[tx_dbs_tx]

I have had my Palm Pre for 6 weeks or so. First things first, no device will ever be perfect in everyone's eyes. The Palm Pre isn't perfect but I will say that it's cons are minimal and most of them will most likely be addressed in future updates. The Palm Pre, on the other hand, has some SERIOUS pros! Well above the competion and it will continue to get better in the months to come. I think the first review was great and covers the Palm Pre for the most part so I won't repeat the numerous facts about it.
I will however give my comparison of the Palm Pre vs the new BlackBerry Tour 9630 from Sprint. Being that both phones are the newest and probably concidered the best Sprint currently has to offer right now. So I went ahead and bought a new BB Tour because the hype and intrigue was killing me. I am a BlackBerry user since the 8700 series so I"m very familiar with BlackBerry devices. I have been using the BB Tour for a week now and honestly I love the ease of use with BlackBerries, but I have to say I really miss my Palm Pre. Seriously. The battery life on the BB Tour is actually quite good and seems better than the Pre. The Tour's web browser is total junk and useless with very slow web page loading and the browser freezes very frequently. BlackBerry browser is not known to be that great and I already knew this but I was hoping for a speedier browsing experience over the BB Curve... NOT!!! So this is where the Palm Pre puts a SERIOUS spanking on the BB Tour! The other thing I want to mention about the BB Tour is the MMS is working great like it's supposed to. You can send pics, ringtones, video clips with no problem. The Pre can only send pics at this time which for me is a minor con. The video playback on the BB Tour has been greatly improved and can play your mp4 encoded videos almost perfectly with very minimal frame skipping. The Palm Pre still out-performs in the video playback department by a long shot. Which brings me to Youtube videos. The BB Tour does not have a youtube application so you have to visit the mobile website. The youtube video playback on the Tour is an embarrasement to say the least. Yes it plays fullscreen, but the video quality is terrible and no enjoyment whatsoever. The Palm Pre plays HQ youtube videos beautifully and perfectly with no lag on my Pre. Again the Palm Pre puts a major spanking on the BB Tour in the Youtube department!
I want to love the BB Tour but I just can,t. It's basically the same BB Os with some improvements but nothing that puts it in the record books. I kove emailing and text messaging on a BlackBerry because of ease of use and that's the ONLY reason I would have one. BUT... The Palm Pre is VERY intuitive in that department and is actually just as good if not better than BlackBerry when it comes to sending, receiving and forwarding emails and texts. I can definetely say that the Palm Pre's handling of email is excellent and very easy to setup and use.Infact I think it's better than BlackBerry with real html pages that actually works unlike BlackBerries. Pre wins here in my opinion. The screens on both phones really isn't much of a comparison... The Pre dominates in every way. The keyboard comparison is basically a draw for me. I really like the designated @ symbol on the Pre where The Tour requires the alt key. That's a great feature of the Pre and it saves time. Otherwise it's all user preference here and neither phone is bad at all in the keyboard department. To sum up my comparison of the Palm Pre vs the new Sprint BlackBerry Tour... I'm more than ready to switch back to my Palm Pre! I don't travel so I don't need the world phone features of the BB Tour, so other than that there's no good reason why anyone should pick the BB Tour over the. Palm Pre. Oh one more thing about the BB Tour is the trackball/cursor is laggy at times and freezes in the web browser from what seems a lack of memory while rendering web pages and also while data is sending/receiving. That's a warning for those who are wanting a BB Tour. Palm Pre is my phone of choice in every category hands down winner! Sorry for the lack of paragraphs and formatting guys.