 "Best iPhone Alternitive" | 2009-11-19 |
| - Reviewed By User: A20AICGJUZIOKJ |
First things first, I owned an iPhone 3G for over a year. In that time, Apple decided to basically give iPhones away, and in New York City, where I live and work, my iPhone became an iTouch that sometimes made phone calls.
Looking for an alternative, I found the Pre - the Pre is easily the best alternative to the iPhone, probably above Droid, because it closely mimics everything the iPhone does, has multitouch, and operates on a much faster 3G network. What the Pre is lacking is the polish that you get with an iPhone in several areas:
1) Design: While I love the look and feel of it, the build quality is not quite as good as the iPhone. It's plastic, and not as sturdy as the iPhone. It's subtle, but it feels a little loose sometimes.
2) Polish: While Palm is new to the 'app' phone space, they have been making smartphones for almost a decade, and some very simple things are not done right. Spell check is a joke compared to the iPhone, I would even say it's non-existant, aside from adding an apostrophe here and there or turning "u" into "you." Music App is not nearly as good as the iPhone's, little annoyances are everywhere. That said, I greatly prefer the notification system over the iPhone.
3) Contacts bonanza: While Palm made it incredibly easy to set up gmail and exchange mail, the phone also imports a billion contacts without asking you, and your phone is full of people you never email or call. Worse, you can't use the facebook app without adding the hundreds of friends to your phone as contacts. Thankfully they can easily be removed. You can do things the old fashioned way, importing from outlook, which can be done through iTunes. Tip: to sync "My contacts" instead of "all contacts" in Gmail(like the iPhone does) use the EAS Gmail setup.
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Concerns I had:
1) Apps: I didn't use apps that much, and any app that used the internet was basically useless, so the Apps thing was not a big deal for me. Also, the key apps I did use (Google maps, NY Times, Movie showtimes, yelp, twitter, directv superfan) were all there. For most apps you can visit the actual website faster than the app. The only app I really miss is Shazam, hopefully they are working on that one. In time, any app that was popular will be copied for the pre, simply because it's so easy to program for and it can be just as lucrative.
2) Network: Anything was going to be better than AT&T. Sprint, in NYC, is fantastic. I have been using the phone for 3 months now and NOT 1 dropped call, and the EV-DO network is several times faster than AT&Ts. Downside: you can't google while someone is talking to you.
3) Keyboard: The keyboard is small, and I have larger than normal hands, but I had no problems. It could be a bit bigger, but I have found it to be less annoying than the on screen keyboard. Even tho my thumb is the size of several keys, I can usually hit the right one. All in all much faster than the iphone. Copy+ paste is a little goofy.
4) Battery: People complained of short battery life but I found it was on par with the iPhone. It needs a charge daily, you can probably squeek 2 days out with wifi off and limited use.
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Things that make this phone great
1) Instant search: You open your phone and begin typing, and immediately you are calling, texting, googling, or wikipeidaing. What took 4-5 taps on an iPhone takes literally 1 second.
2) SPRINT IS DIRT CHEAP! I used to pay over $100 a month with AT&T - now, with taxes my bill is $80 for unlimited mobile to mobile, texting, picture texting, internet, and 450 mins to landlines on weekdays. You can cancel an AT&T plan, sell your iPhone, and make up the difference in a matter of months. You save HUNDREDS over after a year.
3) NFL NETWORK: I don't know why Sprint doesn't advertise this, but they have what any NFL fan on Time Warner or Comcast wants. LIVE NFL NETWORK. The picture is ok but the audio is all you really need. Also a bunch of highlights from last sunday's games, news feed, fantasy.
4) Free Turn-by-turn directions: Why pay $100 for some gps app when it's free on your phone?
5) iTunes Sync: Very easy to get your music and photos on the device. It works with any version before 9.01, I don't know why anyone needs the latest iTunes, but it won't work with that.
6) Camera takes great pictures, flash works ok. Camera is arguably better than the iPhone 3G.
7) Background Apps: When you are using a phone heavily, it is really convenient to go back and forth between apps.
In short, if you live in SF or NYC or anywhere else AT&T is terrible and Sprint is good, get this phone. |
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 "Came from an iPhone with high expectations... and they were met!" | 2009-11-19 |
| - Reviewed By User: AJ20I2UP9Z71R |
I owned my original iPhone for two very happy years. I wanted to upgrade to the 3GS but my husband and I agreed that it would be smart to switch to Sprint in order to save money. Well, I wasn't very happy about this. My husband has a Palm Pre, and he's all ga-ga over it, but I wanted a phone with a virtual keyboard, so I initally got the HTC Hero. After two weeks I couldn't take it anymore... it was simply not easy to use and the virtual keyboard drove me nuts. So I traded it in for a Palm Pre (to my husband's secret delight).
I miss being part of the "iPhone club," having a bigger screen, and having virtual voicemail... but outside of that? I'm a very happy customer. The Palm Pre has turned this unwilling recipient into a proud owner.
What do I like about it? EASE OF USE. The HTC Hero was a headache to understand. With the Palm Pre, I was able to figure it out within a day or two, as though I had been using it for years. The cards system of multitasking is genius in its simplicity, and very effective. I can easily flow from the web browser to my emails to my texts and calendars effortlessly.
It also helps that the Palm Pre is a much more open ecosystem than the iPhone, which allowed my husband to install an iPhone theme onto my Pre (for old-time's sake!), to make it look exactly like an iPhone. I know you can "jailbreak" an iPhone to do this also but the vast majority of people don't know how to do that, whereas any average Joe can make the Pre look and sound just like a Pre. My husband actually DESIGNED a Blackberry theme for the Pre and it's one of the most frequently downloaded.
Another thing I really like about the Pre is the screen. It's smaller, but vibrant and beautiful. The HTC Hero had 65,000 colors, but the Palm Pre? Sixteen million!
This may sound silly but another feature I like is the mirror on the back of the Pre's slider. Ladies (and guys, you too!)... this is a very useful feature!
Palm's App Catalog has a growing number of apps, some of which I find really useful, like Pandora, Google Maps, and Flixster. I haven't missed the thousands of iPhone apps quite like I thought I would because to be honest I didn't download that many when I had my iPhone.
I really like the camera on the Pre. Fast shutter times, and great outdoor quality pictures. Indoors the quality suffers in low light... but when there's NO light then we can use the Pre's built-in flash.
Finally, updates. I like how Palm regularly updates this phone. With the iPhone they would only come once in a while. It's good to know that Palm is continually striving to improve their product. The Pre now saves pictures and copies text from the browser and forwards text messages. Full flash capability is coming soon which will make the browser even better. (My husband told me to put that part in!)
Things I don't like? Battery life is pretty bad. My phone will certainly be dead in the morning if I forget to charge it overnight. My husband surprised me with a Touchstone charger and if you get this phone you HAVE to get this accessory. I don't have to fiddle with wires or anything... just set my phone down and I'm done. Another thing I don't like is that things aren't quite as snappy on this phone as on my friend's iPhone 3GS... but it has gotten faster with updates and again I can do more than one thing at once on the Pre.
That's pretty much it! I'm not a very techie person, just an average consumer and smartphone user. I thought I would miss the iPhone more than I am now, but to be honest, the Palm Pre has been a pleasant surprise. I really like it. If you're on Sprint or on another network considering the Pre, it gets my vote. |
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| "Some drawbacks but overall a great phone" | 2009-11-12 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3MWGE7126BPJZ |
A former Blackberry user, I chose this phone over the iPhone because I wanted multitasking and a break from ATT.
PROS: The Pre is fun to use, call quality is much better than my BB (which means it's very crisp, clear and not tinny), the Pre synchs easily with Outlook via PocketMirror, web surfing is a joy, and multitasking--which is immensely useful and not available on the iPhone--makes the drawbacks worth living with. The camera has no frills but takes excellent photos, much better than the grainy BB photos I'm used to. Sprint Nav (included) works very well and pinpoints my location in seconds. I also downloaded a free app that allows me to email my location to others. GPS is a nice feature to have but I didn't want to pay ATT an extra $10/mo for it; with Sprint, it's included along with texting. I have fewer dropped calls in rural areas than I had with ATT.
CONS: Battery life is poor (I automatically charge it during the day to be sure it won't run out) and the Pre takes more than a minute to turn on, which feels like a long time. The keys are even smaller than the BB, but once I got used to them I can type just as fast with both thumbnails. Would like to see an on-screen keyboard option along with voice dialing and better battery life. People who keeps lots of music and/or apps on their phones may have trouble with only 8G but that's not a problem for me.
With the overall quality of the Pre, plus multitasking and better/cheaper service from Sprint than I got with ATT, I'm very pleased and would definitely buy this phone again. |
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| "Palm Pre & WebOs Create a Great User Experience" | 2009-11-10 |
| - Reviewed By dmcdougall7 |
| I switched from Verizon to Sprint because I wanted to save money(about 50.00 a month) and to get my hands on the Pre. I am someone who changes cells rapidly(say every 6 months). Ive gone from flips back in the day to the Dare to the Iphone(ive also had every carrier except t mobile). Of course the Iphone is amazing, the Blackberry Tour is awesome, and teh Dare was easy to use but the Pre to me is just an amazing piece of technology. The ease of use is unreal. Downloading apps(im not a big app guy i only like a few for news sports facebook) is simple. Web surfing is amazing especially compared to blackberry and even the iphone. The feel of the phone is like its meant to be in your hand. Perfect build. Syncing of email, calendars is so easy. I love opening multiple apps at a time. Makes the user experience so much better and i could seriously never go back to only opening one app at a time. Only negatives are of course no video recording and no fowarding of text messages. Ive had no issues with sprint cust serv. I was sprint in 1998 and they were bad. Now it seems they are better. Verizon had great cust serv but there was always always something on my bill. Anyway the Pre to me hands down is the best phone ive ever had. |
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| "Palm Pre VS iPhone VS BlackBerry. The Pre is an Awesome Phone." | 2009-11-09 |
| - Reviewed By daramy |
I have owned the Palm Pre phone for close to 5 months now, and all I can say is wow. I bought 2 phones for the family when they were first released in June 2009, one each for my wife and me. She loves her phone. After 5 months of use, both phones look brand new. As a business owner and technology analyst, this phone is quite impressive and fully meets my needs!
Build Quality is Solid with a Nice Keyboard:
The Palm Pre phone comes with a 1 year warranty from Palm. This is a good sign when a company is willing to back their products for that long, especially for a mobile device that gets handled and moved around frequently. I am an electrical engineer and computer science professional by training, so I pay close attention to the engineering and quality of the products I buy. First the basics - the Palm Pre is a solid and well built phone. The keyboard slides from under the phone for typing in letters and symbols. The phone has two moving parts (the top of the phone, the screen area; and the bottom of the phone, the keyboard); these are designed to have a little give, which means you can slightly twist the top part of the phone from the bottom. Some people have wrongly assumed that this must be a defect or poor quality, but that is not the case. Every Palm Pre phone has this slight twist, and so it is perfectly normal; it allows the phone to open and close freely without much friction and thus preserve the life of the phone (i.e. its sliding mechanism). In five months of using both phones, the sliders on our phones have continued to work perfectly. I use my phone frequently, about 1 to 3 hours per day. I handled the phone delicately the first few weeks, like any new device; but I soon learned that it is more solid than it appears. In contrast to the Palm Pre, the iPhone does not have a physical keyboard and thus no moving parts. The BlackBerry phones come in many different styles and many with fixed keyboards. None of these phones have the elegant sliding keyboard found on the Palm Pre - slightly curved. Typing on the Palm Pre keyboard is nice. If you type on the Palm Pre keyboard with it close to your ears, you can actually hear a click sound after you press each key. The keys look small, but are quite responsive. I am of average height and build, and I have medium sized hands (much larger than my wife's hands) and I was surprised how easy it was for me to type on the keyboard and make very few typing errors. I typically type a few lines of text before I hit a wrong letter. I like the fact that the Palm Pre keyboard provides a nice tactile feedback (each key you press, you can tell when it makes contact - a little like your light switch when you turn on the light).
The Battery Life is Normal for a Smart Phone - Can be Expanded:
The Palm Pre is a smart phone that has a large screen for viewing web pages on the Internet. The battery last about 1 to 2 days based upon usage. If you plan to spend hours at a time on the Internet, the phone will last you no more than about 5 hours, about the same as the iPhone or comparable BlackBerry phones. The battery in the Palm Pre (and Blackberry) is replaceable. So you can purchase a second battery for your Palm Pre phone and keep it charged for emergency. This allows you to take the Palm Pre phone on long trips or if you work outside of the office. The iPhone's battery is sealed, so you cannot replace it. One thing I like about the Palm Pre is that you do not need to connect the phone directly to the electrical outlet via a cable to charge it. It can be charged wirelessly by simply resting the phone on top of the optional touchstone wireless charger and it automatically starts charging.
The Camera - A Real Surprise:
The Palm Pre at the time of this writing has the most beautiful user interface of any smart phone device on the market (more on this below). My nice has a BlackBerry phone, and the minute she saw the Palm Pre, she fell in love with it. I took a picture of her baby, and her husband who has worked as a professional photographer thought the Palm Pre had a 10 megapixel camera - the picture was stunning. The resolution of the Palm Pre screen is so sharp and the colors so vibrant and beautiful, her son's picture just seems to "pop" and seemed too stunning to be taken by a smart phone. And the picture taken was extremely sharp. None of the other smart phone cameras seem to come close. As an engineer, I did a little investigating to see why the Palm Pre, with only a 3 megapixel camera can produce a picture that looks like it came from a 10 megapixel camera. What I learned surprised me! Palm engineers used the latest image correction technology produced by DxO Labs. This technology is also licensed by Nikon and Canon, and it increases image quality, exposure, lighting, and color optimization, to produce beautiful, brilliant, and vibrant color photos. I own a Nikon D80 SLR camera, so it is good to know that I can take quality pictures with my Palm Pre phone on my casual trips around town and on vacation. So quality picture is not just about megapixel count, it's also about the photo sensor and image processing; for this I give the Palm Pre an A+. I was not expecting such a high quality built-in camera when I bought the phone, so I am extremely pleased. Thanks Palm!
Performance:
The Palm Pre has a high performance processor like the iPhone 3GS. In a recent review by Tomshardware, it was found to be faster than the iPhone 3GS. Overall performance was: Palm Pre (13.8s) versus iPhone 3GS (16.4s). In the last two months, I have noticed that hundreds of new applications, both free and paid applications (one dollar and up) are becoming available for download on the Palm Pre phone. This is good because Palm just announced that they will soon be increasing the performance of the Palm Pre phone through over-the-air software updates. I thought my Palm Pre phone was fast enough, but I will take this.
Impressive and Intuitive User Interface:
The user interface (which is part of Palm's WebOS operating system) on the Palm Pre is simply the most "elegantly" modern of all of the smart phones. This is where the Palm Pre really shines, and why my wife and I love this phone. It is so intuitive, you feel as if it was designed for you. It can run a number of applications at the same time; you can move multiple opened applications on the screen as if you are moving a deck of cards in your hands or on a table, and flick the card (that is, an application) off the screen to close the application. With the competing phones, you cannot do that; their interfaces are like calculator buttons, you press on the different buttons to open their applications. The Palm Pre card interface called "card view" is an absolute revolution on how a smart phone's interface should work. It puts each website you go to on a separate card, Wikipedia on one card, Amazon on another card, etc., it's simply awesome. The Palm Pre has other innovations like synergy to sync your Facebook, Twitter, Google Mail, Yahoo Mail, and Exchange Server accounts and more to your phone. One of the things I really like is the "notification area" feature of the Palm Pre, in which messages appear on a small strip at the bottom of the screen to notify you of emails or phone calls which is great if you are in a meeting.
Conclusion:
After 5 months of use, both Palm Pre phones have been rock-solid, and a pleasure to use. When I am not at work, I use my Palm Pre phone to listen to audio recordings with my Sony wireless Bluetooth headphones. I would not use another smart phone event if you offered me free cell phone service. This is a well thought out and designed phone. That is why a recent survey showed that approximately 90% of the people who bought the Palm Pre phone are pleased with their decision. I for one am a happy customer; the best cell phone purchase I have ever made. Before the Palm Pre, I wanted an iPhone; not anymore! I highly recommend the Palm Pre phone. |
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| "Easy phone to customize, great features" | 2009-11-08 |
| - Reviewed By willsurg |
I also wont repeat what has been said already here other than, I left verizon to get the phone in June and have been very happy.
Phone- unlike other company has been encouraging in allowing you to modify the phone to your needs/wants. Does everything I need, multitasking is awesome
Carrier- Not as bad as I was fearful of. Went from 1 drop call a month on verizon to maybe 3-4 on Sprint. Customer Service has been just as good as Verizon (I had great customer service with verizon)
I am spending about 30-40 less a month, with more minutes, more features and about equivalent coverage. |
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