Can the Palm Pre beat the iPhone?

by Volker Weber

Comments

Ooh nice. But but but, the iPhone has been on the market for some time now. The pre has yet to join us. A new iPhone will be with us in the next six months too, surely… Still, it’s about time the iPhone had some stiff competition!

Ben Poole, 2009-03-09


This looks very nice. It is certainly going on my list of things to look at.

Andrew Pollack, 2009-03-10


Of course, that begs the question of Verizon Wireless actually supporting this one.

Andrew Pollack, 2009-03-10

I'm under contract to Sprint with my aging Treo until August. Pre-pre, I was expecting the Treo to be my last Palm phone. Now I'm not sure. The Pre looks really slick. Palm made a clean break from PalmOS and have built something innovative, not just another phone with "touch" hacked in.

Bob Congdon, 2009-03-10


Yeah, all that linuxy goodness has plenty of appeal.

Andrew Pollack, 2009-03-10

Impressive, indeed!
But I dislike the idea to adopt that much of "desktop feelings" to a tiny screen.
The UI looks much like a "shrinked KDE" to me, so I assume that some of the controls could be hard to hit?

Anyway, six month to wait. Six month for Apple to get "pboard for iPhone OS" done. :-)

M.

P.S.: Will Adobe Flash (R/C/TM) be included? :-)

Martin Kautz, 2009-03-10

If the pre is really six months off, they’ve started the hype way too early IMHO.

Ben Poole, 2009-03-10

Volker, if I recall correctly, you've already seen and handled a Pre. Have you also been able to determine how good or bad Mac integration is? Will it "kill" the iPhone in terms of addressbook/calendar sync as well?

I'm asking, because the BlackBerry integration, er, sucks.

Jan-Piet Mens, 2009-03-10

It integrates via ActiveSync and with Google and Facebook. Not with a PC or a Mac.

Volker Weber, 2009-03-10

What really interests me now is the battery life. Does the Pre survive a busy day? The iPhone doesn't.

Hubertus von Alvensleben, 2009-03-10

That does look awesome. I've thus far waited to get an iPhone because of two factors, though I would really love one.

1. Price
2. I use a Blackberry Pearl for work and send lots of email/SMS messages. The iPhone screen doesn't seem as easy to use for sending fast messages, though I hear you get used to it.

I haven't bought anything new that is cheaper than the iPhone because I want to synch with my Mac calendar/contacts. iPhone seems to be the best at this naturally.


Questions:
1. When you say ActiveSynch, that means that it will synch with Mac easily correct? Or am I wrong.

2. What is the expected price.

I bought an O2 XDA IIs a few years ago. I paid about $700 USD for it. After about 2 months, I realized it was oversized brick that's only REAL value was that I could switch between using the stylus or the qwerty flip up keyboard to send SMS messages. I could never decide which one was better. The Wifi, ability to load skype, email functionality, etc. all ended up either not working correctly, or were too slow. The problem is that I spent so much money on that thing that I couldn't not use it until it accidentally got smashed on the sidewalk 4 months ago.

For the last 4 months, I've been using an old Nokia 3120b that was laying around in a drawer from yesteryear. When people see it, I tell them that it's a "retro phone." I haven't purchased anything new partly out of defiance to the cell phone manufacturers, partly out of defiance to the cool kids that do have iPhones, and partly because really all I do is text messages and phone calls. All the other stuff would be nice, but is just fluff.

David Killingsworth, 2009-03-10

It does not sync with a Mac, David. It syncs with every server that supports ActiveSync. The Mac syncs with Google if you like, and the Pre also syncs with Google.

Volker Weber, 2009-03-10

I have set a personal litmus test based around the Pre, as support is a matter of will and effort.

We'll see what happens.

Craig Wiseman, 2009-03-10

Volker, this is really funny: Apple Computer, Google Mail, Palm Mobile.

And one Ring to rule them all: Microsoft (!) Active Sync...

Roland Dressler, 2009-03-10

Why not ActiveSync? No other bugger seems inclined to come up with a worthwhile API for this stuff (and yes, saying that hurt :-) )

Ben Poole, 2009-03-10

@Ben Poole "seems inclined" is exactly the issue, and so, yes it does hurt.

Craig Wiseman, 2009-03-11

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