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I picked up my Pre phone on Saturday the 6th around 15:00 or so.
I think this will be a fairly good phone in a few months. Right now it is clearly a first attempt. Will it be good enough to save Palm and Sprint? Well... only if Sprint lets it.
Sprint doesn't allow tethering with your laptop even though the phone clearly supports it. Their attitude about their so-called everything plan isn't exactly great. They really want you to get an aircard or other data device. My feeling is, if I have to get a dedicated data device I might not get it from Sprint so they risk losing even more customers.
Physical impression:
It's an attractive phone, kind of heavy for its size, with a good feel in the hand when closed. Opening it to expose the keyboard makes it feel a little lopsided but still not bad. I almost feel like I should leave the keyboard out when using it as a phone but I haven't actually done so yet.
The screen is bright and fairly easy to read even in sunlight. In viewing some large web sites the font shrinks terribly but you do have the expand option. It looks like even the tiny font is well rendered but I can't see that small so I could be wrong about that.
The hatch over the microUSB port is horrible. I feel like I'm going to break it every time I open it (and I do that a LOT because it's the only way to charge the phone - the store was out of touchstones and I haven't gone looking for one since then). I'd say about half the time I don't get the hatch cover back on completely, it sticks out on one side or the other.
Battery access is via a backplate that you have to pry off. The first time I took the cover off I was sure I was going to break something. You have to be authoritative with it.
Battery life sucks. On Wednesday night I charged the phone to 100% then put it by the bed around midnight. When I woke up at 7am the next morning it was down to 22%. This was with WiFi and bluetooth turned off. This phone spends a lot of time plugged into that microUSB cable to keep it charged.
No external media slot. No SD card, nothing. The phone itself acts like a USB card when plugged into your computer via the microUSB but the phone only has about 7GB usable space so that doesn't give you a lot of room for your music/videos/pictures.
OS: webOS is ... interesting. It takes for-bloody-ever to boot (it is Linux and it shows). Once the phone is booted it takes a bit more time for it to acquire signal. I do like the multitasking abilities and it's fairly intuitive to use.
Applications: not a lot out there yet. The App Store has a horrible setup where instead of telling you how much an application costs it just says "try it". I have no idea if any of the apps I'm "trying" are free or if they're going to want money at some point. Uncool.
Data sync:
I hate this. There is no built-in way to get your contacts/calendar into/out of the phone. You have to either give it to Palm (in your Palm Profile) in which case you'll never get it back to your desktop/laptop or put it into google or facebook of all places. My private data is private, I do not want to share it with the rainbow borg or anyone else.
There is a beta 1 release of a product from Mark/Space (ruiners of MySync) that will allow you to sync between your Mac and your phone. I tried it yesterday - it needs serious work (more on that in another post, perhaps). If the "Missing Sync for Pre" actually becomes a reliable product this may be ok, but I'm not yet convinced.
Other Observations:
I completely locked up the phone (thus needing to remove the battery to reset it) by copying the PDF of the user's guide to it and launching the PDF viewer. A few pages in the phone was a brick. This is a bug that I expect they'll fix soon enough.
The lack of indication that you have an SMS message/voicemail that you missed is very bad. When the phone is asleep it is asleep. The only way to find out if you missed a call/got a message/have voicemail is to wake the phone up (and unock it, if you're properly paranoid and have set a lock code to keep people out of your email and other data).
When you get a SMS message the phone beeps quietly twice and lights the screen for a few seconds. If you miss that you're SOL notification-wise. A lot of people have commented on this in the forums and we all hope it will change. It would be nice if you could at least change the notification sound to something louder and longer lasting (there is currently no way to change alert tones other than the ringer for the phone). Ideally it would beep/vibrate every few minutes until you ack the alert, too. There are three lights on the front of the phone that could be used as a visual notification, as well. Currently they don't do much of anything.
There's a lot to like about this phone but it is frustratingly constrained in a lot of ways. I really hope Palm and Sprint change their tune about allowing people to use devices the way they want to use them.
Will I be returning this phone tomorrow? No. I have 3 more weeks to see what happens. If the Missing Sync thing works out I'll most likely keep the phone. It's all a matter of "wait and see" now.
I think this will be a fairly good phone in a few months. Right now it is clearly a first attempt. Will it be good enough to save Palm and Sprint? Well... only if Sprint lets it.
Sprint doesn't allow tethering with your laptop even though the phone clearly supports it. Their attitude about their so-called everything plan isn't exactly great. They really want you to get an aircard or other data device. My feeling is, if I have to get a dedicated data device I might not get it from Sprint so they risk losing even more customers.
Physical impression:
It's an attractive phone, kind of heavy for its size, with a good feel in the hand when closed. Opening it to expose the keyboard makes it feel a little lopsided but still not bad. I almost feel like I should leave the keyboard out when using it as a phone but I haven't actually done so yet.
The screen is bright and fairly easy to read even in sunlight. In viewing some large web sites the font shrinks terribly but you do have the expand option. It looks like even the tiny font is well rendered but I can't see that small so I could be wrong about that.
The hatch over the microUSB port is horrible. I feel like I'm going to break it every time I open it (and I do that a LOT because it's the only way to charge the phone - the store was out of touchstones and I haven't gone looking for one since then). I'd say about half the time I don't get the hatch cover back on completely, it sticks out on one side or the other.
Battery access is via a backplate that you have to pry off. The first time I took the cover off I was sure I was going to break something. You have to be authoritative with it.
Battery life sucks. On Wednesday night I charged the phone to 100% then put it by the bed around midnight. When I woke up at 7am the next morning it was down to 22%. This was with WiFi and bluetooth turned off. This phone spends a lot of time plugged into that microUSB cable to keep it charged.
No external media slot. No SD card, nothing. The phone itself acts like a USB card when plugged into your computer via the microUSB but the phone only has about 7GB usable space so that doesn't give you a lot of room for your music/videos/pictures.
OS: webOS is ... interesting. It takes for-bloody-ever to boot (it is Linux and it shows). Once the phone is booted it takes a bit more time for it to acquire signal. I do like the multitasking abilities and it's fairly intuitive to use.
Applications: not a lot out there yet. The App Store has a horrible setup where instead of telling you how much an application costs it just says "try it". I have no idea if any of the apps I'm "trying" are free or if they're going to want money at some point. Uncool.
Data sync:
I hate this. There is no built-in way to get your contacts/calendar into/out of the phone. You have to either give it to Palm (in your Palm Profile) in which case you'll never get it back to your desktop/laptop or put it into google or facebook of all places. My private data is private, I do not want to share it with the rainbow borg or anyone else.
There is a beta 1 release of a product from Mark/Space (ruiners of MySync) that will allow you to sync between your Mac and your phone. I tried it yesterday - it needs serious work (more on that in another post, perhaps). If the "Missing Sync for Pre" actually becomes a reliable product this may be ok, but I'm not yet convinced.
Other Observations:
I completely locked up the phone (thus needing to remove the battery to reset it) by copying the PDF of the user's guide to it and launching the PDF viewer. A few pages in the phone was a brick. This is a bug that I expect they'll fix soon enough.
The lack of indication that you have an SMS message/voicemail that you missed is very bad. When the phone is asleep it is asleep. The only way to find out if you missed a call/got a message/have voicemail is to wake the phone up (and unock it, if you're properly paranoid and have set a lock code to keep people out of your email and other data).
When you get a SMS message the phone beeps quietly twice and lights the screen for a few seconds. If you miss that you're SOL notification-wise. A lot of people have commented on this in the forums and we all hope it will change. It would be nice if you could at least change the notification sound to something louder and longer lasting (there is currently no way to change alert tones other than the ringer for the phone). Ideally it would beep/vibrate every few minutes until you ack the alert, too. There are three lights on the front of the phone that could be used as a visual notification, as well. Currently they don't do much of anything.
There's a lot to like about this phone but it is frustratingly constrained in a lot of ways. I really hope Palm and Sprint change their tune about allowing people to use devices the way they want to use them.
Will I be returning this phone tomorrow? No. I have 3 more weeks to see what happens. If the Missing Sync thing works out I'll most likely keep the phone. It's all a matter of "wait and see" now.
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