My Palm Pre
Posted on June 8th, 2009 at 4:46 pm by necco

I upgraded my phone to the new Palm Pre this weekend. Being a Sprint customer and having a phone that was starting to seem antique made the choice pretty easy (I’ve had only two cell phones in the last seven years that I’ve been with Sprint). Honestly, I was done with T9 typing and no web browser. I actually waited in line for an hour to get one of the 50 phones delivered to Santa Monica, CA. This was a new social/cultural experience for me (waiting in line for the newest block of silicon and plastic) and I was able to handle the ordeal by telling myself it was an anthropological learning opportunity. Interestingly, the people in line seemed pretty normal and friendly. There were no strange Pre fanatics or obvious hard-core geeks. In fact, I don’t recall anyone even saying anything about the Pre, but it was obvious that people were excited about it.

My take on it? I think it’s fantastic. It’s intuitive, has all the touch screen capabilities introduced by the iPhone, comes with all the apps I will every actually use and it’s smooth and quick. It’s also a bit smaller (length x width) than the iPhone, which has always seemed a little unwieldy to me. One of features that really proves itself is the ability to have multiple applications running simultaneously (load a web page, a large file from an email, get a software upgrade or download an application all at the same time). The applications are sorted into visual “cards” that you can easily navigate by flicking your finger left or right. Close an application instantly with a flick of the finger.

The Pandora application works perfectly. Signing up my work email (Microsoft Office Outlook with Exchange from saveonit.com) literally took 10 seconds, required no email to our IT department and all of my calendar events automatically started appeared as notifications. The notification system is nice: it pops up a stack of transparent notices on the bottom of the screen. The MMS application makes it easy to navigate between conversations you’ve had or are having. And the camera takes crisp three megapixel shots with almost no noticeable delay between button press and when the phone is ready to take another picture.

So, if you’re like me and never really wanted an iPhone, but felt like you were missing out on some cool features then I would highly recommend the Pre to you. I’m loving it.