[Reeves]

Yeah, I know, Cardfan....you and I have had to eat a lot of our positive words toward the Pre. It sucks.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the iPhone experience is "cheaper". For what I need, I haven't had to buy anything like Classic or Pocket Mirror or whatever. And even if I did, I'd still be paying that much more EVERY MONTH for the iPhone 3GS and navigation, and getting crappier coverage here in Atlanta (Have lots of iPhone - owning friends - there's a reason they prefer to text than call most times).

That being said, having a relatively smooth and well-supported experience is worth paying more for. Yes, iPhone users had to wait a couple of years for cut and paste, MMS, and video. But these are add-ons that the iPhone and iPhone 3G were never advertised as featuring. You knew what you getting, and they delivered what they promised out-of-the-box. What it does...it does WELL.

The Pre, on the other hand, has some significant issues with things it features out-of-the-box. The web browser works great...WHEN IT WORKS. But sometimes, it just sits there loading pages and never finishes, then you have to restart the device to get anywhere. It's a known bug that's been reported by multiple people on this forum. So is pages half-loading, and then you have to turn the page in landscape mode and back in order to see the rest. THAT's a known browsing bug too. So is the overabundance of checkerboarding when scrolling. Both the Hero and the iPhone 3GS have WAY less checkerboarding when web scrolling, and at least the former has far inferior guts than the Pre.

The Pre works HORRIBLY as a phone too. There's a healthy and well-detailed thread on the inadequacy of the phone app here. It's just far too hit-and-miss.

Multitasking is still better in concept than execution. People - myself included - still occasionally get a "Can't Open New Cards" message with two or less cards open. That's inexcusable.

Yes, it's a version 1.0 product. Yes, it's been less than 90 days. But the fact that FOUR updates have come and gone without addressing these essentials is not a good sign.

I used to be a Pre cheerleader of sorts, but as time goes on, facts and reality make that impossible to do. I honestly cannot recommend this phone in its current state to anybody.

[rposa]

Don't get me wrong, I love my Pre, but ...
<blah></blah><blah></blah><blah></blah><blah></blah>

Go back to your cryPhone.

You're the kind of person they shouldn't have sold to.

Look - it's a 1st gen device. People have customized it far beyond what they coulda with the 1st gen cryPhone. Palm is working on the phone. They are working on the stuff. Yeah, maybe the release was a bit hurried, but I knew what I was getting into with this phone...

For <expletive deleted> sake,

[supersizeme]

Im sure I'll get flamed too but what the hell, I love my Pre, it is the best phone I've ever owned and I have downloaded several homebrew apps and have deleted some as well. I'll probably never use this phone to it's full extent that it can be used but that will be my own fault.
I am ready for a few new apps as well but what shows up in the homebrew section is great also, I have never really wanted an iphone nor do I now, this phone is the BEST phone I've ever owned!
Patience is a virtue that some of us have lost in this "fast paced" life style we live in now.

[Success100]

every huge phone, is always exploited by its users. iPhone, Android, BB's, Palm Pre, WM phones. Its just the way it goes. It doesnt mean that these companies are making a bad product.

The majority of people who have these touted "smart phones" dont even know how to use everthing on their phones. WE are power users. We nit pick, and write our own apps for things we would like to have, we just arent satisfied with everything out of the box. But for the "average joe", the Palm Pre is the best thing since sliced bread. I know Palm is listening, but they cant please everyone!

[hparsons]

...
The majority of people who have these touted "smart phones" dont even know how to use everthing on their phones. WE are power users. We nit pick, and write our own apps for things we would like to have, we just arent satisfied with everything out of the box. But for the "average joe", the Palm Pre is the best thing since sliced bread. I know Palm is listening, but they cant please everyone!

I'll take a small issue with the first part of this paragraph. Some of the users on this forum, some of them that are the most vocal in the criticism of the Pre, are not really power users ... of the Pre. Some of them are/were power users of the previous device(s), and insist on trying to use the Pre the same way they used those devices, and then moan that they're "not working right".

Guess what dudes (and in some cases, dudettes), it's not the device that's the problem...

[ecb1171]

The reason Palm created such an open product is not because of some deep seated belief in openness (these are Apple people we are talking about). They needed to get something to market ASAP and the quickest way to do that was using 'pre'-existing open source technology.

What was open source about webOS ? webOS was built from the ground up by Palm; it's not an open source OS (aka the OS equivalent to Open Office)

Palm is taking a great approach to the homebrew movement in that they are encouraging development rather than shutting it down. The homebrew community fills a hole while the App Catalog is ramping up. I'm curious to see what happens to homebrew when the App Catalog is out of beta; I'm hoping Palm will not close up webOS devices.

[Reeves]

I'll take a small issue with the first part of this paragraph. Some of the users on this forum, some of them that are the most vocal in the criticism of the Pre, are not really power users ... of the Pre. Some of them are/were power users of the previous device(s), and insist on trying to use the Pre the same way they used those devices, and then moan that they're "not working right".

Guess what dudes (and in some cases, dudettes), it's not the device that's the problem...

I'm not saying that doesn't apply to SOME critics of the Pre. But what about the other ones, like myself? I'm the problem because I expect the Pre phone app to be on par or better than the one on my Samsung Instinct S30 which had maybe 1/3-1/2 the hardware firepower? Or that I'm the problem because I expect one of the first four updates to fix some significant bugs in the web browser? Or that I'm the problem because some of the apps that shipped with the device still have memory leaks?

It's embarrassing to answer a call in front of people and not be able to pick it up before it goes to voice mail because the screen doesn't respond in time, or it does but lags so that you have to go "Hello? Hello?" and then wait for the call to actually pick up. I'm the problem there?

[bdhu2001]

OK. I just figured out what would be embarrassing. Embarrassing would be releasing a touted phone that nobody bought. Pre isn't in the position and most of their users are happy with the pace of updates and the direction that Palm appears to be going in.

Now my entire family of four owns Pres. I diligently tried to talk my son out of the Pre and tried to get him to stay with his Blackberry. He's always wanted an iPhone , but I wasn't ready to pay iPhone & AT & T prices for him to be on a separate network from the rest of the family. He went with a Blackberry and loved everything about his curve.

He and my daughter both live in SF and everyone is talking about the Pre there. You may ask why I would try to talk my son out of a Pre. He's an iPhone lover and has prejudices against the Palm even before he uses the phone.

He didn't want Palm to have his e-mail address for the Palm Profile; he wants an e-mail app instead of using the e-mail system built into the phone. I just didn't want a Apple lover not using the device fully, but then complaining about the Pre when he won't use the phone as intended.

He has the phone now, so I guess we'll see what happens. I think anyone who actually uses the phone instead of looking for issues, will be pleased.

However, if you go into Pre looking for what your old phone had instead of researching to see if Pre has what you want before you buy it, you're bound to be disappointed.

If you look for reasons to be disappointed or go in knowing something doesn't meet your need, but getting it anyway, you set yourself up for an unfavorable experience.

If I would have gotten the iPhone when it came out, I would have immediately complained about bluetooth and the inability to listen to my music on bluetooth. In addition it didn't have audible, DTG, my e-book readers, MyBible, SplashID and numerous other apps.

Some of them are available now, but it took Apple 1-2 years to allow some of these things. Even now, the experience isn't that great for some of my favorite apps. Thus, I never looked at the iPhone as a purchase for myself. I simply looked at it as a nice phone for other people.

I think people judging the Pre should look at the Pre in the same way. It's probably not for you, but it's a nice phone for other people. Actually it, been a great phone for me, just as I'm sure other phones are for other people.

[cardfan]

Who wants .99 cent apps? I want unique and useful apps. And I certainly don't mind developers making a living from writing said apps....99 cents? Whose living on that? FYI your sling box app is $29.99 for the iphone...and seriously, what are you saying? The Pre sucks that I should get an Iphone?

Its way too early and there are only a few priced apps, for you to say anything remotely like "Say what you want about the iphone and its closed system and more expensive AT&T but after factoring in apps its cheaper than the Pre" shows me how little you know. Seriously that was idiotic. Fine I get it, you don't like what palm has done here. Whats your need to convince us?

I wonder if you've gone as far as to short palms stock? I guess that would at least be a reason to hang around a forum for a device you clearly loathe.

I didn't mean i actually LIKE .99 apps. That was thrown out there only to mean they've dropped in price. That was part of the shock for me coming from the palm world to the iphone in that apps were so much cheaper.

I'm always for the developer to make a living..make no mistake. With millions of users, its not about price, but sales..for that platform.

Slingbox sort of stayed the course at pricing. It also raised a lot of whining with iphone users. But they're more a rare exception as big brand unique apps can demand more.

I don't despise Palm or the Pre. But I am disappointed with them. I've no interest in shorting their stock..Palm is more than capable of that..lol

[cardfan]

Yeah, I know, Cardfan....you and I have had to eat a lot of our positive words toward the Pre. It sucks.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the iPhone experience is "cheaper". For what I need, I haven't had to buy anything like Classic or Pocket Mirror or whatever. And even if I did, I'd still be paying that much more EVERY MONTH for the iPhone 3GS and navigation, and getting crappier coverage here in Atlanta (Have lots of iPhone - owning friends - there's a reason they prefer to text than call most times).

That being said, having a relatively smooth and well-supported experience is worth paying more for. Yes, iPhone users had to wait a couple of years for cut and paste, MMS, and video. But these are add-ons that the iPhone and iPhone 3G were never advertised as featuring. You knew what you getting, and they delivered what they promised out-of-the-box. What it does...it does WELL.

The Pre, on the other hand, has some significant issues with things it features out-of-the-box. The web browser works great...WHEN IT WORKS. But sometimes, it just sits there loading pages and never finishes, then you have to restart the device to get anywhere. It's a known bug that's been reported by multiple people on this forum. So is pages half-loading, and then you have to turn the page in landscape mode and back in order to see the rest. THAT's a known browsing bug too. So is the overabundance of checkerboarding when scrolling. Both the Hero and the iPhone 3GS have WAY less checkerboarding when web scrolling, and at least the former has far inferior guts than the Pre.

The Pre works HORRIBLY as a phone too. There's a healthy and well-detailed thread on the inadequacy of the phone app here. It's just far too hit-and-miss.

Multitasking is still better in concept than execution. People - myself included - still occasionally get a "Can't Open New Cards" message with two or less cards open. That's inexcusable.

Yes, it's a version 1.0 product. Yes, it's been less than 90 days. But the fact that FOUR updates have come and gone without addressing these essentials is not a good sign.

I used to be a Pre cheerleader of sorts, but as time goes on, facts and reality make that impossible to do. I honestly cannot recommend this phone in its current state to anybody.

It's hit and miss whether i'll get voicemail when i call my wife. Her phone doesn't even ring until the second or third ring on my end. Then she has little time to grab the phone, slide the icon up, say "hello" a few times, etc. I usually end up texting her instead.

It's sad that i reach for my iphone to make a call. The reverse used to be true when i had a centro.

[s219]

I'd say these are embarrassing times for the iphone fanboys. How could a company less than 1% the size of Apple come out with a 1.0 device that is worlds better than their 1.0 iphone ever was and will most certainly end up being better than their 3.0 device by the end of its first year of existence.

Thats got to hurt.

So let me get this straight, you're comparing the 2009 Pre to the 2007 iPhone, and you're saying the Pre will be better than iPhone 3.0 a year from now when Apple will probably be on 4.0?

Seriously, that's a major problem with so many blind arguments in favor of the Pre or against the iPhone. You're either comparing the Pre to the old iPhone, or assuming Apple will remain static while the Pre catches up. That's the problem with competing against Apple, they move the ball pretty fast. Palm is already lagging.

Palm needed to make the Pre comparable to iPhone 3.0 out of the gate, and they need to be building towards 4.0 a year from now. That's the way the market is moving in the 2009-2010 timeframe. By saying what you did, I think you're lagging behind the ball as much as Palm is.

[cardfan]

My wife I would say is the perfect customer for Palm. Coming from a Centro, she's in love with the Pre's web browser. The bigger, sharper screen. The MMS. The ability to buy mp3's. The ease of installing an app...she never installed apps on the centro. The games she had on there were because i thought she might like them. Scrabble and bejeweled were her favorites.

She initially didn't want email on her Pre. Never used it on Centro. But after seeing the notifications pop up, she told me to leave it on and loves it now. She favors a physical kb.

She loves pandora.

And finally, the camera is just night and day compared with centro.

IMO, she's typical of the majority of Pre owners.

What i'm trying to say is she doesn't like the Pre because its supposedly a smartphone. She never desired or wanted an iphone. Just something better than what she had. And on Sprint, that was hard to find. It's the sharp screen, web browser, camera, and MMS that the old palms didn't have. She'll never care if its a bit laggy, has few 3rd party apps, needs updates for all the missing details, can sync with outlook, is a good organizer, can download files, etc. No way she'd go back to a Centro.

It'll be interesting to see how Palm does on carriers that do have better phones. Sprint really had nothing else worthwhile.

I can't imagine a lot of people buying a 4gb EOS with slower processor at AT&T when they can shell out the same amount for an iphone. Both will require same expensive plan.

[ADGrant]

WebOS isn't open source enough for this to be true. If that was the case, they would have just used Andriod.

I wish they had. If they wanted an open source phone OS they would have used Android. The fact that they didn't, implies that they did not want an open source phone. Nothing that Palm has added is opensource and as I have already mentioned, these are Apple people.

[ADGrant]

yeah seriously, how would using android do anything but put palm out of buisness? palm would not be a very good handset only company...their strength is their OS

Are you suggesting that Palm hardware is crap? Pam had quite a decent business selling Windows Mobile handsets.

Since Android is really open source (unlike WebOS), Palm could have built their nifty task switcher and not quite so nifty "synergy" on top of Android. The result would have been a phone with pre existing applications and a robust SDK instead of the javascript crap Palm has forced developers to use.

[ADGrant]

The "cards" multitasking metaphor is so simple that it almost looks embarrassing to Apple that they didn't think about it. I believe the real reason lies in the architecture of the underlying OS. Palm used the metaphor because their OS could support multitasking without bugs.

You are displaying an embarrassing ignorance of operating systems design in general and the iPhone's OS in particular. Why comment on things you clearly know nothing about.

FYI The iPhone's OS is a variant of OS X which is the OS used in modern Apple Mac computers. Its always been able to multitask. In fact, its abilty to multi-task is why it replaced the original Mac OS which really couldn't. The reason Apple does not allow 3rd party apps to run in the background it their concern about limited memory and battery resources on the iPhone. The Pre's lousy battery life shows they may have a point.

[gbp]

My wife I would say is the perfect customer for Palm. Coming from a Centro, she's in love with the Pre's web browser. The bigger, sharper screen. The MMS. The ability to buy mp3's. The ease of installing an app...she never installed apps on the centro. The games she had on there were because i thought she might like them. Scrabble and bejeweled were her favorites.

She initially didn't want email on her Pre. Never used it on Centro. But after seeing the notifications pop up, she told me to leave it on and loves it now. She favors a physical kb.

She loves pandora.

And finally, the camera is just night and day compared with centro.

IMO, she's typical of the majority of Pre owners.

What i'm trying to say is she doesn't like the Pre because its supposedly a smartphone. She never desired or wanted an iphone. Just something better than what she had. And on Sprint, that was hard to find. It's the sharp screen, web browser, camera, and MMS that the old palms didn't have. She'll never care if its a bit laggy, has few 3rd party apps, needs updates for all the missing details, can sync with outlook, is a good organizer, can download files, etc. No way she'd go back to a Centro.

It'll be interesting to see how Palm does on carriers that do have better phones. Sprint really had nothing else worthwhile.

I can't imagine a lot of people buying a 4gb EOS with slower processor at AT&T when they can shell out the same amount for an iphone. Both will require same expensive plan.

Cardfan,
Your postings are normally spot on., but in this thread , you have probably over looked into how ridiculous the UI and the cards interface is.

iPhone is way behind in doing simple things like entering new email address while switching back and forth with notes.

The whole concept of using the center button , and using "BacK" button on top on most of the iPhone apps is so clumsy that it takes a constant tapping of the "center button" and "the back" option" to do simple switch between APPS.

I agree with you on the "Lag" and "Hardware ingeneral" , but apart from that the phone is miles ahead of the iPhone in terms of usability.

Besides , you probably contradicted your original opinion about the majority of the Neo Smartphone users being not that techie.

Average iPhone and Pre user doesn't understand the intricacies of tweaking phones.

[ADGrant]

What was open source about webOS ? webOS was built from the ground up by Palm; it's not an open source OS (aka the OS equivalent to Open Office)

Almost everthing is open source about WebOS. It was not built from the ground up by Palm. Linke Android, WebOS is a customized version of Linux. However, Palm added a lot less custom code than Android. Their SDK is based on the opensource Webkit implementation of HTML 5 and an opensource implementation of Javascript. They did write the applications, the task switcher and a bunch of widgets though.

Even the emulator from their SDK is based on a free third party virtual machine. It works well though, the emulator is much faster than the Android emulator. The debugger OTOH is an embarrasing joke. In fact the SDK is on the whole, total crap compared to Android's SDK which given a fast enough PC is pretty slick.

[scaryhumor]

This thread is brought to you, in part by, the same bunch that were screaming "RELEASE THE PRE, RELEASE THE PREE" back in May.

[Reeves]

However, if you go into Pre looking for what your old phone had instead of researching to see if Pre has what you want before you buy it, you're bound to be disappointed.

If you look for reasons to be disappointed or go in knowing something doesn't meet your need, but getting it anyway, you set yourself up for an unfavorable experience.

I think people judging the Pre should look at the Pre in the same way. It's probably not for you, but it's a nice phone for other people. Actually it, been a great phone for me, just as I'm sure other phones are for other people.

I've asked these questions before, but I will rephrase them so that they correspond to your points cited here:

You say the Pre might not be a nice phone for me, but is nice for other people. What "people" is a phone that you can accurately answer maybe 60-75 percent of the time great for? In researching the Pre, where would I have found out that it had a highly inadequate phone app with a choppy call log and laggy button presses? How did I "set myself up" for that "unfavorable" experience?

I went into the Pre experience with all guns ablazin and defended its shortcomings initially on this very forum. Yet, 90 days later, almost none of them have been answered despite there being four updates. How many updates should I wait for?

8?

15?

27?

I'm talking about fundamental, paramount issues like making sure that the PHONE part of the Palm Pre smartPHONE works properly for everybody. It clearly does not, as evidenced by the growing thread bemoaning the phone app here on this forum. You can dismiss that as anecdotal evidence, but that same anecdotal evidence indicated that there was a physical issue causing battery shutoffs that Palm has now acknowledged and responded to with a piece of foam on new Pre phones.

[mrloserpunk]

Are you suggesting that Palm hardware is crap? Pam had quite a decent business selling Windows Mobile handsets.

Since Android is really open source (unlike WebOS), Palm could have built their nifty task switcher and not quite so nifty "synergy" on top of Android. The result would have been a phone with pre existing applications and a robust SDK instead of the javascript crap Palm has forced developers to use.

I don't know if I'd say they were doing a decent buisness with their winmo phones...seemed like they were going outta buisness holding on to a super old os and making handsets...even Rubinstein has said that they are not locked into making their own equipment. A clear sign they are interested in Webos. I doubt we will ever see an Android Palm device. And I'm okay with that, I like diversity.

So ADGrant, your convinced that sdk is all palm's gonna do for webos and the pre? You don't think it can be tweaked and new features added? Or is it just that you feel it should have been there from day one? I can understand your desire to have it there, But Palm was in no position to bake this thing any longer.

SO at least they got it out and it seems like they are dedicated to tweaking it and improving as they go...No embarrassment, in fact the people whose opinion matter seem to think the PRE has done something right....