Vote of confidence for the Pre
by Volker Weber
I briefly switched to an iPhone today since I needed to try out a few things. It's a wonderful device and I have no complaints about it, besides the Apple & carrier chain. And still, I was happy to be back on the Pre. I just love the most elegant way to run several apps at the same time.
Comments
Nunja, ich hatte heute bei O2 den Dummy in der Hand und seit gestern ab und an mal die webOS Emulation per SDK gestartet... beides macht einen guten Eindruck - leider bekommt "mein" O2-Händler das Gerät erst in zwei Wochen... aber ich spiele schon seit der Ankündigung mit dem Gedanken, mir das Gerät zu kaufen... ich bin also gespannt, was deine weiteren Erfahrungen bringen :-)
It is very tempting. I am going to try to hold out until July next year, then see what the next gen iPhone has to offer.
Paul, I am in awe.
I would never been able to control myself this way.
(Or do you have a wife that put the foot down already and you just sell this as being great at self constraints? ;-))
Soon, Mariano, soon. :-)
And Paul, we need Mariano to have a Pre so he ports NewsRob to the platform. ;-)
I was at the O2/Pre Launch Event in Stuttgart yesterday and played around a bit. All in all this didn't make me want the Pre more or less than before.
- The UI is polished and rather good for a version one
- The device feels good - looks like I could really use it one-handed
- The Pre is a bit slow - too often there was a 1-3 second pause - I immediately felt I needed a faster device
- Synergy looks like a good concept but you would need to uses it to decide about feasability - looks like the number of supported services is rather small
- Need to see what's in the app store
- The sales pitch was - as often - a bit cheesy, positioning me-too's as great new features. I had the feeling that the Pre can work, given there is a good seller - unfortunately I've recently met the other type at an O2 store
In the event O2 shot themselves by having ~30 devices access the internet through UMTS instead of preconfiguring them to WLAN.
So I will take a look at the upcoming Android devices first - hoping some become available this year.
@vowe, I was actually considering that, because from the screenshots alone Web OS looks very slick and is not as restricted as the iPhone. But I can't give another year of my life ;-)
My girlfriend would very likely object also ;-)
I heard some bad things about the event in Hamburg. Also saw some videos that made me cringe.
The app store is pretty much empty right now. That will change, but maybe not as fast as Palm hopes. Once you have a dominant platform or two, it's hard to attract developers. iPhone is the dominant one, and Android is certainly getting a lot of attention.
Do check out the Android devices. The HTC Hero looks very nice. Only played with it for a few minutes, but once you know one Android it is very easy to size up any other.
@Mariano you can increase the WAF by getting two... ;-)
Two wives, not two devices, right?
Man, are you crazy? I can hardly keep up with the one I have.
;-)
Goodness, no! Two wives means three devices! Can you afford all that equipment? ;-)
The pre has to mature in terms of software (universal search now only search contact and app names, no calendar, no bookmarks, no emails and why can i sync facebook contacts but not messages), but the main drawbacks now are:
- speed, espacially if you have a handful of apps running
- battery life - it is as bad as the iphone. And apps running in the background seem to drain the battery all the time - even while "idle". That works much better on symbian s60/nokia.
Otherwise it is a very elegant system and also good to handle using only one hand. Especially syncing to several adress books at once without getting double contacts is very cool. Also i get not only my personal calendar synced, but also public calendars i subscribed to via google (e.g. Werder Bremen soccer dates, local weather forecast etc.)
Also ich hab meins seit gestern und bin sehr zufrieden.
Wie lange die Batterie hält werden wir sehen.
Ansonsten gutes Handling und die Geschwindigkeit ist für mich auch in Ordnung.
Das einzige was man als iPhone/iPod Touch Benutzer zu bemängeln hat, sind die fehlenden Apps. Aber ich bin guter Dinge, dass sich das ändert.
Meine Empfehlung: Kaufen!
i'm a little bit disappointed... the hardware look and feel is cheap, the slider doesn't really fit, i can move it from left to right. the display is nice and shiny but much smaller than i thought. but the most bad thing is the battery!! my pre loses up to 15%/hour, so i have to charge it twice a day plus at night...! that's NOT acceptable!!
the best thing of the Pre is webOS! poor there are very less apps in the app catalog right now... i will stay with my iphone and hope that the €480,- for the Pre will make it one day.
