Phone service

30 Days Came And Went

All good things have to come to an end, with that said I would like to throw out one final thanks to groups of people that have made this all possible. First Of all I would like to thank Palm, Sprint, And CNET for making all of this possible by working together to help promote this great phone and WEBOS as one. I would also like to thank everyone at SmartPhoneJunkie SPJ and PPCGeeks PPCGEEKS for bringing this opportunity to my attention as well as convincing me to try placing in my "application" for this contest. Without all of the above being a part of this I would not have been able to test this great device and blog about many of the useful features, how the device works, the size factor, etc. And finally thanks to the readers because without you none of this would have been thought of since the user themselves are the people that make a blog or webpage what it is and as a Co-Founder of a site i can't stress that enough. But without further ado here is my overall thoughts on the device. The form factor and overall look of the device is amazing for the most part. The solid gloss black color screams for the consumer to pick it up, the bright clear screen draws you in with the millions of colors, the slideout qwerty keyboard screams to be pressed, ans the great angled slide grabs the attention and keeps the eyes focused on it. In a design for a device you cant ask for more than that, but with the good comes the bad. When the device is slid open revealing the keyboard it exposes a semi-sharp cheese like slicer that overlaps the recessed keys so they don't make contact with the screen when closed. This to the frequent phone user is troublesome since the keyboard is a huge thing on a device and having an imperfection there can be the beginning of the end. The only other flaw with the general make-up of the device is the "Oreo Problem" that many users have faced. The oreo problem is where the phone can move quite a bit from side to side as if you were un-twisting an oreo. (you can check this out i the video below and sprint does replace these devices with new ones.)… Read more

Final Post: Looking Forward

In this final post, I would like to say a little about what I look forward to in my Pre experience and express my appreciation for this opportunity to share my experience and ideas about the Palm Pre.

What I Look Forward to Most

As I have said and implied in many of my posts, I love my Pre. I have had mostly positive (mostly very positive, actually,) experiences with the phone since I got it. It works with me seamlessly for the most part and has allowed me to stay in contact with the world in ways I either could not or could not enjoy with my Blackberry Pearl. I am thrilled to be a Pre user now, and I expect many positive future Pre experiences.

Like any good consumer of technology, however, I am always looking forward to the next fun technology-mediated experience. So, in that spirit, I would like to note a few, as yet un-had, experiences I am looking forward to with my Pre:

External Notification Light

The feature I think I would most like to experience on the Pre in future is being able to tell that I have a message without having to wake up the phone to check over and over again. Ideally, the home button might light differently for different kinds of notifications--for example, blue for voicemail, red for SMS, and green for email--but I would be thrilled if it lit up at all to indicate there was a notification I needed to review.

Visual Voicemail

I hope this is in the works 'cause this would be a great feature on the Pre--one I have have only heard about as a cell user and never experienced except for my limited experiments with Google Voice. The Pre is a phone that already excels at messaging and notifications in many ways, but without visual voicemail and (another missing feature I mention below), there are limits to how excellent the phone can be for messaging.

Forwarding SMS/MMS Messages

As it is, I do a lot of SMS and MMSing and I love doing both of these on my Pre, but I really look forward to being able to forward SMS/MMS messages.

Copying and Pasting More Easily

Yes, there is a way to copy/paste currently. But it doesn't work in all fields (received SMS's, for example) and it's kind of a pain to have to hold two keys down and drag. I don't do it very often because it's a bit too complicated, but I would do it a lot if it was made more easy. WebOS 1.1 has apparently got an easier method enabled in Memos--a way that involves some tapping for whole word and paragraph selection. This is the kind of thing that qualifies as "more easily" for me.

Selling the Pre: Happy Pre Users Offer Ideas

As this test drive winds down, I find myself wanting to provide some closure to these posts. And how better to provide closure than to look forward?

So, in the spirit of moving forward with the Palm Pre, I have collected the following ideas based on happy Pre user experiences. Some of these are pretty great.

Maybe Sprint/Palm should have another contest for the best Pre marketing idea?

PreCentral member "Meriweather" describes one possible TV commercial:

Have a series of ads that play on the use of cards and multi-tasking--an arena where Palm has an advantage over the iPhone. For example, an ad with a street magician saying, "pick a card, any card" to a throng, and you pan in, and he flips through a series of apps on the Pre, showing calendar, Pandora, email, photos, TV, whatever you want to show off. People in the crowd are oohing and aahing, and shouting out, "we want pandora", "play a video" "check email", etc. Then the magician says, "no problem we can do all of them. All at the same time." The crowd cheers, except one guy with slumped shoulders, who slinks away.

"Ronlongo" describes his idea:

How about an ad where they show all of life's things going on all over the place (meetings, tasks lists, emails, etc.) like a jumbled chaos maybe as separate (but live) images moving around at random on the screen and the actor going crazy trying to manage and remember it all.

Then swap to another actor. Suddenly all the activities resolve into a deck of playing cards again with live pictures on them. For example, one depicting a meeting at work going on, another showing Little Pete's baseball game, etc. the actor shuffles through the cards with ease managing them with complete ease. The meeting card depicts the meeting come to an end and the actor discards the card.

Finally the actor pulls all the cards together into a stack. Touches the top of the stack (where the Pre's power button is) and the stack resolves into a Palm Pre.

Google Voice Homebrew Application Now Available!

It looks like I'm going to have to stop being so lazy and find access to Mac OS 10.5+ so that I can get filecoaster on my Pre so that I can install the latest and, perhaps, greatest homebrew app to date..

Yes, that's right: There is now a Google Voice homebrew app that looks too good to pass up.

If homebrew app installing is not so much your style, vote over at Google Voice for them to work on a native app for the Pre. For now, as Derek over at PreCentral explains:

Blackberry and Android … Read more

The Sprint Side of the Pre

Since I have been a Sprint user for coming up on a decade now, I took its service level for granted. I am going to attempt to rectify that now with some basic notes on how the service is with Sprint and the Pre.

While I cannot compare against personal experience (see above), I do have friends with a mix of cellular carriers and I can compare against them. In my area (Seattle), I have rarely noticed an instance where I got worse service than others around me and have noted several times to be getting any/better/more reception … Read more

THE APPS STORE

I'm back to talk about a few apps I downloaded, but before I do that, I want to inform you about what just happened to me. I just received my SPRINT phone bill and there was an extra $70 added onto my bill for call forwarding. Actually 350 minutes of call forwarding at .20 a minute. The reason for the call forwarding, which I've never done before, was so I can test drive the Palm Pre, but the Pre has it's own phone number so I just forwarded all my calls from my cell phone over to … Read more

Missed Calls - a MISS

Lately, with my new number for this test drive, I've received a few calls from what appears to be Vietnam, and a couple of other random numbers. When you miss a call, a nice notification shows up at the bottom of the screen showing you the number (or contact) you missed the call from. So, like every other human I expect, I click on the missed all notification, assuming this would accomplish 2 things: Inform me about the missed call (when they called, if a message was left, etc), and clear out the notification at the bottom of the … Read more

Gettin' In The Groove

After three weeks of living with two phones, I've finally gotten the Pre on my own Sprint account. No more Samsung Instinct. No more charging two, carrying two, and texting from two phones.

With my life all bundled up in one smartphone I'm finally gettin' in the groove. I love the Palm Pre more every day!

Favorite features to date:

Flick Right to Delete; whether notifications, individual emails, texts/IM's, or photos the user can flick the item off the screen, to the right, and the item is deleted.

Tweed; With all the functionality of my favorite … Read more

Sprint Customer Service - A Good Experience

In the past I've found Sprint's customer service lacking on many levels, however, this week I've had three very nice technical support experiences.

I had requested over a week ago that my free service from Sprint be canceled so I could put the Pre on my own account to more fully experience it's features. I got an email saying they would turn it off last Tuesday night, but as of this Monday morning the service was still connected. I finally turned the phone back on, knowing I would enjoy using the Pre on my trip. And I did. For the first 3 hours. … Read more

SWITCH TO SPRINT AND SAVE..."BIG"!

Well, I'm back with a LOUD ANNOUNCEMENT for all you people out there who've read all the reviews and seen all the commercials for the Palm Pre and just can't wait to get your hands on one, BUT, belong to another phone carrier......."RUN, RUN FAST, HURRY AND ESCAPE TO THE DOORS OF SPRINT.COM!! YOUR WASTING YOUR MONEY AT THESE OTHER CARRIERS, THEY'RE BLEEDING YOU DRY...COME TO SPRINT A.S.A.P.

I've been with SPRINT since 1998 and have never changed. Yes we've had our ugly times but we've … Read more