![\"\"](\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_j7nO4iNpcsM\/Sh7FZ6BpjbI\/AAAAAAAAFOk\/XCRwC-fchsg\/s400\/palmpre.gif\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wednesday night I came home from class to find a box from Sprint.\u00a0 As I’ve mentioned before, I’d been considering the Pre for some time.\u00a0 Last week I stopped by a different Sprint store in the valley and tried it out.\u00a0 I have a friend that is a Sprint corporate rep and she “hooked me up” with a cheaper plan and cheaper deal on the phone\u00a0than the general public would get.\u00a0 Lets just say I’m paying for an iphone 2G and getting a Pre… and paying for Verizon 450 minutes and no data… but getting 450 minutes and unlimited data…<\/p>\n
At least that is what she said.\u00a0 I’ve been dinged $340 up front and supposedly the money will come off in a rebate and then discounted on subsequent bills after the first.\u00a0\u00a0 Unfortunately my Pre has the same two little lighter colored sections of the screen (or “burnt” sections) on the bottom corners.\u00a0 These spots are only noticeable when looking at a black screen or white screen (they appear yellow against white), but don’t otherwise detract from the experience. My rep friend says that I can just exchange the phone for a new one at any store – so I’ll do that soon.\u00a0\u00a0Supposedly since all my data is stored with palm in the\u00a0cloud I can swap phones without worrying about data loss.\u00a0Other than those screen spots\u00a0I like the device.\u00a0 A lot.<\/p>\n
I suppose anything would be great compared to a MotoQ, but my friends with Storms and WinMo devices liked it as well.\u00a0 The layout (specifically the choice of fonts) is very nice; Palm hired a font foundry to create a new set of fonts for the phone and I’m sure any typographer would agree they’re delicious.\u00a0 The “gestures” are completely intuitive.\u00a0 The phone activation intro teaches you how to use the “back” gesture for five minutes, but everyone I’m sure understands after one example. What you don’t see in the ads or on the websites is that there are\u00a0LEDs that glow in the gesture area when you use this gesture, and the little ball (not a trackball) lights up as well.\u00a0\u00a0The use of an off screen gesture area is great and speeds up the process of doing things like calendaring appointments and making task lists… not to mention web-browsing.\u00a0 There is also a slight “ripple” effect when you touch anywhere on the screen, which is nice feedback.<\/p>\n
As for physical keyboard vs. on-screen I’m not sure there is a great difference.\u00a0 If I had to choose one I’d probably lean towards the physical keyboard because I’ve gotten used to texting on the keyboard of the Q, and every time I’ve tried to do it on an iphone or LG or whatever my texts become a garbled mess.\u00a0 So far I’ve IMed three people on the Pre and not had to fix my words once.\u00a0 There is something about the tactile sense of pushing the button down that lets you proceed to the next one that much faster.\u00a0 I don’t have to wait for a letter to light up before going to the next.<\/p>\n
But, like I said, the keyboard isn’t why I bought this phone.\u00a0 I bought this phone because of its reliance on push notifications, OTA information syncing and account conglomeration.\u00a0 Within a minute of using the phone I was looking at a calendar that combined my work exchange (note, EXCHANGE, not just outlook) calendar, google calendar and facebook calendar (not that I know what the hell <\/em>that <\/strong>is…).\u00a0 At first I was disappointed that it didn’t sync my google mail task list with exchange.\u00a0 Then I realized that the google mail task list was one of those “labs” features that isn’t official yet.\u00a0 Now that I have the phone I’m switching back to the outlook task list since I can add notes, due dates, etc. ALL FROM THE PHONE.\u00a0 And once I’ve changed something on my calendar, email or notes, it is updated immediately OTA (over the air).\u00a0 This is so convenient.<\/p>\n Also, I really don’t know how iphone (or any other smartphone users) can put up with not being able to multitask.\u00a0 I can make a phone call, put the phone on speaker, respond to an IM or text from somebody else, check ESPN, watch a youtube video and check my GPS location on google maps … all without stopping any of them to do the next.\u00a0\u00a0 The “cards” system is a very intuitive way to display this.\u00a0 Basically the “cards” are the same as windows on a PC, and instead of hitting an “x” to close you just push them off the top of the screen.\u00a0 Oh, and the Pre was developed to save the battery by leaving wifi on all the time (which is the opposite of every other phone).\u00a0 What this means is when I go into a wifi area I automatically get the speed of that network without even thinking about it (which means my phone is incredibly fast at home of course).\u00a0 The Sprint 3G network is also pretty fast, I don’t notice a discernible difference between the 3G network when I’m at work and my own broadband wifi at home.<\/p>\n There have been many complaints about the lack of apps.\u00a0 I agree partially, as there only around 20.\u00a0 However, this phone JUST launched and developers were just given the development code weeks ago.\u00a0 Doesn’t anyone remember the “apps debacle” back in the early days of the iphone?\u00a0 There was nothing available and Apple was severely limiting who could make apps.\u00a0 The lack of a tetris app\u00a0for the Pre is\u00a0shocking though!\u00a0\u00a0 Although, I won’t need Tetris to kill time now that I can surf the web…<\/p>\n Apparently Sprint’s own phone support people aren’t very knowledgeable about the phone either.\u00a0 I had to call support to port my number yesterday and spent an hour on the phone with the guy because he couldn’t figure out how to do anything.\u00a0 He would tell me to hit keys on the phone that didn’t exist (I think he kept confusing the Pre with the Centro).\u00a0 But, in any event, I eventually DID get the number ported and everything works fine now.\u00a0 Having the phone delivered next day AM was a nice touch by Sprint.\u00a0 Of course, maybe this is due to the fact that my friend handles corporate accounts and I wouldn’t have received this treatment as a regular joe… who knows?<\/p>\n To emphasize its competitive nature with the iphone the Pre comes with ear buds.\u00a0 I tried them out last night, they aren’t terrible, but I think I’ll get some “real” headphones for travelling.\u00a0 The mp3 player is decent and the headphone jack is a standard one (big plus!).\u00a0 However, as an audiophile I do have to complain about the lack of EQ on the player.\u00a0 Also, the 8GB storage limit is a downer since they decided to remove the removable storage from the phone.\u00a0\u00a0 I may get a Zune HD to listen to music instead, haven’t decided yet.\u00a0 (maybe I don’t need a DAP at all, I’ve gotten by just fine so far)<\/p>\n Perhaps the most pleasant surprise on the phone is its “synergy” component.\u00a0 The phone merges data from all contact sources, email, outlook, facebook, etc. into one profile.\u00a0 For example, by just entering my account info on activiation I now automatically have a dossier on everyone I know, including birth dates, photos, all their phone numbers, all their emails, etc…. without doing anything more than entering my email accounts (which I was doing for email retreival and calendar…not this…).\u00a0 I didn’t realize how in depth this went – and was surprised when I tried to “test” call Cindy wednesday.\u00a0 When I pulled up her contact info -boom! – there was a big picture of her.\u00a0 turns out the synergy also pulls everyone’s facebook profile photo and uses that for their contact photo in your addressbook.\u00a0\u00a0 I remember trying to assign each of my motoQ contacts a photo and what a hassle that was – and here the Pre does it without thinking.\u00a0<\/p>\n I was worried that the Pre would feel big in my pocket as it isn’t as flat as the Q.\u00a0 However, it actually fits better because the entire surface is one even curve.\u00a0 So it feels like dropping in a big polished pebble, whereas the Q had odd angles and points that would catch on things.\u00a0 Since it is smaller in most aspects it also feels easier to hold in one hand and operate than the iphone.\u00a0 Of course that comes at the sacrifice of some screen real estate, but not <\/strong>in resolution – the Pre actually has a higher res screen because it packs the same amount of pixels as the iphone into a smaller space.<\/p>\n The one thing that I thought was silly about the Pre was the curved screen edges.\u00a0 The screen itself isn’t really curved in the corner… just the way the OS displays.\u00a0 I get it, the phone is curved itself, so this echoes in the OS… but… c’mon.\u00a0 Not a big deal, but please, I can tell where the screen “ends” are just some black pixels that look like curved corners.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m an old screen real estate guy (30″ + 20″ multi monitor set-up at home), so sacrificing those 20 or so pixels to make the corners curved seems like a waste.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Wednesday night I came home from class to find a box from Sprint.\u00a0 As I’ve mentioned before, I’d been considering the Pre for some time.\u00a0 Last week I stopped by a different Sprint store in the valley and tried it out.\u00a0 I have a friend that is a Sprint corporate rep and she “hooked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1128"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1132,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions\/1132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}