[diomark]

So I've had a chance to play with the Palm Pre for ~4-5 hours now, and I'm not sure.. I might actually return it.

Here's a short comparison. For reference, my TP had SPB Mobile Shell 3, wm65, kinoma play, & opera 9.7 beta.

The screen. Sorry to say it, but the touch pro has a crisper screen. When zoomed at the same approximate level, the browser was much more legible on the touch pro then on the pre. Issue is, pre is choosing an automatic level when you double tab on the browser, and I think it's just slightly too small considering the screen resolution. (You can change it manually by pinching to zoom)

The browser is great. I would put it at the same level if not better then opera 9.7 - unless you're heavily multi-tasking.

Keyboard - It's usable, but I'm much faster on the touch pro's landscape keyboard. I would put the palm pre's keyboard on the same level as using touchpal pro soft-sip on the tp.

contacts. Palm Pre pulled my contacts from google, exchange, and facebook. This mean that the actual contacts tab is basically unusable. The good news is that with the keyboard, I can just type someone's name or initials and it'll pull them up. (slight lag here, but not too bad) - I liked spb mobile shell 3.0's contacts, but I guess technically the palm pre WITH the eyboard is better. (it's nearly impossible to browse contacts without pulling up the keyboard though)

Emails - opening an email had a slight lag to them. tp wins here. I'm syncing two accounts. My exchange server, and my google mail. I've actually set the gmail to sync manually, but it's still syncing automatically.. bug I think. (my exchange is a filtered forward of my gmail so they're redundant..)

Notificaitons - the notifications on the palm pre are awesome. You basically get little icons on the bottom, and you can tap them to see what it wants. (wm65's default notifications suck! although sms/email/missed call notifications with spb mobile shell 3.0 are fairly decent)

One of my typical scenarios is listening to podcasts. There is no podcast player on the Palm Pre yet, but I found a way around this (basicaly using google reader as an RSS reader, then streaming the podcast mp3..)

Plays fine, but my bluetooth headset cuts out more often when the pre is in my front pocket. It was playing perfect when in my back pocket though. (With my touch pro, it would play basically fine in both places - cutting out some in the front pocket, but not nearly as much as the pre did)

Multitasking while streaming an mp3 wasn't that good. The browser (which otherwise is awesome - think of opera 9.7 when it's actually working) was laggy and not a fun experience to use while streaming mp3's and listening to it on a bluetooth headset. I would say tp by far wins at this task.

charging. I've always complained about the time it takes the tp to charge.. I haven't seen the palm pre hit 100% yet (in fact, haven't gone above 50%..) - it's just been too busy (me using it, it syncing contacts/etc) since I've gotten it.. Charging while using felt slow though.. (but then again, I don't think it'd drain whlie plugged in.. in fact, at one point I hit 5% left on power.. plugged in while streaming, it kept going..) - so I guess palm pre wins here.

Wifi - the wifi on the tp has always felt like an afterthought. EVDO was always faster for me then wifi. On the palm pre, wifi in my house is definately faster, and the way that it manages wifi is much better then TP. basically, I have it automatically connect to my home network.. but if it's not there (ie. while I was at the gym today), it just switches to evdo.. I didn't have to do anything. Palm pre wins here.

Apps. They're not there yet.. TP definatley has mroe going for it in terms of apps for now..

So that's my initial reaction after an afternoon of having this device. I'm still on the fence as to if I'll keep this device or not..

Got any questions comparing the TP to Palm Pre? ask away...

-mark