The Palm Pre

A couple months ago my Palm Treo 650 finally ticked me off enough that I stopped using it and went back to my previous phone, a Sanyo that I stopped using when I upgraded to a smartphone. I had originally purchased the Treo despite poor reviews by existing users; I had used a Palm for years and wanted to stick with a hardware/software platform I was familiar with.

Overall I was pleased with the Treo, but l did have—particularly lately—a disturbing number of resets, where the phone would simply restart. Even more frustrating was that the phone would (as I put it) "go stupid": it would become so unresponsive that it would take 30 seconds to wake up and would not inform me of a phone call. I would need to pull the battery to reset the device. I finally had enough of that nonsense and went back to my old phone while I researched my next one.

If it weren't for the fact that I despise AT&T and have been boycotting them for over 7 years due to hundreds of dollars of overcharges, I'd be buying an iPhone. I bought an iPod Touch last year and it serves most of my needs, so I don't really need a smartphone, but I thought I'd wait a bit until the Palm Pre was released to see if it would be the phone for me. Meanwhile, I narrowed my choices to the Samsung Instinct, the Samsung Rant and the HTC Touch Pro.

I didn't read many reviews of the Pre, but those that I read were nearly completely positive. One review mentioned Jon Rubenstein's comment that the release wouldn't be an iPhone-like affair (my paraphrase; indeed it was not at my local Sprint store: store staff easily outnumbered customers yesterday at the release.

Within minutes it was clear that the Pre was not the phone for me. I'd read the "cheese slicer" comments in the reviews so I was prepared for the sharp edge of the slide-out keyboard, but there's no way I could get used to the feel of the unit while it was open or the awkward recessed keys. The speed of the device was definitely a deterent as well, with "cards" taking 7-10 seconds to appear when I viewed contacts, calendars, etc.

Then, too, I have a sweet deal on my current plan, which is not compatible with the Pre (or the Instinct, either), and I would be paying 70% more to use the Pre. That's ridiculous, since my use of the phone wouldn't be any different from the Treo. (Yet another reason why switching to the iPhone is unlikely.) Frankly, using my landline and DSL is less expensive than mobile usage, so I'm already annoyed at the pricing without the additional cost of a new plan.

In the end, I walk out with a new Rant (two, in fact) and the opportunity to deliver this one.