Palm Pre/Crackberry: The More I Learn, the Less I Like

Right after the general announcement about the Pre, I blogged about it, giving my likes and dislikes.  I said I’d keep an open mind, hoping that I might like the new phone.

I’m an avid Treo 700p user.  It does what I want it to do.  My gripes are few.  I figured that after a few years with it, technology would allow for some improvements on the Treo.  I was a bit optimistic there.  (me, optimistic?  there must be frost in hell at this moment.)

Some of what the Pre offers looked interesting, like the larger display.  Unfortunately I’m having trouble discovering much else to motivate me.  There is no provision for removable storage.  This means you can’t stick a memory card in it.  The first thing Treo users did was get an SD card so they could store data, programs, and music on it.  What lack of logic led to not having a card slot on a new phone?

A larger keyboard would be good too.  The Pre has a slide out keyboard.  Unfortunately the keyboard slides out on the short side, meaning it’s no bigger than the Treo or Centro.  That doesn’t seem too smart.

The new OS will have no compatibility with existing applications.  This means everything I work with now will not work with the Pre.  This is annoying at very least.  If the OS works so much better, maybe this will be less of a problem - we’ll see.

I’m with Verizon.  Unfortunately the Pre debuts with Sprint, for an unannounced period of time.  That’s not particularly helpful or informative.  It does, however, expose Sprint users to New Device Syndrome, wherein all of the first generation bugs will occur during their ownership.

Today I learned about WebOS.  I skimmed over the OS a while back, intending to check out what exactly Web meant.   Apparently there will be NO cable syncing with the Pre.  You have to sync it over the air, hence WebOS.   Perhaps I was given incorrect information, in which case I encourage you to correct me.  This lack of feature is the dealbreaker for me.  If I want to sync certain work info and certain personal info, it appears that I won’t be able to do it.  It will want to sync over the air, which my work servers won’t be happy about.

THERE AIN’T NO CURE FOR THE CRACKBERRY BLUES

Meanwhile the Crackberrys are being deployed at work.  A coworker let me check out his phone for a while.  I’m not crazy about it.  The keyboard, although roughly the same size as the Treo’s, feels alien.  I just plain don’t like the trackball.  It works great on the desktop but fails on the smartphone.

For what it’s worth, this coworker enjoys his Blackberry.  He says it does everything he needs it to and doesn’t crash.  He is not hooked up to work’s Blackberry server.

The interface also fails for me.  You have to hand it to Palm: if nothing else, they produced a relatively stable OS that required very little work to get where you wanted to go.  Windows Mobile greatly increased the number of clicks required to perform most taks. Same for RIM.  Too many clicks to get where you need to be.  One pull down menu, as opposed to several.  No touchscreen really makes things difficult and cumbersome.

This week I beheld the final straw: the circuitous path data takes to arrive at your phone.  If you are not hooked to the server, you can make use of POP3 mail but you simply cannot sync your calendar or contacts.  If you are hooked to the server, everything gets exchanged.

But all is not as it appears…. another coworker was testing out his phone and got a firewall error from work’s firewall.  RIM has seen fit to use work’s internet connection for surfing.  I realize that a positive use of this would be complete control over surfing, but this seems a bit silly.  Why should the server be an internet proxy?   Why can’t the phone get its connection from the carrier?

As if that weren’t enough fun, even the POP3 connection is not normal.  You don’t simply put your POP3 server credentials in - this phone uses some sort of connection that creates a web page.  Everything goes through RIMs servers plus work’s Blackberry server.  Privacy implications aside, that’s way too many points of failure for me.  It’s inefficient, kludgy, and a bit silly.

And it has a GPS in it.  What in the universe do I need a GPS for?  Both phones are very trackable because of this.  Do you want that?  I don’t.

NOW WHAT?

The way I see it, I’m screwed.  Palm is dropping sales of the Centro when the Pre comes out.  There will be no more Treos or Centros, as well as no more development on them.  Of course they will be around for years to come, assuming no physical breakage.  So I can keep my 700p until it breaks.

But where do I go now?  Maybe you can help.  Here are my specs:

• stable
• keyboard-preferrably larger than the Treo/Blackberry
• sync to pc (LINUX SOFTWARE would be nice for once)
• no proprietary servers or circuitous data paths
• POP/IMAP/WEB native email access (Exchange maybe)
• sufficient memory plus removable storage
• plays common media formats - not locked
• larger than Treo screen (if possible)
• FAST
• multitasking OS
• no GPS/tracking
• delivered by Adriana Lima

Yeah, I know…. I’m SOL.