Thinking About Making Move to Pre instead of TP2 Help me Decide

[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

[davenukem]

Hey guys davenukem here, drunk as drunk comes. Got the palm pre a while ago and even in this state it's amazing. Web OS is new and interesting and most importantly fast, snappy, and SEXY. The browser is great and as soon as flash 10 hits this October it will be almost equal to my desktop. If you are debating making the move to the Pre i will give this advice, the keyboard is weaker than the TP and the apps are lacking but as soon as the SDK becomes public.................. The Touch Pro will not have an app that the Pre does not (pertinent ones that is).

Surprsied i spelled pertinent right... did i? lol Listen the Pre is a phone you can actually SHOW OFF to your friends. The TP people pick it up and are like hth do you use this thing? The Pre is a very pick up friendly device it's am Iphone but BETTER!!!!! And it's not made by apple. Sorry about this drunken rant but i love the phone and i'm typing it on my pre (the review) i got used to the kb and it's about as efficient as the TP... Love the phone get it guys.

[robj19]

I am not feeling the Pre at all. The only thing I wish I had on my touch pro is the multi touch feature. Other that that I can get past the inability to use skyfire and the keyboard absolutley sucks mud. Me and a friend decided we would race to type a sentence on each of our phones. He has the pre and of course i have the Touch Pro. Needless to say not only did i smoke him texting he had errors on every other word. Wouldnt trade my phone for that one if you paid me.

[diomark]

after spending a full day with the Pre, I'm tempted to go back..

Frustration point today - couldn't figure out how to play any of my divx's videos (not even by using orb..)

I was able to multitask nicely using ONE HAND though during lunch today.. listening to a podcast while messaging with a friend, using facebook, and checking out news articles..

I could never use the touch pro one-handed like that.. so definate plus there. One negative though.. THe pre has cut/paste, but not in all fields. i.e. I was trying to cut something from facebook (pre doesn't have a facebook client.. I was using the web interface) and paste it into a message.. it wouldn't let me

-mark

[tx_dbs_tx]

The Palm Pre is a multimedia powerhouse...convert your videos to mp4 format and it will play them fine. Another thing to take note of is the Pre can play videos at 30fps @1024kbps flawlessly with absolutely NO lag and Not a single skipped frame. No other phone can match the Palm Pre's video player. It rocks!!! Go ahead and give it a try...rip your favorite DVD into mp4 format at the highest quality your software can produce and the Palm Pre will play it beautifully!!! Don't forget to make your videos 480X320 resolution or higher and the Pre will auto size it. Youtube on the Pre is also the best I have seen with no lag and great video quality like on your pc.

[tx_dbs_tx]

After using the Palm Pre for a few weeks I can honestly say the Palm Pre is in the same boat as the BlackBerry Curve/Bold/Tour, etc... being that..."it just works". That's the category that BlackBerry falls into and the Palm Pre is no exception. It's extremely dependable, fast, never freezes, never have to soft reset, and the os is very intuitive and a delight to use. No more rom flashing, tweaking, and trying to find ways to speed up the os and ui like in WM. Again... "it just works".

[a1aone]

The palm pre has everything that you would be looking for in a phone.

[jmelan]

don't return the pre yet, it really took a few days for me to get used to it as well, now i could never go back to my touch pro

just having a responsive dialer was a big enough relief for me to keep the pre,

the entire os is being developed by palm to specifically integrate with the device - as time goes on the difference is usefulness will only get bigger

[tx_dbs_tx]

Amen! I agree that the Touch Pro's lagginess and qwirkiness along with it's insane battery draw is more than enough reason for me to not wanna go back to the Touch Pro. You can type as fast as you can on the Palm Pre and it never has a single lag or hiccup.

[info[]box1]

The only reason I would go back to the touch pro is to get the high of flashing the newest ROMs. Helping others tweak and modd their device. But I can break out the touch pro once in a while and do that.

I will admit that tp2 screen is pretty, but its still wm 6.1. I won't send microsoft the message that it okay to drag their feet. They lost alot of fans to the pre, 3Gs, andriod devices within the last 60 days.