Well, it's happened. I've come to the dark side. After leaving the iPhone, loving WebOS, I'm back with Android - and surprisingly - loving it. I'll post a few entries on the journey, starting with the Palm Pre Plus.
I picked up the Palm Pre Plus on Verizon about a month ago. My husband and I - with our matching phones (how cute - gag) both loved the OS. I even grew accustomed to the keyboard and could type fairly fast on it. I can say with no reservations that WebOS is my absolute favorite mobile OS. The multitasking capabilities and integration make it the best communication device on the market today. That said, we would both still be using our Pre Plus were it not for quality issues. My keyboard had the double typing bug - sometimes it would repeat a key six times with one touch, sometimes the touch wouldn't register at all. Very frustrating. My husband had two Pre's in the space of three weeks - both died and wouldn't power back up. After reading the forums, it was apparent that while one might know just a few Pre owners who had returned a device only one time, more likely than not, Pre owners have returned their device more than once. Before the end of our thirty day trial period with Verizon, we returned our devices and picked up Motorola Droids.
What I Liked about the Palm Pre Plus:
I loved the unified calendar on WebOS. I had five calendars (four Google and one Lotus Notes) embedded into the device - all showed up with different colors so it was easy to track what was work, home, kids events, and husband appointments. Very cool. And for those coming from the Apple side of things - incredibly easy to configure.
Multitasking. Have I raved about how well the Pre does multitasking? Several phones on the market multitask, so this isn't a new concept. However, the Pre does so with the most elegance and the most user control of any other mobile OS. The card system allows the user to know what is open and choose to kill off apps at will. My favorite multitasking on the Pre was reading articles in FeedsFree, Tweeting about them in Twee, copying links from Snippet into my tweets, all the while chatting with my sister on gTalk. The simplicity of moving between apps is unparalleled in any other OS. Not impossible to do, but none so elegantly as WebOS.
Unified inbox. This is one of those things I never knew I needed until I had it. On the iPhone, it took six taps to get from one inbox to another. Six! On WebOS I read my email from all inboxes at one time, or I can choose to only view specific inboxes. This is great on the weekends when I want to avoid work email. When responding to email, the Pre was responds from the email address it came from. Perfect integration.
Gestures. While foreign at first, the gestures became second nature and I find myself missing them when working in other OS's. I love that one little spot on the phone can do so many things. I don't have to remember which button to push to go back or to bring up my stack of cards, it's all in one place. I'm sure this is a matter of preference, but I prefer it to any other method of interacting with a phone.
Form Factor. The reason I stayed away from the Pre for so long was form factor. One of the things I liked best about the Pre once I had it in hand was form factor. This phone fits better in my hand and pocket than any other smartphone on the market. I can operate it with one hand (which is great for mom's who typically only have one free hand). I love that the device felt warm in my hand - the benefits of plastic over metal. I even liked the screen size, as I could hold the device with one hand and still reach the entire screen with my thumb.
The things I want my phone to do: Facebook, Twitter, E-mail, IM/SMS, phone calls, RSS feeds, and calendar - the Pre had built-in functionality or apps that did it very well. The Facebook app updated while I was on the OS with greatly improved functionality. Notifications are now in Beta form which means that I could use the mobile version on my Palm without ever logging into the computer. There are at least 3 fantastic Twitter apps for the Pre (Twee, Tweed, and BadKitty). The built-in functionality of e-mail, IM/SMS and calendar worked flawlessly for me. I didn't drop a single call with my Pre - after coming from the iPhone, this was a breath of fresh air. Who knew a phone could actually make call!
Synergy - because my life is in Google, I was able to load my contacts, calendar, and email into the phone and be up and running in 10 minutes. Awesome!
What I Didn't Like About the Pre - or What Palm Could do to Woo Me Back:
Calendar - while I loved the integrated calendar function, I couldn't invite people to events. No, you aren't reading that wrong, I could not invite people to events using the calendar on my phone. This is a deal-breaker for anyone in a corporate setting. Please give us this functionality. Please.
Speed... I know I'm spoiled, but the speed on the Palm Pre Plus was less than stellar. I know there are options to overclock the Pre's processor now, but with an improved processor, this wouldn't be necessary. Package WebOS with a 1GHz Snapdragon Processor and I'm back with Palm in 2 seconds flat! The phone took up to 5 minutes just to boot up. Five full minutes of painful waiting. Also, opening apps took 5-7 seconds to load up. With multitasking - it's possible to keep my most important apps up and running so I don't have to wait for this, but an improved processor would allow me to move between more apps more quickly. We all love speed, make the Pre as speedy as the competition and everyone is happy.
Voice Dialing or anything voice related? Hello? Anyone out there? I understand that the programming language has not been released for developers to develop apps that use the devices microphone, so um, why not? Seriously, even my old LG flip phone could do voice dialing. Android is building their OS around voice search - get on the ball Palm and get it out there. Developers will have a field day developing apps that incorporate the microphone.
The App Store on the Palm Pre Plus is very pretty to look at, well organized, and easy to search. Someone, however, forgot to invite the Developers to the party. Sparse is an understatement. I came from Apple so I understand again that I was spoiled. I also understand that no one needs 100,000+ apps. On the Apple App Store, if I was looking for an App, there were often 6-7 to choose from. On the Pre, well sometimes there was 1. No one can rival the App Store on Apple for its app descriptions, screen shots, and volume of reviews. Also, the apps for WebOS are not as mature as their counterparts on other OS's. Evernote is a good example. I expect there's not enough market penetration of WebOS devices to get developers to focus on the platform.
In the End...
I'm still rooting for Palm. I really hope they are able to turn this around. I think new hardware, better hardware, non-faulty hardware is going to be required to make it so. I think the mobile industry as a whole is a better place with Palm in it - they are part of the machine that spurs creativity in design and they are very good at it. I also think they need to get all the parts of their OS out there for developers to use so that they can create apps that rival apps on other platforms. Were it not for buggy devices, we would still be using and satisfied with the Palm Pre Plus. I also think that the Pre is still the right device for a specific group of people. Those new to smartphones, those who want a device that organizes their life, those who want a good communication device and are not so interested in apps, and those who want out of the box, simple functionality. Just make sure you purchase the extended warranty at the start of the contract...
This is awesome. My hubby has a droid, never had an iPhone, but this is great for him. How do you load music? seems really complicated on the droid
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