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Two and a half years ago, I switched from a long line of Treos (180, 270, 600, 650, over 5 years) to a Blackberry Pearl. When I first got it, I loved it. I did for about a year and a half, and then things started to go downhill. An operating system memory leak would cause it to slow down to almost unusable speed. T-Mobile’s coverage in my area seemingly got worse, somehow (all my Treos were also on T-Mobile). An OS update temporarily fixed the memory problem and made it usable again for a while, but then it came back. It would sit there for several minutes at a time with just a spinning hourglass, accepting no user input.
Finally, on Saturday, I made the switch back to Palm, though it’s a brand new operating system. I got to the Sprint store at 6am, and was second in line. The store opened at 8, and by 8:30 I was all set up with my number ported to Sprint. I now own a Palm Pre. At the moment, I’m thrilled with it. Let’s see if I still feel that way in a year and a half…
There are only a few applications available for it at the moment, and I’m still waiting on the SDK, but it can do most of what I want. The web browser is phenomenal. Far better than Safari on my iPod touch. The Touchstone inductive charger is neat. The battery life is crap, but that was to be expected. At least I can carry around a second battery with me if I need to, because it’s user replaceable.
With Classic, I am able to finally use Frames on my phone again, and don’t need to keep an extra Palm (Z22, which I will probably sell) at the bowling alley. My iPod touch (or an iPhone) is capable of doing this, but Apple won’t allow the software to be released. Just another reason I was convinced not to get an iPhone.
It’s better than the iPod touch as a photo viewer, because it gives me more control over the size and display of the images. If only it had more storage space, I might be able to replace my iPod touch as well. I might anyway, thanks to Pandora. I might just listen to that most of the time now, anyway. I’ll probably go through my music library and put a bunch of stuff on the Pre, though.
The Sporting News Pro Baseball app added all the Mets games to my Pre calendar. Supposedly, it will give me in game notifications during the games. I’ll find out tomorrow how well that works. The application does make it easy to check scores and see current game situations without notifications, as well.
The device also comes with Sprint Navigation, which gives me full turn by turn voice navigation. I’ve already used it once (though I knew where I was going) to try it, and it works very well.
Oh yeah, it works pretty well as a phone, too. Overall, very happy with my decision to switch back to Palm, even after today’s announcements from Apple about new iPhone features.
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Glad you’re happy with the Pre, so far… I ordered my 32GB 3GS today. But there will definitely be little apps here and there that I miss from the PalmOS platform. I am still on my Centro, have been since launch!
I’m glad Palm came out with the Pre. I had a chance to play with a co-worker’s Pre, and it seems like a solid competitor to the iPhone (unlike the G1 and Blackberry Storm). Hopefully the Pre and Sprint will gain enough of a foothold to force both Apple and AT&T to lower prices and innovate. I’ve got a year left on my AT&T contract, so I’ll be sticking with the iPhone for now.