News of the Palm Pre may actually keep me from jumping off the slowly sinking "Sprint" ship. I’ve been with Sprint for the last five years; their lack of a good contender in the smartphone category and their lackluster customer support have me waiting for my end-of-contract date like a kid counting the days until Christmas.
This could change with the announcement of the Palm Pre. The Pre is getting great media coverage. It seems to be the new media darling – getting, in most cases, better reviews than the sexy iPhone.
Advantages of the Pre are:
- Open development platform
- Physical keyboard (ever try typing on the iPhone keyboard? It sucks.
- Faster G3 network (even if it is using Sprint)
- supports multitasking
- Only phone other than iPhone to support multitouch
- COPY AND PASTE (gez…come on Apple)
- Swap-able battery
- This device appears fast!
Advantages of iPhone
- Sure beauty
- The Apple developer community
- None-Sprint Network – dealing with the Sprint knuckleheads is like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer…a 20-pound sledge hammer.
- Price. The Pre is humored to be priced above the 200 mark, even as high as $399 – this could be a deal killer. The iPhone can be purchased for as little as $99.00 (refurbished)
I currently own a Palm Treo (running the Palm OS), and hate it. I have to remove the battery at least once a week and have had to hard reset the OS three times in the last six months. This is the second Treo I’ve gone through in a year. The first Treo I had was traded in after a week of use. The "s" key on the physical keyboard refused to work.
Will the Palm Pre be enough to keep me from jumping ship? With my past history of dealing with the incredibly frustrating Sprint support and the crappy performance of my Treo…the Pre better be a dang good smartphone.
The winner? The smartphone consumer. It appears that Palm has upped the ante with the release of the Pre. This will force Apple to finally listen to its fan base and add multitasking, cut and paste, and a physical keyboard.
January 21st, 2009 at 5:27 pm
I have been watching all of the smartphones out there, and frankly, this rocked me off my seat when I saw the CES review and release. Not to mention, I was a bit ticked off with Sprint never having the smarts to get the more popular phones like the Samsung Omnia, which of course went to Verizon. Stupid too because the Omnia totally rocks and is made by the same people that did the Instinct, Come on Sprint!
I totally stoked about the Pre though. If it is as truly great as it appears to be, then WOW, I’m in! I will wait however to get the hot little phone in my hands. That will be the determining factor.
I wont switch just because of a phone, because I compared ALL of the services to what I have through Sprint, and Sprint is way cheaper. So there you go fellow techies.
January 27th, 2009 at 3:21 am
I saw several site that show a GSM unlocked version of the palm pre