A Post That Will Get Me Hate Mail From Palm Pre Fanboys…
Most people who know me know that I am a TOTAL gadget queen. Over the past several years I have had at least a half a dozen different smart phones. All of them made by Palm. So it shouldn’t have been any surprise to anyone that when the Palm Pre was announced last year I literally peed my pants with glee.
So began the waiting game…I waited for MONTHS for this phone to be released. I thought it was literally going to be the bees knees…oh how wrong I was.
I’ve been using a Windows Mobile phone for the past two years, and for the 3 years before that I was a Palm OS user. I do like both Operating Systems, but I found Windows Mobile to be a bit more “modern” looking, which is I guess what drew me to the Web OS that is on the Palm Pre.
This was my trusted co-pilot before I got the Palm Pre.
My phone up until yesterday was the Palm Treo 800. It has Windows Mobile 6.1 and I had added a LOT of extra applications to it to make it even more usable. I had the Splash Wallet suite that included Splash Money, Splash Shopper, Splash Photo, and Splash ID. (A great suite of apps for those who want to manage their money, photos, grocery lists, and login information on their phone) I also had Weight By Date Pro installed on there that allowed me to track all of my food intake, as well as my weight loss(or gain) and it also synced witha desktop version of the software. I had also installed PocketTwit. A Twitter application that is a lot like TweetDeck but runs on Windows Mobile. I liked the phone, even though it didn’t get great reviews it did everything I needed it to do, and it was fast, and small, and very functional.
Enter The Palm Pre. This phone was touted as the iPhone Killer. With a totally new Operating System, sleek design, and (supposedly) it was FAST.
I will admit that it’s a BEAUTIFUL phone, and it was sleek, but fast? Not so much.
Hey Buddy, Looks aren't EVERYTHING.
I got the phone on Saturday. Kept it for less than twenty four hours, and promptly returned it as soon as the Sprint Store opened on Sunday.
I posted on Twitter how much I despised it and got quite a few hateful tweets from Pre users who couldn’t understand my disdain for the phone.. well here’s where I will explain.
First of all, they might as well have not put a keyboard on the phone. It is darn near impossible to use. The keys are TINY, and the design of the bottom of the keyboard has a weird raised lip that is uncomfortable to hold onto. The design of the phone felt cheap, rickety and plastic.
I cannot describe to you how much I hated the OS on this phone, yes it was beautiful to look at, but that was where the love affair ended. You navigated the phone by a series of taps on the screen, and it felt a lot to me like what would have taken maybe 2 taps to do on the Treo 800 now took at least double and sometimes triple the amount of time to do on the Pre. Applications seemed to take FOREVER to open once you tapped on them, and there were very few options for customizing the few menus that were available on the Pre. (I am a big time tweaker when it comes to menus and options if I can’t customize it I have no interest in using it.)
Now let me tell you what the Pre did to my Google Calendar, and Google Contacts.
There is no Sync between your computer and the Pre. (This was another killer for me.) The bottom charging/sync port on my Treo 800 had gone out and was no longer functioning. Thankfully I had all of my contacts in Outlook on my computer and was able to do a one time sync with the cable from Outlook to the Pre to transfer them.
This is where the havoc began.
The Pre syncs all of your contacts, phone numbers, and EVERYTHING with your Google Account. Before I got the pre I had maybe 200 contacts in my Gmail account. Now I have about 970. Why? Because it created a contact for every phone number I had stored in my phone. You cannot delete contacts from the Palm Pre. You have to go to a “real” computer, login to your Gmail account and delete them from there.
Now onto Calendar issues. The Palm Pre syncs with your Google Calendar. During the one time sync with Outlook, it took all of my calendar appointments, transferred them to the Pre, and then synced them with my Google Calendar. Somehow in doing this every single appointment got quadrupled. You cannot delete calendar appointments on the Pre itself, you have to login to Google Calendar on a “real” computer and delete them from there.
Other things I HATED about the Pre.
No slot for a Micro SD Card. This was a HUGE drawback for me. It wold have taken up so little space yet they chose to leave it off.
No video capture. Come on! Even the crappiest of flip phones have video now!
Lack of available applications to customize the phone. I understand that it’s a completely new OS, but the “app catalog” for the pre has approximately 25 applications at this time.
Battery life was TERRIBLE. Even on a full charge I got at most 3 hours of use out of it. This might be fine for someone who has a charger nearby at work or at home all the time, but I’m a mommy on the go and don’t want to be tethered to a plug all the time.
SO- What did I exchange the Pre for?
The beautiful, shiny, fast, awesome Palm Treo Pro.
My new, shiny co-pilot.
There isn’t much NOT to like about this phone. If you took the 800 W and took away all the bugs, fixed the battery life issues and made it shiny an black(my favorite color!) you would end up with this. I brought it home, synced with outlook, installed all of my apps from the old phone onto it, and in minutes I was up and running on it.
EDIT: My one gripe with the Treo Pro is that the Internet Explorer is a different version that what was on the Treo 800W. For some reason it shows pages(even when you specify mobile) in desktop size which makes them extremely hard to read due to all of the scrolling from right to left and up and down.
I did find an alternate browser called Iris on the web and download it and it works nicely, includes tabbed browsing(really cool) and will import your bookmarks from Internet Explorer Mobile(really really cool).
I even loaded my blog and was able to play the youtube video in one of my posts directly in the web browser. Something I’ve NEVER been able to do on a Windows Mobile phone.
You can get it HERE.
I have no idea how I will go about cleaning up my Google Contacts, and Calendar to undo the damage done by the Palm Pre. I’ll leave it for another day, or week. GRR. Suffice it to say there will be alcohol and cursing involved.
It is safe to say I am NOT a fan of the Palm Pre. I guess if you were all about looks and no function it would be the phone for you. I however, need a phone to do a LOT of different things and the Pre is pretty much just…well…pretty unimpressive…
Wow – what a great review. I was thinking about getting one of these soon since my 700wx is getting kind of old at this point. I’ve heard good things and bad things, so I’ll have to see what else I hear about it, but I’m glad you pioneered the research a bit.
Very good review but I feel its a little subjective. I came from a centro, so I’m pretty much in love with the keyboard and felt the edges around it gave leverage when typing. No issue with google calandar I can seemlessly sync between outlook/Pre/Gcal without issue, and only had to download a file to sync between google and outlook. Based on how you use your phone you really should have waited. I knew when I bought it, I would essentially be joining a version of a beta test. Lets be real, that’s what is now, and that’s what a lot of phones are at launch. My issue is with the hardware which I won’t mention here, but go to any Pre forum and you can judge for yourself. It’s a good phone, I’m keeping it, but new adopter should really ask themselves some hard questions before purchasing one.
What a great review! I think you nailed every point right square on the head. I wanted so much to love the Pre, but I just couldn’t get past all the issues. Tweeting and linking. Thanks!
-Tif
I can’t begin to tell you how offbase you are. It syncs easily with everything and organizes your contacts neatly and conveniently. I am also an avid Palm user from the old days and my last phone was a Centro that I loved. The last two WebOS updates easily make this the fastest phone on the market, also the battery gets better with more use after breaking it in. The special function comes in multitasking which makes it much more functional than any other phone OS. I am looking AT MY Centro right now and this Pre keyboard is larger and more logical for web use. The video feature is coming as well as more apps. It syncs with iTunes and iCal as well. I don’t believe you gave this phone its proper chance and are obviously not in the market for future (by end of year) superiority in function (which it has now). This is why Apple rushed the bomb iPhone3GS and still can’t keep up with the ability, they sold a ton of 3GS’s but they are overheating bad. The Pre is the phone of the future and as far as hardware, I love it and the fact that it can clock up to 1 GigHz (locked at 500 now) and is future 4G compatible.
Sorry you had such a poor experience with your Pre but I can say that mine was 100% the opposite. My contacts, calendar & email synchronization was awesome including two Outlook exchange accounts, gmail and of course Face Book as well. As for the battery they do say right in the paperwork that the battery will get better after a few charges and mine certainly has. I haven’t had to “top off” the battery during the day since about the 4th or 5th day. As for the keyboard, it’s fine! In the last two years I’ve had a Centro (Tiny keys), Blackberry Curve & a Blackberry Pearl and I will admit that the first couple things I typed on the Pre looked pretty bad for spelling by my third text/email it was easy and I have pretty large hands/thumbs.
Again, sorry that you had this experience with the Pre but I wanted to share my experience which for the past 3 weeks has been nothing but excellent and getting better every day.