Shameless iPhone user wading into lion's den

[ShamelessiPhoneUser]

Hi everybody,

Yes, I am an iPhone user, and I have been reading your posts with interest. Given the strong feelings expressed in many posts about iPhones and iPhone users, I decided to weigh in and stir a little friendly debate. I recognize I will become the "man you love to hate" by default, but I am willing to bear that heavy burden. :wink:

I've been reading up on the Pre and it looks like it's got some really cool (even innovative) features. I think it's great that Palm has re-entered the market with a bang, and I welcome the competition with the iPhone. However, you won't catch me buying one anytime soon. I am frankly appalled at the reports of poor build quality, including:

• screens with distorted / discolored areas
• screens with dead pixels
• screens that crack easily
• batteries that overheat
• embarrassingly poor battery life
• batteries taking forever to recharge
• weak reception / "low bars"
• phones that inadvertently turn off when you click the keyboard closed
• phone having difficulty registering "clicks" / finger taps
• poor quality camera
• phone requiring random restarts / software glitches
• portions of touchscreen being non-responsive
• phone feels flimsy / cheap plastic

I recognize this is a 1st generation device and that there are no doubt many owners who are satisfied with their device. However, releasing a device of such (purportedly) cheap build quality is difficult to swallow. The iPhone in comparison is absolutely solid (even rugged), a truly well-designed and well-built device of superb quality. Don't believe me? Try one.

Another topic I'd like to discuss is multi-tasking: many posts comment enthusiastically on the Pre's ability to multitask, smugly pointing to the iPhone's inability to multitask and reporting how iPhone users' eyes literally bug out of their heads in raw amazement when they view Pre's multitasking.

I must burst this naive bubble. I agree that multitasking is pretty cool, and I have no doubt that it will be incorporated into future iPhones. However, did you ever wonder why it is not included by default? Well primarily, it's battery life. Apple recognized that multi-tasking would seriously degrade battery life, and chose not to incorporate it. As such, I enjoy a greatly increased battery longevity compared to Pre users (although no doubt this could be improved on the iPhone too).

The other aspect you must realize is that I - and my iPhone brethren / sisterthren - don't miss multitasking. At. All. Why should this be so important to me? It's cool, yes, but never, not once, do I long for multitasking, and never do I feel like I am somehow "missing out" because my iPhone can't do it. So you can put that one to rest.

Apart from the Pre's reported glitchiness, it currently has no apps whatsoever. I'm sure this will change over time, and the iPhone certainly took awhile to build up its repertoire of apps, but... launching with like 3 apps?? Wow.

For all of that, I really do applaud Palm and their efforts to come up with a hot new smartphone. It's got some great features and I wish them success, as they will keep Apple on their toes to develop better, more capable iPhones. But you will not find me switching to a Pre. No doubt future versions will improve dramatically, and I look forward to being tempted one day to cross over. For now, the Pre seems nowhere near ready to compete with the iPhone. Honestly, how many folks here have owned an iPhone before? Slim to none, I'd be willing to bet. If you had, you would never give it up to buy a Pre (at least, not yet). The iPhone is hands-down the best smartphone on the market today. It is the highest quality, most luxurious, capable, solidly-built, endlessly useful, flexible, and slick phone out there. Once you have owned an iPhone, you cannot own a Pre. At least not version 1.0.

PS. - I may be an iPhone zealot, but I'm not a Mac zealot. The iPhone is the only Apple product I use.

[rishio]

I don't have a Pre yet but have been playing around with it quite a bit and plan to purchase one soon. A lot of the hardware quality issues you mentioned seem to be quarks with the first shipments. The first shipments of iphone v1 had these quarks as well which got fixed fast..

According to Anandtech, the battery life is not too different than an iPhone 3g. It's easy to focus on the negative posts in the forum but consider battery life has a lot to do with a few bugs that Palm has been working on correcting. Let's wait for a month and do a proper evaluation of battery life.

Regarding multitasking - I prefer to be in control of battery life rather than the device forcing me to not multitask. Not having 3rd party multitasking is like forcing my car to limit itself to a max of 2k RPM since it will save gas mileage. I'd rather be in control..

Don't forget, multitasking is more than just doing computation in the background. Haven't you ever been irritated when you got an SMS message on the iPhone while you were browsing the web. In order to read the SMS, you have quit the web browser, open the SMS, view and reply to the SMS, quit the SMS and open the browser again.

THink about the times you want to hear pandora music while using google maps in the car. You can't do both on the iPhone.

Think about the time you are replying to an email and you need to look at or copy/paste content from a web page while you write the email. Do you really want to quit the draft email, open the browser, copy the content, quit the browser, open the email and find the draft and continue writing the email realizing that you need to check out more info from the browser again?

Keep in mind these multiple card activities that don't do processing in the background don't take up extra battery life. Sure, running pandora does.. but having 2 email cards and your calender running at the same time does not affect battery life since they are practically nothing in the background.

iPhone is fully capable of multitasking but the problem is not in it's capabilities. It will be difficult to implement an interface that enables third party multitasking due to the design of the UI. Tell me how they are going to redesign the UI while maintaining compatibility to enable multitasking like the Palm Pre. For example, there is a reason Mac OS X has the fixed menubar on top of the screen and it will never go away. Backward compatibility. Unobtrusive notifications and mulittasking are major things that needed to have been thought out before the product was released.. Changing the UI to support these new features is not trivial!

BTW, I am an iPhone user.

[ShamelessiPhoneUser]

Great points, Rishio. I agree that multitasking is cool and useful, my point is that it is not the "iPhone killer" that most people seem to think it is. I certainly don't feel as if I'm missing it, nor do any of my iPhone friends (for lack of better term).

I hope you're right about questionable build quality of Pres being limited to initial shipments only; we'll see. I hope you enjoy your Pre and would look forward to you writing an objective follow-up post once you've had a chance to use your Pre for a good 5 to 6 weeks to see how things are going.

PS - written on my iPhone.

[rishio]

I don't think it's an iPhone killer. The iPhone is a great device and I think it will always be ahead of the Palm Pre in terms of number of users.. But the Pre will definitely have it's place and a strong following. Palm has won me over.

The only reason I don't have a Pre yet is because my x-boss is still paying my iphone cell plan. Pre is not good enough when I get the iPhone cell phone plan for free

It's only a matter of time however till my x-boss cuts me loose. It's weird but I'm kind of wanting that to happen..

BTW, that's pretty cool that you wrote that all on your iPhone. I wish Palm and Apple would make external bluetooth keyboards so I have one more reason to leave my laptop behind..

Here's a nice article posted today by arstechnica:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/revie...pre-review.ars

Great points, Rishio. I agree that multitasking is cool and useful, my point is that it is not the "iPhone killer" that most people seem to think it is. I certainly don't feel as if I'm missing it, nor do any of my iPhone friends (for lack of better term).

I hope you're right about questionable build quality of Pres being limited to initial shipments only; we'll see. I hope you enjoy your Pre and would look forward to you writing an objective follow-up post once you've had a chance to use your Pre for a good 5 to 6 weeks to see how things are going.

PS - written on my iPhone.

[ShamelessiPhoneUser]

Good points re: app development. I have 20 apps on my iPhone, and 4 of them are graphically intensive. We'll see what things look like in 3 - 6 months time with Pre apps.

[aolbites]

I don't think it's an iPhone killer. The iPhone is a great device and I think it will always be ahead of the Palm Pre in terms of number of users.. But the Pre will definitely have it's place and a strong following. Palm has won me over.

The only reason I don't have a Pre yet is because my x-boss is still paying my iphone cell plan. Pre is not good enough when I get the iPhone cell phone plan for free

It's only a matter of time however till my x-boss cuts me loose. It's weird but I'm kind of wanting that to happen..

BTW, that's pretty cool that you wrote that all on your iPhone. I wish Palm and Apple would make external bluetooth keyboards so I have one more reason to leave my laptop behind..

Here's a nice article posted today by arstechnica:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/revie...pre-review.ars

Just gotta get this and you're good to go.

[rishio]

Just gotta get this and you're good to go.

Palm used to have a nice folding one. I want something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/PalmOne-Portab.../dp/B00004RC2I

[.plaid]

S'ok to have a little shame, no biggie.

Welcome to the everythingpre forums; I hope that you're also a member of everythignicafe.

Hi everybody,

Apart from the Pre's reported glitchiness, it currently has no apps whatsoever. I'm sure this will change over time, and the iPhone certainly took awhile to build up its repertoire of apps, but... launching with like 3 apps?? Wow.

I'm assuming you bought a first gen iPhone at or near release? I've seen some of the apps that were available, web-based apps, and they're horrible. I appreciate the fact that, even though there were only 18 apps available on June 6th, they were real applications, not spruced-up websites. Comparing first-gen iPhone to first-gen Pre I'd say that Palm has the lead in this regard.

Honestly, how many folks here have owned an iPhone before? Slim to none, I'd be willing to bet. The iPhone is hands-down the best smartphone on the market today. It is the highest quality, most luxurious, capable, solidly-built, endlessly useful, flexible, and slick phone out there.

I haven't owned an iPhone, nor any Apple product so I can't form (what some would call) an informed opinion, and I'm ok with that. I've played around with an iPod touch at Best Buy but I didn't like how everything felt sandboxed. Granted, I tried it out after I got my Pre so multi-tasking is my paradigm in this regard. I knew in November of last year that my contract would be up in May so I started looking for a replacement for my first-gen Motorola Q. I liked the HTC Touch Pro well enough, but I'd had my fill of WinMo. I also looked at the G1 (and again as recently as May), but I knew enough to look past the iPhone.

As for others on the forum, there are plenty of folks who have or had the iPhone and love their Pre. The nice thing is that it needn't be an either/or kind of sitch. I don't consider the Pre an iPhone killer, rather an anti-iPhone.

I'm not really sure why you made this post, and it's not terribly important that I figure it out. If you have specific questions, feel free to ask; if you have news to share, by all means do so; I'm as curious as you to see how your time here is spent.

Best,
.

[mrcsbrooks]

I've had my pre since the launch party on june 5th. Prior to the launch I did play with an iphone. I admit I love the os..but I hated the virtual keyboard. And I adpat pretty quick to keyboards but I just couldn't work with it. The pre was perfect with the hard keyboard and all of the touchscreen features I needed. Mind you before this I had a palm centro, and before that I had a blackberry so its obviously clear why I may pick a pre as opposed to an iphone. But I do agree with .plaid I think this is the anti iphone. Iphone is ok, but its just so many more features in a pre. And as in comparing when both phones came out, true the pre doesn't have apps out now, but its two things palm has done that apple didn't at launch. For one its been 2 updates since launch both improving on the battery life and other tweaks in the os. 2nd there has been no activation issues (or massive ones) like there was when the iphone was released. In the end I say the iphone is a great device,but I love my multitasking Pre...great topic!!

[glamisfanatic]

I agree there are some issues with the phone, but they will be addressed sooner than later ( i hope ) Most of it are things that can be updated in patches, which Palm seems to be pretty on top of. I am fine with the quality, I don't think its flimsy. Battery isn't that bad. Although it is kind of a pain because i came from a Blackberry Curve, and man I love that thing. Battery is great on it, and it had blackberry messanger, all around great device. I do enjoy the Pre though, as time goes on it will become a better device.

As far as these "iPhone Killers" go, I really don't think ANYTHING will kill the iPhone, except another Apple phone product. Apple has WAY too many Loyal fans for anything to kill it. iPhone is a great device and it is fun to play with. The key board and service provider are what keeps me away from it. I am not big on touch screen keyboard for 100% of the typing. I would love to see one on the Pre for short little messages. AT&T blows too, I don't understand why you would pay $30 extra dollars on top of a $100 dollar a month plan that includes everything already.

In conclusion, iPhone is a great product, so is the Palm Pre. I don't believe the iPhone has an assasssin or ever will in the near future. In the end all that really matters is that you like your phone. I don't think we should go around declaring this phone or that phone champion, because in the end what really matters is that you know you like your phone, and its the best for you. No number of reviews can change that.

:cool: