Applications

THINGS I LOVE ABOUT THE PALM PRE

As time goes by, I'm getting more and more comfortable with the beautiful little egg, known as, The Palm Pre. I just want to show you a couple of my favorite things.

FIRST: ADD A CALL. Other wise know as call conferencing.

Notice on the CALL SCREEN, in the lower right hand corner is a +phone symbol (add call), you place your call then after the person picks up you hit the +phone symbol (add call). At the top of the second picture you see where you dial the second person you want to add to the conference, then push talk and you're on a three way call. This is so neat, the Blackberry Curve nor the Palm Pro have this feature. I just love it. You don't have to remember any numbers to dial to place a conference call.… Read more

Customizing your Pre

When I buy something, no matter what it is, I consider it mine. In the United States, there are some cell phone companies that don't allow you to customize your phone the way you want like most cell phone companies do. What this means is that they might disallow you to put on a custom ringtone or wallpaper without going through their service to do so, or you'll have to find a way to hack the phone to put the media on yourself. Thankfully, Spring and Palm don't make you go through that trouble to put wallpapers … Read more

Upgrade Android icons to display unread count

Android's open nature makes it easy to customize the look and feel of your phone with widgets, themes, and home screen replacements. Not surprisingly, many have chosen to make their Android phone look and operate like the wildly popular iPhone.

Yet, Android and the iPhone differ in the way they display unread application notifications. Android places new alerts in the systemwide notification bar while the iPhone places a notification directly over the specific app. Both systems work well, but some might prefer the iPhone's system.

SMS Unread Count is a free Android widget that attempts to emulate the … Read more

Getting connected on my Pre!

Probably the most important thing to me in any sort of smart phone is connectivity. And not just having a signal, but being able to easily connect to my different mail accounts, and NOT have to worry about my contacts. In the past, trying to manage porting my contacts over from phone to phone every 2 years, all while MS Outlook was becoming my de facto source of my contacts. When I got my first smart phone, a Windows based Motorola Q, my contacts were pulled in directly from my MS Exchange account and I believed I would never have … Read more

Applications: Email and Contacts

Setting up Email and Contacts was fast and simple.The first time I turned on the phone, I followed instructions on a few screens and entered my Gmail account information. That was it on my end; the phone then downloaded all the data that was already in my account.

You can add several email accounts to the Pre. There's a nice feature to consolidate the accounts by filtering the Inbox and Flagged items. The Smart Folders options for both these folders is on by default, but if you need more of a distinction between work and personal email it's easy to turn off. I like that you delete messages by swiping them off to the side. Two big gripes, however:

1) there's no confirmation screen when you delete a message, and 2) you can't turn any of the screens in Email to landscape. Grrr!

Some Early Impressions and a Word about Authenticity

[Some of my earliest comments after playing with the Pre I purchased.]

Though I understand the skepticism some might have about the sincerity of positive user reviews of the Pre made by folks given free Pres to "test drive," I can assure you that everything I write in my posts--both Pre positive and Pre negative--will be sincere. And not only because I actually chose to purchase the Pre over the iPhone before I was asked to guest blog.

Also, you should know that, as far as I can tell, our posts for this test drive are not being edited at all by anyone at Palm, Sprint, or CNET. We paste what we write into the CNET blogging tool, save and "publish" there, and what we have written goes live almost immediately.

When I purchased my first Pre before receiving one to write about in this test drive, I was really excited. For months, I had been reading everything I could find about all new cell releases on Engadget, Boy Genius Report, CNET, Pre Central, Gizmodo, and Mac Rumors (because I had expected to purchase the iPhone) and so my enthusiasm was palpable. So much so, in fact, that I really can't recreate it now.

So...what follows are some of my first impressions of my Pre experience--impressions posted to Pre forums in the first few days after I made my purchase, before I knew I would be guest blogging here on CNET, and before I was given a free phone.… Read more

Some Notes on Settings and Features

The Palm Pre, like all smartphones, comes with a variety of features and software as well as the ability to purchase third party applications. In this post I'll discuss a few of the built-in features.

Screen Lock and Location Services

What I want my screen lock to do is, of course, lock the screen, but I also want a little flexibility. I can set the screen to turn off after 1, 2, or 3 minutes, and I can set the screen unlock password as off, simple PIN (numbers only), or Password. However, if I manually turn off the screen, it automatically locks the screen after about 2 seconds. So, if I want to use a PIN or password, the screen is either off and locked, or on and unlocked. I would like turn off the screen and be able to set the time before it locks. It might sound a little nit-picky, but I think about it everytime I use the phone.

The Location Services include the ability to geotag your photos. The problem here is that it's either on or off, and the setting is separate from the camera feature. I'd like to see an option to toggle the photo tagging on the camera screen. … Read more

Red, White and Blue + Palm Pre = Independence

I consider myself a geeky sort of gal with a good understanding of technical gadgets. Technology just makes sense to me. I tell people I was raised not only on a farm, but also on a computer. My dad is a mechanical engineer. When I was a child he taught Computer Aided Crafting (CAD) at a local college, and sometimes he'd take me with him. TSTC's Computer Lab is where I was first introduced to the wonders of technology.

Fast forward a few decades and here I am, twenty-five years old, a business owner and manager, graphics designer for web and print, web hosting provider, and blogger. I do some short run printing for local clients and I modify Wordpress themes for people all over the world.

Today's technology not only allows me to work from anywhere, it keeps me in touch with clients, friends, and family. This is why the Palm Pre is a perfect smartphone for me to test drive. (Thanks to CNET and the Sprint Now Network for the phone and 3 months of service!) … Read more

The honeymoon isn't over, but I'm finding flaws in our relationship

WebOS update When I got the Palm Pre, it was loaded with WebOS 1.0.2, and the Updater app told me that 1.0.4 was available. I'm always very leery about firmware updates since you always hear stories about how someone bricked their device by doing a simple firmware update. All it takes is the update to glitch and the device won't know how to boot properly.

Either way, I updated the phone and it went very smoothly. There weren't any changes worth noting here, but being up to date sometimes has features you don'… Read more

iPhone 3GS jailbreak, 'purplera1n,' hits Web

Just as America gears up to celebrate Independence Day comes news that iPhone 3GS owners are getting some freedom of their own.

George Hotz, who you may recall as the teenage hacker who originally unlocked the iPhone, has let loose a jailbreaking app for the iPhone 3GS code-named purplera1n. It enables the installation of third-party software not approved for Apple's App Store.

For now, purplera1n is Windows-only (but not Windows 7) and requires the latest iTunes installed, as well as an iPhone 3GS with the 3.0 firmware. In a Friday blog post titled "I make it ra1n,&… Read more