Official Palm Pre User Review Thread

[CozBoogie]

Nice write-up dbs!

late,
Coz

[tx_dbs_tx]

Originally Posted by CozBoogie

Nice write-up dbs!

late,
Coz

Thanks Coz, I thought there might be folks who where curious about a BB Tour/Palm Pre comparison and that was my quick run-down with my honest opinions between the two. I hope some find it useful since I really enjoy helping people as much as I can.

[tx_dbs_tx]

I just wanted to inform everyone that there are some bad batches of Palm Pre's still being sold at Best Buy and Sprint stores. I witnessed several "screen twist" Pre's and also 2 Pre's with "dead" pixels straight out of the box brand new. This was yesterday evening in a Houston based BB store. My advice to those who are on the picky side like myself is to have the sales rep hand you the Pre so you can visually inspect it BEFORE they begin to activate it. The "twist" syndrom is not anything to get alarmed over as it's a minor quality issue that does not affect the phone's function other than occasionally causing the slide to bind and drag in which case I would definetely exchange it or not purchase one that does that. The dead pixel(s) is something you will really need to look very closely for. A dead pixel in the screen looks like a white dot that never goes away and can be confirmed by simply navigating through the phones features while paying attention to the dead pixel never changing colors and remaining a constant white. It's not the end of the world if you happen to have gotten a phone in this condition, just return it to the place where you bought it even after the 30 day return period because the Pre has a 1 year manufacturer warranty reguardless. No need to file an insurance in these cases. Well that's my tip of the day for everybody...

[sec1rxg]

I bought this phone for my wife as a B-day gift and had to return it on the the spot, Palm Pre doest not respond to anytnig else but finger touch; my wife has long finger nails so keeping this phone beyond the activation screen was not possible much less give a review. Back to WM phones, gonna try the Tocuh pro 2 which I hear will be available Sept. 3rd

[sanmanc]

Originally Posted by sec1rxg@yahoo.com

I bought this phone for my wife as a B-day gift and had to return it on the the spot, Palm Pre doest not respond to anytnig else but finger touch; my wife has long finger nails so keeping this phone beyond the activation screen was not possible much less give a review. Back to WM phones, gonna try the Tocuh pro 2 which I hear will be available Sept. 3rd

Yep it is a capacitive screen rather than a resistive screen. Capacitive uses the electrical conductivity passed through the finger as opposed to the resistance used to operate resistive screens. Several devices either use this capacitive technology or will be using it in the future so I would recommend researching the devices before purchasing. Current devices that I know use it are the iPhone, iTouch, Zune HD, Palm Pre, and the soon to be release Palm Eos and HTC Hero.

[tx_dbs_tx]

Windows Mobile will need a major facelift in order to be able to use capacitive touchscreen technology. Simply because of the tiny buttons etc in windows mobile that need the "pinpoint" accuracy that resistive screens have. Capacitive screens are less accurate but work waaaaay better than resistive screens. I prefer capacitive on anything except win mobile then that's where resistive and a stylus is mandatory. So keeping in tune with this thread topic I'd like to say that the Palm Pre's capacitive touchscreen is very nice and much better than any resistive touchscreen that I've ever used and far better than the Touch Pro with the lag associated with it's screen. The Pre's touch screen lag is very minimal and mostly non existent only happening on rare occasions and is to be expected depending on circumstances.

I can't believe I'm gonna say this but I'm done... Selling the Pre

I have a love-hate relationship with winmo but I'm gonna jump back to it. I realize the Pre is a first gen device but to have it function like a winmo device is too far away... Here is my personal list

1. We have a cpu nearly identical to the iphone 3gs but no hardware acceleration in 2d rendering, or any for that case, its all done by software thust choppy animations and taking a toll on battery and heat. (why have such a strong cpu then?) and since the SDK (crappy btw) and OS itself is web based thust it only uses javascript or similar languages, you really can't do OpenGL to make it communicate with the GPU so its touch to see this soon. It not only affects games which doesn't bother me, but rather the overall performance of the device

2. Back to the sdk, its so neutered that atm its only limited to no better than web widgets with no hardware support and who knows when Palm will release another one? A year? Too far off...

3. No native web downloading / uploading, and a file manager to support it. (you have a mass storage device but no way to universally access your files? I'm so used to downloading music albums via RAR, ZIP, and also decompress them on the device as well as movies, pics etc.) That this alone could be a dealbreaker

4. Neutered copy / paste (why make such a big deal against the iphone to have it this poorly executed)

now I realize that some of this is software but to have this fixed will look like a WebOS 2.0 and I see this too far off for me to stick around cuz I need a lot of these features now not then... I'm prolly gonna wait till september to see how the app catalog rolls out and the rumored WebOS update, so unless it fixes a lot of missing key features I'm getting rid of it to get me a touch pro 2 cuz its the first time I regret selling my laptop back when had my mogul (touch pro after that) which filled all my mobile computing needs despite occasional winmo gripes and issues and now with the Pre I feel like I have a fancy phone rather than a PDA or pocketPC.... Time will tell

[tx_dbs_tx]

I understand your dissapointments concerning the lack of basic pda functions on the Palm Pre. All I can say is try to keep some faith and be patient. These features will come soon enough and the existing features will also get better with updates. I would hate to see you sell your Pre to go back to WM, that seems pretty desperate to me because I used my Touch Pro the other day and quickly realized how much more responsive and user friendly the Palm Pre is. The new Touch Pro 2 is nothing new, same old lag luster WM 6.1. The only benefit would be the bigger screen and tilting keyboard. It hasn't changed much and definetely not enough to warrant me to drop my Pre or shell out that kind of money to have a redesigned Touch Pro with the exact same OS and features from the first Touch Pro. I'll pass on WM and wait for the Palm Pre to evolve. Which will happen sooner than people might think. If you change your mind about selling your Pre I won't give you a bashing LOL. I'd keep the Pre and save your money, that's my advice.

[Matts4313]

Just made the switch from Touch Pro to Palm Pre. This phone is better in every way that I use it. Browsing the web, listening to music, GPS, searching for movie times, ect. I used the Pro for business occasionally, but i am more than willing to give up some of the more business features for things I use daily

[jbearamus]

Originally Posted by mike20pr

I can't believe I'm gonna say this but I'm done... Selling the Pre

I have a love-hate relationship with winmo but I'm gonna jump back to it. I realize the Pre is a first gen device but to have it function like a winmo device is too far away... Here is my personal list

1. We have a cpu nearly identical to the iphone 3gs but no hardware acceleration in 2d rendering, or any for that case, its all done by software thust choppy animations and taking a toll on battery and heat. (why have such a strong cpu then?) and since the SDK (crappy btw) and OS itself is web based thust it only uses javascript or similar languages, you really can't do OpenGL to make it communicate with the GPU so its touch to see this soon. It not only affects games which doesn't bother me, but rather the overall performance of the device

2. Back to the sdk, its so neutered that atm its only limited to no better than web widgets with no hardware support and who knows when Palm will release another one? A year? Too far off...

3. No native web downloading / uploading, and a file manager to support it. (you have a mass storage device but no way to universally access your files? I'm so used to downloading music albums via RAR, ZIP, and also decompress them on the device as well as movies, pics etc.) That this alone could be a dealbreaker

4. Neutered copy / paste (why make such a big deal against the iphone to have it this poorly executed)

now I realize that some of this is software but to have this fixed will look like a WebOS 2.0 and I see this too far off for me to stick around cuz I need a lot of these features now not then... I'm prolly gonna wait till september to see how the app catalog rolls out and the rumored WebOS update, so unless it fixes a lot of missing key features I'm getting rid of it to get me a touch pro 2 cuz its the first time I regret selling my laptop back when had my mogul (touch pro after that) which filled all my mobile computing needs despite occasional winmo gripes and issues and now with the Pre I feel like I have a fancy phone rather than a PDA or pocketPC.... Time will tell

many valid points and for a lot of the same reasons i'm jumping to the Hero next month. I may give WebOS another chance later but right now i'm liking the hero. as for the #s 3 & 4, those are supposed to be addressed in WebOS 1.2 which will be out sooner rather than later however with it being pushed back once already who knows when it'll drop