Sprint made sure they tethered it with a wireless data plan- I'm going
back a number of years though to the first generation one. Before I
dumped the phone I tried using it with just a voice plan and it was
worthless. No 3G data network = no use. I'm not aware of any custom
firmware out there, maybe someone else is?

--
Jeremy MountainJohnson
Jeremy.MountainJohnson at gmail.com



On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 10:37 AM, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Feb 2012, Jeremy MountainJohnson wrote:
>
>> Most people say I should get an iPhone or an Android phone; unfortunately
>> I don't want one. I tried a similar smart phone a couple years back, the
>> Linux based Palm Pre, and found it to be over kill, a big distraction, and a
>> waste of money (factoring in the device and monthly plan).
>
>
> I bought a Palm Pre when it came out in June 2009.  It's a pretty good
> device, but I wasn't blown away.  I still have it.  My carrier is Sprint.
> I'm paying something like $75/month, including taxes, etc.  That's $900 per
> year and quite excessive, I think.  I also think the Sprint people have done
> a lousy job with some aspects -- previous Palm phones (e.g., Treo 600) could
> do a lot of things that were lost with Palm Pre, such as syncing
> *everything* with a computer, and I think Sprint is to blame for the
> undesirable changes (I have to back up to their "cloud," but not everything
> is backed up).
>
> I do have a question:  Suppose I drop my plan.  What can I then do with this
> Palm Pre?  It does have Linux inside and I've been able to use that to copy
> files out of the device.  It has WiFi.  But what exactly stops working if I
> drop my plan?  Do apps fail even if I'm using WiFi instead of Sprint
> networking?  Do any of you have any experience with this?
>
> Mike
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