iPhone 3GS from AT&T. Free ShippingThe 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.)
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If you have been following at all, you may walk away from my posts with the idea that I hate everything about the Pre. Just in case, I wanted to use my last post of the month to summarize my feelings about the Pre.
In a nutshell, I love it. The webOS is fantastic. Initially, I did not take as big advantage of it as I could have, but now I have settled into a routine now where I have my calendar (fully integrated with Google), my task list, my memo board, my e-mail and my text/chat conversations all running in the background all the time. I still get great battery life and I save on waiting for them to boot up as I move between the various cards constantly.
The physical phone itself is gorgeous. The screen has amazing clarity to it and the phone is sleek and trim. Maybe not as much as the iPhone, but I have found that I enjoy holding it a lot more than the iPhones. The Pre's slight contour gives it a better feel to me.
As a software engineer, I have picked on a lot of little aspects about the phone that I have felt could have been implemented better. However, I am hopeful that the App Catalog will eventually fix most of my little qualms with the phone and looking at some of the homebrewed applications that are floating around, it is not just blind hope. Even if it does not, I am still left with a phone that I adore and it vastly superior to my previous Palm phone.
I had originally planned to make yesterday's post my last. It was, after all, my 30th post. But, somehow I didn't get around to saying all I meant to.
First, I want to say how much I've enjoyed reading all the other posts by my fellow bloggers. Some of you are so much more technically advanced than I am and I feel like I've learned from the things you've shared. I honestly enjoyed participating in this assignment and would do it again, any day, even without receiving a free product!
Speaking of "free product," I'd like to thank Sprint and Palm for the Palm Pre and this amazing opportunity to blog about it here at CNET. I'm a huge fan of CNET and I visit the reviews before I purchase any technology devices. While I've never been a huge fan of Sprint (their service in our area isn't exactly great) I haven't hated them either. Since working with them on my Palm Pre account, I've had some great experiences with their customer service and I'm happy.
While I hadn't experienced Palm before, I had been considering the switch before being chosen for this experience. I needed a solution to my Instinct and when I described what I needed many of my friends recommended Palm. I couldn't be more pleased. I'm excited to have the Pre in my business networking tool belt!
I want to thank those of you who've visited and read our posts. I hope we've shed some light on issues, showed you how amazing the Pre is and helped you make up your mind on whether the Palm Pre is the right smartphone for you.
(Credit:
SoftSailer.com)
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 LightThe 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.
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As the songs goes "IT'S SO HARD TO SAY GOOD BYE!" This is the finale of a beautiful experience. I've never won anything before and it was truly a great surprise to me when I won the Palm Pre as well as the opportunity to blog about it. I've never blogged before so this was a eye opening experience. I've been reading some of the other bloggers experiences with the Palm Pre and I must say I've learned a lot. I also learned a lot with my own experience on the Pre.
A few weeks ago a critic said that all this blogging about the Pre is "transparent", in other words, if someone gave us the Palm Pre we would only write good things about it. Well I'm here to tell you that is not true. In all of these blogs there have been negative and positive things said about the Pre. I don't think anyone held back because someone gave us a phone. I know for myself I have expressed all the negative things about the Pre, for example: 1) I don't like the key pad 2) there is no video recorder 3) there is no voice command dialing for your wired headset 4) no automatic answer with the wired headset like the Palm Pro 5) also no voice recording 6) and last, the size, I would like the Pre to be a bit longer, about the same size of the Palm Pro, I feel more comfortable with that size phone. Now these negatives are all the things I look for in a phone and the Palm Pre does not have them but I do feel they will be added in the future, so I can wait. However, having had the Palm Pre for a few weeks now, the positives really out weigh the negatives as far as importance. Here are all the positives about the Palm Pre: 1) I love the internet, how the Pre will open up videos on the web and play them right on the spot without having to save the file and then open it up later. 2) I love how you can open up multiple apps and have them all running at the same time 3) Even though I don't like the key pad I'm really glad it has one because I'd prefer a literal key pad rather than a virtual one, I make to many mistakes with the virtual key pad. 4) I love the 3.2 mega pixel camera and flash, takes awesome pictures 5) I like the Apps store, sure there aren't enough but I'm sure with time and lots of patience the Apps will come rolling in. 6) I like the fact that you can put your old Palm OS with the use of Classic Apps on the Pre. If you have any old games or programs you can install them there and they'll run fine. 7) I really like the fact that the Pre has a very loud speaker. Easy to listen to music as well as hear a person clearly on a phone call. So you see the positives do out weigh the negatives. This is the phone I've been waiting for and as soon as I can put it into my name I will be selling my Blackberry Curve and my Palm Pro on E-bay.
Now for the hard part, to say "GOOD BYE!" I've had a great time blogging about the Palm Pre and I just want to say thanks to the powers that be, CBS Interactive, Sprint and CNET, for opening up this forum to "TEST DRIVE THE PALM PRE" and for picking me as a blogger. The irony of life is "WITH TIME EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE, NOTHING STAYS THE SAME" so like a chameleon I'm changing and moving on with the rest of my life, hand in hand, side by side with the Palm Pre. It's been a blast blogging with the other bloggers and hopefully in the future we'll cross paths again. Life is good, so take care and until we meet again, PEACE. ;o)
Here we are at day thirty. Wondering where the time has gone and where we'll go from here. One thing I know, wherever it is life finds me, the Palm Pre will be with me!
While many things impressed me, and I had very few disappointments, I'm just going to touch on a few of the major things I liked and disliked.
Like:
Design. I can't say enough about the slick, modern look and feel of the Palm Pre. It really is in a class all of it's own.
Palm Synergy. Linking my contacts from several different places, combining multiples, and even pulling pictures from my contact's profiles is amazing.
Activity Cards. This is one of those genius ideas that should have been implemented long ago. Being able to switch between apps without losing your place saves a lot of time and frustration.
Quick Upload of photos to Facebook.
Great apps for business minded users.
Dislike:
Can't turn off the camera's shutter sound.
Can't specify ringers for voice mail and text messages.
No video camera.
No external media card.
(Credit:
Sprint)
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.
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The Pre has a good foundation with some important features, but is coming up short in terms of applications and some of the finishing touches of it's existing features (like viewing a missed call!!! Missed Calls - a MISS). I am optimistic that with the power and presence (and promise!) of additional carriers, some of these 'features' will be fixed and there will be an incentive for developers to develop good (or even common) apps for the Pre. ... Read more
(Credit:
Sprint)
My post earlier today about the crazy Palm Pre lady commercial led me to read a bit more deeply about Sprint and Palm ads, and during this search, I decided to try to visit Sprint's Now Network "vanity" site (live since May, I think) on my Pre.
If you haven't yet seen the "Now" site, it's definitely worth a look and a listen. However, don't expect to experience it "live" on your Pre. The closest Pre users can come to viewing it on their phones is looking at this screen shot. I thought it was kind of funny that the "Now" phone on the "Now" network couldn't access the "Now" experience on their vanity site, so I had to share that.
Now, since users can't have the full experience of the site via the Pre, let me explain what that experience is like...
When you navigate to the site, a woman's voice (which, somewhat ironically, sounds as if it is from the future) welcomes you to now and announces the current time. What you see is a rapidly changing, flipping, fluttering version of the screen shot above with what sounds to me like a plane flying in the background.
The page is essentially a live mosaic of constantly updating stats about random things: how many people are getting a spray tan right now, how much milk vs. soda is being consumed, how many planes are in the air, the number of texts being sent on Sprint phones, how many workers are out sick right now, etc. Periodically, the futuristic female voice reports a "Now" stat and makes other announcements like, for example, "All content is rated 'N' for..." What else? "Now!"
It is actually pretty cool, so check it out on a desk/laptop sometime.
Note: I would like to acknowledge that it's not Sprint's fault that the Pre won't play with their "Now" site. The Pre just isn't there yet (I'm not a programmer, but I'm guessing it's a Flash thing).
