To Pre or Not To Pre, That is the Question!

Durning dinner the other night, I had a good discussion about smartphones with some co-workers. After which, we decided to go see what the buzz about the Palm Pre was about. We had at our disposal, my Xperia X1 and an Ipod Touch, but no Palm Pre. We’ve all seen and heard the buzz about it on the internet; rather hard not to. So we located the nearest Sprint store after dinner and rushed over to go see it. We wanted to see for ourselves if this device lived up to the hype and criticism we’ve seen online.

We found a Sprint store in a nearby mall. We rushed in and found the Palm Pre display. We had all heard the comments on the build quality, so we had to see and feel it. Our conclusion? Yes, sadly, for as nice a device as this is, it feels like a toy. I think some of my son’s toy phones are made of better stuff. the front of it is a shiny plastic, and the back is a sort of rubberized plastic, obviously for a non-slip surface. It smaller than the Ipod Touch, and the screen is smaller, but the screen has nice resolution. The flip up keyboard was usable, but it did feel cramp. The only metal on the case was the back panel that showed when sliding the keyboard out (probably used for the antenna), and the little button nub that’s on the bottom front of the unit. Sadly, this looks to be where Palm cut costs for the phone. Being all black did make it seem rather dull in comparison to the iPhone, and my Xperia, whose build quality is exceptional.

We all liked the phone’s OS, but someone had to show us how to close applications, because it wasn’t obvious right away that you had to flick the application windows up off the screen to close them. It was obvious that the phone could run multiple things at once, since not knowing how to close apps, I had quite a number running. The web browsing experience was exactly the same as the iPod Touch (which I’m guessing is the same as the iPhone). Internet access speeds seemed adequate, but the device didn’t play YouTube videos as well as an iPhone (which I later tested at an Apple store in the mall). YouTube playback was not smooth, and paused often, this may have been the fault of Sprint’s network, and not the device. In general though, my feeling is that the iPhone is still better in regard to the overall experience, even though only one app can run a time, things just seemed snappier.

So, since I’m in the market to replace my Xperia, will the Palm win me over? No, I don’t think so, maybe in another generation or two, but right now, the iPhone is still the better device for what I’m looking for.