? How do you feel about the Pre's chances? Are you still interested? Do the new features of iPhone OS 3.0 and the possibility of a new iPhone sway your decision at all? Let me know your thoughts; I'd love to hear them!
| Palm Pre | Apple iPhone 3G (with OS 3.0) | |
| Dimensions | 3.9 inches by 2.3 inches by 0.6 inch; 4.7 ounces | 4.5 inches by 2.4 inches by 0.48 inch; 4.7 ounces |
| Screen size | 3.1 inches; 480x320 pixels | 3.5 inches; 480x320 pixels |
| Navigation | Touch screen; gesture area; multitouch gesture support; slide-out QWERTY keyboard | Touch screen; Home button; multitouch gesture support; onscreen keyboard with landscape support |
| Camera | 3 megapixels; LED flash; no video recording planned at launch | 2 megapixels; no video recording |
| Connectivity | Dual-band CDMA; EV-DO Rev. A; Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 2.1 with support for tethering and A2DP | Quad-band GSM; tri-band UMTS/HSDPA; Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 2.0 with support for A2DP and peer-to-peer networking, no tethering yet |
| Accelerometer | Yes | Yes |
| Proximity sensor | Yes | Yes |
| GPS | Yes | Yes |
| Maps | Turn-by-turn directions via Sprint Navigation (TeleNav) | Turn-by-turn directions through third-party apps (presumably in development) |
| Memory | 8GB; no expansion slot | 8GB or 16GB; no expansion slot |
| POP3/IMAP; Microsoft Outlook with direct push | POP3/IMAP; Microsoft Outlook with direct push | |
| Multimedia messaging | Yes | Yes |
| Syncing | Synergy: Brings together Outlook, Google, and Facebook calendars and contacts; removes duplicate entries | CalDAV adds support for Yahoo and Google shared calendars in addition to Exchange |
| Search | Universal search: Searches contacts, apps, Web | Spotlight: Searches e-mail headers, contacts, calendar, notes, iPod tracks, applications, and Web |
| Multitasking | Deck of Cards feature lets you run and switch between multiple applications at once | No background applications; Push notification sends badges, audio alerts, and text message alerts |
| Flash support | Palm has committed to Adobe's Open Screen Project and promised to bring Flash 10 Player to its Web OS devices by the end of the year, but won't ship on the Pre at launch | No |
| Music store | Amazon MP3 store | iTunes Store |
| Application Store | Pre App Store | iTunes App Store |
| Copy/paste | Yes | Yes |
| 3.5mm headset jack | Yes | Yes |
| Removable battery | Yes | No |
| Price | TBA | $199 with two-year contract for 8GB model; $299 with two-year contract for 16GB model; also available unlocked |
| Data plan | Simply Everything Plan: $99.99 per month for unlimited everything (data, messaging, voice); Everything Data Plan: $69.99 per month for 450 minutes, unlimited data and messaging, $99.99 per month for 900 minutes; Family and business plans also available | $30 per month for unlimited consumer data plan; $45 per month for unlimited business data plan; $99.99 per month for unlimited voice; $79.99 per month for 1350 minutes with rollover, $59.99 per month for 900 minutes, $39.99 per month for 450 minutes; $5 per month for 200 text messages, $15 per month for 1,500 text messages, $20 per month for unlimited text messages |
Bonnie Cha is a senior editor for CNET, covering smartphones and GPS. When she's not testing the latest gadgets, you can find her chasing after her crazy lab or surfing in the chilly waters of Northern California. E-mail Bonnie.
Nice article! I have the iPhone 3G, but I'm also interested to see the Pre (and I'm secretly routing for them!)
Sources say the Pre's multitasking engine is horribly inefficient and the more apps you're running the more processor cycles are wasted ... thus the removable battery. Seems like a forced feature to me.
Huh? That comment absolutely no sense other than fact you are DESPERATELY trying to justify the 10-year old non-removable battery design. Oh wait, that was intentional. God forbid we just give you another battery to fix a battery issue when we can CHARGE you to service it AND charge you $50/50% more a month for slower data speeds on unlimited everything.
So what is your annual salary with Apple or AT&T anyway? Seriously that has to be the EPITOME of fanboism ever!
If the Pre can serve the same basic purpose, I'd love to stay with Sprint (been with them since '97, while occasionally trying various other services). Then again, Apple should be countering with better hardware in addition to the new OS in June, so I'll have to make some decisions.
Anyone know when the at&t exclusivity agreement ends??
~Trav
i think both sprint and tmobile are the best money savers out there!
I'll just have to wait until june when both new phones are out in the open.
The Pre looked good when it first was shown but it is rubbish at todays standards. The LG has a ppi of 310, the iPhone, about 180, the Pre, probably about 200. then to power, the pre has a 400mhz proc, the LG has a 528mhz and the TG01 a 1ghz proc.
Now seriously, which would you buy? a plastic piece of overpriced rubbish, a HTC touch dual with a new OS , a centro's keyboard and better screen or a civilized media phone which will own both of them in close to every way.
Btw we do know its all speculation but these specs will not be far off with multicore processors.
I like the competition though it keeps things moving forward. I hope the Pre is good, but I have a feeling by time its released many others will have matched it or passed it. If they could have released it at the beginning of the year it would have wrecked havoc, but now I think the later it gets the more it losses ground.
and i'll tell you what i'd rather use a centro keyboard than that crappy on screen keyboard apple uses.
also, the pre is using the treo pro keyboard.
the iPhone is not a productivity device. it's not for power users. it's for consumers, not people with important jobs or students.
the pre's OS is CLEARLY more advanced than that of other phones out there. get off the bashing band wagon and open your god da(m)ned eyes man.
Sprint charges $100 for unlimited minutes, sms, gps, tv, radio, internet, mms and nfl live.
Boost charges $50 a month for unlimited minutes, web and sms
Metro charges $40 a month for unlimited minutes and sms
$109 will get you 450 minutes with 5,000 night and weekend minutes, unlimited sms and data
no gps, no tv, no mms..to get plan comparable to other providers you'd be paying over $160 with att
i don't know why at&t thinks they can charge that much in the US.
hmm...that's interesting, I wonder where you get such solid facts. Let's see...I'm a student (a darn good one at that) and I absolutely love my iPhone. I can text or write e-mails as fast as anyone else. The app store only expands the features of the iPhone to a level completely beyond that of any other handheld device. Can your cell phone tune a guitar? or maybe your phone has a calculator that has the ability to produce better graphs than a TI-89.
Yeah I'm sure your phone is MUCH more capable than the iPhone...seeing as you're an important business man and all.
When it comes down to it...it's all about how successful a product really is, regardless of what target consumer the product is aimed at. Mark my words "donttredonme", the iPhone has been and will continue to be an extremely successful consumer product. In fact, I challenge you to find a cell phone that has been as successful as the iPhone in recent years.
Except that there are people who use it just fine in business. I work for a top tier media company and a lot of executives here (you know the important business types) get free blackberrys. Many have returned their FREE blackberry in exchange for their personal iPhone.
The G1 is always my fallback.
To try and stay relevant to the article, I'd like to pick the Pre over the iPhone, but I'm worried that Apple will continue to be the walled garden of choice for closed developers while Android is catching up quick with its open nature. There is going to be a limit to the apps developed for mobiles, not everyone is going to release their app for the iPhone, Pre, Android, WinMo, Symbian, and Blackberry. This next year will be very interesting to see which platforms grow and which shrink.
At any rate, Android has at least a couple years to really take off.
Android may well be a great development platform, and (though I doubt it) it may also be a better OS than either Palm's or Apple's, but phone hardware is AT LEAST half the battle, and I don't see anything NEAR as compelling as either the Pre or the iPhone running Android. Until Google gets a true hardware partner and not just a collection of licensees, I don't see the Android OS being much of a player in this game.
The argument about choosing is really moot because, as of today, no one knows when or if the Pre will actually be released. Pre had better be a winner though because it's all Palm has left to save them.
I love my iPhone. I hope Pre does well because competition is good for everyone.
Well, until archos leaked it's android phone. and HTC came out with the Touch HD
Is the iPhone 3g with 3.0 going to be $480 better than the Palm Pre? Doubt it. If Apple doesn't release a new iPhone this summer they will find themselves with the second most appealing "smartphone" on the market.
Is there some point where the price of the plan starts to deter a large number of customers away? I can imagine a significant number of current iPhone customers opting out of their phone plan the next time they get the chance and switching to a cheaper AT&T line or going with some other company.
I cut the land line, cable television, and lowered the internet tier at the house to save money and if the iPhone plans don't get cheaper I don't think I will be an AT&T customer past June.
You would be surprised how much you DON'T miss cable television or a land line. You can watch almost every TV show online and a lot of them live with rabbit ears. As far as the landline goes the only thing I miss is hanging up on telemarketers.
And don't be afraid to include what the iphone would cost for unlimited everything. It's definitely not cheap. But you've included it for Sprint. Be consistent.
Also, fair point on the pricing. I will add the unlimited plan for the iPhone momentarily.
thanks bonnie chacha =P
You have to pay for the Apps on the iPhone to get that.
Not only that, but it would be nice to know if Sprint will make people upgrade their plan to the unlimited data @ an extra $30 a month. This will definitely be the deal breaker for me, seeing as I currently pay $10 a month for data on top of my $29.99 phone plan.
I'm rooting for the Pre, but if it's not cost effective, then both Palm and Sprint are in serious trouble.
I will definitely have heavy interest in the Pre, since I really do like Sprint's service and would rather not switch to a different provider. Of course I'll just have to wait and see...
I notice I only need a basic cell phone because I can usually find Wi-Fi to use with my iPod Touch, but if I could combine most of the features of my iPod into my cell phone (and maybe throw GPS in for kicks) I'll be glad to update and lose the iPod.
There is positively NO excuse for Apple to have omitted certain features on the first two generations of iPhone. How can a product be so hyped with such limited functionality? No MMS? Are you serious? Every other phone with a camera has MMS- even cheap free phones. No GPS turn-by-turn? The iPhone ecosystem is more impressive than the phone itself, Yes it has pretty animations but as a smartphone, it's really not good. As a "feature" phone, it's great however but outside of the many available apps, I don't really see what's great about the iPhone. I had an old Treo 700p that was a much better tool than the iPhone I used. No, it didn't have pretty graphics or a attention grapping large touchscreen but I could easily read Word files and allow me to get important things done plus typing was a breeze. It was a PDA and phone in one while the iPhone is more of just a fancy phone that needs lots of add on apps to become a dependable tool.
Now I'm stuck on Blackberry but if I ever get rid of it I'd love to check out the Pre (if it's ever released!) The combination of a true keyboard and the gesture area/touchscreen interface is the best of both worlds. People can fool themselves and pretend you don't need a physical keyboard but if you are a heavy user, a non tactile screen is just toy (can Apple at the very least provide haptics?). Even the Storm I played around with has more functionality and the feedback screen was impressive (and hopefully whenever they update the OS more stability).
So be happy or the Pre woudn't have even existed otherwise
people always bash the iphone by Conviniently stating things it coudn't do
but you forgot all the stuff it could and will DO
and Why the whole cell phone world is aping it !
So Stop being so stuck up and Acknowledge the iPhone for wat it is and wat it was back in 2007 a Technological breakthrough
Name 1 phone that has made this much difference to the world of mobile phones ? just one ? I rest my case
1) iphone users are tired of dealing with apple's smugness and not providing simple features like cut and paste until their hand is forced by palm
2) palm's card feature. The idea of running apps in the background and at the same time is a HUGE feature and it doesn't sound like the next iphone will have this
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by Kyusaku
March 27, 2009 1:49 PM PDT
- I find the plan portion slightly misleading for the AT&T part. As far as I know you can't get a data only iPhone and in regards to mobile costs, minutes are often the main value(and most expensive which gives the impression that AT&T's plans might be cheaper in comparison. Maybe it's just me finding the description being overly complicated.
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Showing 1 of 4 pages (128 Comments)Kudos on the comparison though. I am a Sprint customer waiting on the Pre myself. I am quite excited for it.