I've been dying to rant... I had an iPhone 3G until last Saturday when I bought a Pre and then realized a piece of me died. While the Pre is a great phone compared to the Treo, it sucks compared to the iPhone. Things that suck - It is not easy to turn the phone on, unlock it, bring up the phone app, find a contact, and call them with one hand. - The Pre will not allow you to connect to a IMAP server with a self-signed SSL cert which is a HUGE disappointment. - The flap to reveal the connector port for charging is difficult to open and I could honestly see the flap breaking off eventually. - The connector looks like a micro USB port, but is some proprietary connector. - Most of the time it feels like the touch screen is not accurate... it thinks my figure is like 5 pixels below where I clicked. - The first day I had it, it would arbitrarily reboot. That hasn't happened since I updated the phone. - A fully charged battery with WIFI and bluetooth on drained about 25% while I slept for 8 hours. - There is a bit of slowness with the UI, especially when launching apps. - The best way to sync contacts is with your Gmail contacts which I had to first get my contacts into Gmail (which took a long time). You can't use iTunes to sync contacts. - The phone looks like a symmetrical stone... in a dark office, I often somehow manage to pick up the phone upside down. - The web browser is clunkier than the iPhone's. - The max ringtone volume is still hard to hear when the phone is in your pocket. Maybe I'm just getting old. - No visual voicemail. Calling up and hearing "1 new voicemail message" from some number that I haven't memorized is worthless. - Makes a distorted noise when using my Jawbone bluetooth headset before and after calls. - It's probably a matter of time before the Pre doesn't work with iTunes. Right now, it is detected as an iPod v1.0. - The address book lists all of the contacts and their phone numbers making the list very long and visually hard to find who I want to call. - You can't add/edit contacts while in the phone's address book. You need to leave the phone app and go into the contacts app. - Instead of a "settings" area, they have a separate app for configuring bluetooth, device info, wifi, sounds, wallpaper, security, etc. - No SDK... yet. Things that don't suck - Feels comfortable next to your ear. - Sprints plans are cheaper than AT&T's. - Sprint has better signal at my house in Shakopee. - The gestures are fun. - Best Palm phone so far. - In my opinion, best Sprint phone so far. - Feels smaller in my pocket compared to the iPhone. - The camera flash LED is nice. - When plugged in, it can show up as a external drive. - You can update the phone without a computer. - There is some new innovative UI, but most of it was copied from the iPhone. - When the SDK does come out, it will work on Linux! And you don't have to code in Objective-C! I'm sure there's a list of other things that rock or suck with the Pre. Despite AT&T's network being crap in my area, I'm going to switch back to AT&T and get a iPhone 3GS. The 16GB model is the same price as the Pre and has lots of nice features. Only 6 months until AT&T adds a new tower to my area that should make the signal better. Now the question is how do I return the Pre and switch back to AT&T without losing my phone number? -Chris P.S. Once I'm back on my iPhone, I'll be using Touch Term (http://www.freshapps.com/touch-term/) to SSH into my Linux boxes. Mike Miller wrote: > I got the new Palm Pre when it came out on Saturday. As luck would have > it, my wife's phone failed, so we had to get another Sprint phone to > replace it, so I found out about the Pre and got one for her and another > for me. Before the Pre I was using the Treo 600 for 5.5 years and it > still worked great. The Pre is taking things to a much higher level > though: multitouch 320x480 display with 24-bit color, WiFi, EVDO, > Bluetooth, a keypad, beautiful small design, very nice apps and a new OS > called "Palm webOS" that allows developers to use HTML, CSS and JavaScript > (so expect a lot of apps to come out soon). > > Anyway, I don't work for Palm or Spring or know anyone who does. So far I > like this product though. One bad thing -- it sometimes refuses to take a > charge, it doesn't warn about this, and you have to restart it to fix the > problem. I don't know how often that happens, but it happened to me and > to another guy who attended a training seminar with me (and about 15 > attending). > > The new webOS is not Free Software, but I guess it has some Linux inside > and thus free components. I am interested in using the Pre to connect to > Linux boxes via SSH. If you see an app that can do this, let me know. > Apparently the Pre can run old PalmOS software using an API called > "Classic" (which costs $30, but I think I need it): > > http://www.motionapps.com/classic/ > > The truth is, I really wanted to start doing something with OpenMoko, but > every time I checked, they seemed to be way behind and not really ready > for me. I'll be keeping my eye on them. > > Feel free to write to me off of the list if you are using one of these Pre > phones or are interested in them. It would be fun to hear from local > users. > > Mike > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >