Comments on: Tell us about your Palm Pre experience

Early sales of the Palm Pre look promising, but some early problems are bring reported. Crave asks its readers what their experience has been with the Pre.

[bedynekj]

Okay, everyone settle down. I am in the market for a new phone and looks like the iphone gets my vote, for now. Basically, they are the same when you get used to them. Thumbs up for all of the apps available for the iphone, especially when you turn to the jailbreak option. Thumbs up for Apple announcing the $99 8GB new phone today.
After the latest 'iphone killer" fiasco Sprint called "The Instinct ", my instinct tells me to wait until they fix all of the problems with the Palm Pre that I am already reading about or just get an iphone.

[vail970]

I'm a long time Sprint customer and was told I would be able to get the Pre on Saturday,June 6th based on the fact that I was on their list and had signed up for the required service contract. I had read numerous articles regarding the supposed controlled distribution of the phone.Clearly,that became an issue and I did not get one.In any follow up calls to the Sprint store no one seems to know when or how many more phones will be available.It doesn't seem like a great way to inspire customer satisfaction and a commitment to Sprint

[PStrangelove]

I fell in to the 3G hype and bought one last year. It was a cool toy but never has it been my phone. I immediately had to get another phone (G1) to make calls and have useful contacts..

The pre is fantastic, it makes my 3G feel like a '79 Buick and my G1 feel like 67' Rivera. The pre fits naturally in your hands, its smooth and nice to hold. It is lighting fast compared to the G1.
The "cards" are great, and you really don't get the importance of multitasking, until your happy.
Browsing is great. Honestly this is the best phone I have ever had, and I have had many.
First few days battery life seemed low, but the more you use it and charge it, it comes out better than G1 and about equal to 3G.

[drinselman]

I got to the Sprint store in Coral Springs, FL at 7:25am and was 18th person in line. The doors opened at 8:00am sharp. Everything was very organized. We were allowed in 9 at a time and then 2 people would go to a table so they could play with the phone and receive some basic training. When it was your turn to go, a salesperson helped you. There was a bit too much up sell for me, however, I realize that it is all part of the process. After you get your phone you went to another area where technicians would help you with the basics of setting up email, contacts etc. The technical staff was not as knowledgeable as I would have liked. I got out at 11:30am eager to play with my new toy.

The phone is amazing. I did spend literally 9 hours on the phone with tech support because I wanted to master all of the features at once, which I did. At this point I can probably teach the techs. There are only 2 negatives that I have found so far. (1)You cannot delete multiple emails at once; they must be deleted one at a time which is a pain in the neck if you get many emails. (2) You cannot sync directly with outlook. You must use Google calendar or another internet based calendar which can compromise security. In my opinion you should be able to sync directly from outlook if you choose to. There are not many applications as of yet, but I am sure they will be coming very quickly.

The sound quality of the phone is terrific. The internet is fast and crisp. The slide out keyboard is a winner. Calendar and contact syncing is fast and easy. Sound quality of the speaker is amazing for a phone. Tech service was fast with little hold time on the phone.

In short buy the phone today. You will be glad you did. Bravo Palm for a great worth the wait product.

Dr. Paul S. Inselman
www.drinselman.com

[drmatthewchan]

For syncing with stand-alone Outlook on your desktop PC, check this out: http://www.chapura.com/pm_standard_pre.php

The Pre just gets better and better!

[silicron]

The Pre is a very nice phone and I might even consider getting one if they had it for my carrier, but I have a strong feeling that it won't even begin to live up to its potential in the current market. What a lot of people don't know is that Palm is betting the farm on the Pre and if it doesn't do extremely well, then they are in trouble. There is very steep competition in the smart phone market now and Sprint has many issues well beyond the handsets they sell. Sprint came about 2 weeks from filing Chapter 11 last year, so many creditors are well invested in the Pre's success. I have a strong feeling that the Pre is going to fall very flat and end up ultimately bankrupting Sprint and Palm.

[rfceo]

AT&T chief Randall Stephenson warned that US wireless networks aren't ready for a deluge of 3G traffic. Speaking at the All Things Digital conference Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reports that Stephenson spent much of his time addressing complaints that AT&T was ill-equipped to handle network demands posed by the iPhone. "I feel like we are closing the gap on this, but we're not there yet," he said. "We are about to see these issues manifest themselves industry-wide." So would at&t be able to handle additional influx of additional web enabled phones? Would their network slow to a crawl?
Sprint has a lead in 3G speed and also has next generation 4G networks up and operating.

[mjwelchphd]

When I upgraded my account to the "Everything Data" plan in preparation for buying the Pre, a Sprint manager gave me a free Airave and free monthly service for the Airave. Of course, I was delighted to accept it, but still I asked why Sprint would give me the free Airave. She told me it was an effort to help reduce the load on the Sprint towers.

Later, when I got home with my new Pre and tested everything, I found out that although the Pre supports "tethering" or "phone as modem," I got a message stating that it was not in my plan. Obviously, for me to get that far proved that the service works. I called Sprint and got an obnoxious young rep who wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise, and he was telling me a bunch of technical lies I knew not to be true (I've been a programmer for 45 years; I'm not a newbie). It didn't take too long to put 2+2 together: Sprint has decided NOT to support the "phone as modem" because their towers are operating near capacity, and they want to reduce the load because they're not in a position to expand the network at this time.

Sadly, I rarely need "phone as modem," but when I need it, I need it.

Otherwise, I love my new Pre. I had a WinMo phone before, and it was the most unreliable phone I've ever owned. It crashed or hung regularly, and I propose that there is a reason HTC made the "reboot" button so accessible. I hardly used any of the features of the phone because WinMo regularly lost data. I had some vandals attack our car, and I took 31 pictures for the police. WinMo crashed later that day, and the next day, when I went to look at the photos, they were all missing. The sequence of photos left off at 27 and started again at 59, so I know the camera took the photos.

I have had the Pre for a week and found only one problem. The phone slowly lost memory, and ran slower, until finally it said (with no apps open) that there was insufficient memory to load any app. I had to turn off and on the phone to restart the OS. I'm sure Palm will find this quickly and we will get an update, so it doesn't worry me.

This argument over whether the iPhone or the Pre is better has no basis. The iPhones my nieces have work very well. Apple had the hard job of inventing the new paradigm. Palm and others have the easy job of carrying Apple's work forward and making improvements. The Pre is more sophisticated that the iPhone, but the iPhone is still a fine product, and will get better. Apps for the Pre will be written, and in two years (like the iPhone) there will be thousands of them. Pick the phone you feel comfortable with and buy that one. I'm happy with my Pre.

[DivaTech]

I was in line for 3hrs in OKC to get my Palm pre . My husband was in another location to get 2 Palm pre's by 1030 we were at starbucks with my kids my husband enjoying our 4 phones. SO EXCITING! We came from AT&T after being loyal customers for 12 yrs didn't get us anywhere. High plans, robots for customer serv reps. No empathy.We were fed up. I waited till today to get a right feel for the phone and have a full sense of the PRE before commenting! and you know what? we have not put the phones down. The keyboard @ and . commons signs and easy access. Huge for me bc I email constantly. FW text messages easy one more step but still easy and organizze We were most concern with syncing but it literraly took minutes to get it all done. And to think I never ever ever again have to deal w/ AT&T is probably one of the best feelings oh and one more thing : Never spending another dime on ringtones is absolutely satisfying!!! since i can use my mp3's. or Itunes and we have tons and tons since we had the Iphone which now sits as just a paper weight Just fabolous!!! We are new sprint customers we ported 2weeks ago right before the Pre came out (wink wink) :D My only fear was the things I had read and heard about Sprint Cust serv. But you know what??It's been great, Empathy not robots I sincerely hear they care even if its bunch of c**p or if they are acting while I'm on the phone w/them for those 5 minutes 15 minutes It feels like they genuinely care. And that has been my experience w/ SPRINT. A great one!! Now my Kids 15 and 17 have not put there Pre's down either. I will be commenting a little later! :D If you have the chance to get away from AT&T this is the time! Run Run Run to a SPRINT STORE and get you a Palm Pre!!!

[myDrpC]

Here's a story, of a man (oops - phone) name brady (oops) PRE... (hehehe)

Hi Bonnie. nice job!!!

Otay, as promised per last response - yep the kid stood outside a BestBuy for 6 hrs. Woohoo!
Course, as I was surfing the internet on my Blackberry Curve - my record was broken as someone
showed up at a BestBuy @ 3:00am beating my 4:00am arrival. Crazy, maybe - but I was the first (yep,
number 1 - thou no coffee and donuts :( ) out of 2 " YES " to get the PRE.

Otay, here's the juice parts you asked about. IT'S the BOMB!!!

Truly thou, the PRE is the new Kid on the Block and it will only get better with each OS update. The potential of the PRE is OFF the Charts. And considering what Apple presented today @ WWDC, Palm or Sprint for that matter don't have to worry about anything. In fact, as you and I have chat about - this phone is in a class of it own. Yep, the PRE is here to stay. YES!

But, Palm if your listening and I'm really hoping so - we do have some major issues and request of
you to take this phone " Over the TOP " and make it the phone of the year!

Otay, first:

Issue 1: Problem with setting up work email - EAS accounts
Scenario:
EAS Corp SSL:
Issue: Missing Security components like pin enforcement. (WHY, Palm ?)

When trying to log on to my Corp server I'm getting the following error message from the PRE:



****** The mail server requires security policies that are not supported *******


EAS Corp Non-SSL:
Issue: Will not validate without SSL secure website (WHY, Palm ?)

When trying to sign in to my Corp server I'm getting the following error message from the PRE:

****** SSL certificate error. Is the date and time correct ? Answer: YES! *******


Okay, we found a way to setup a generic email account (really having issues with several POP email accounts as well) to send the root certificate by email to the PRE and TRUST Security Certificate for server. However, then we get continually and it's NOT just for EAS accounts but POP accounts as well:

****** unable to validate account settings. ******

SOLUTION:

(Palm, please assist us in making this easier whether SSL certified or NOT)...

if your like me and didn't have a Palm device prior to the PRE & you don't want to use Google
to sync your data to the PRE, then unless Palm comes to our rescue with an update very soon - we will be waiting for Chapura to release their software to rescue us. Again, this really shouldn't be this hard.

Every site I'm visiting has more EXCHANGE/EMAIL/CALENDAR issues than any other issue which means this really is a problem for the consumer. Okay enough with the complaining, except -

Simply put, We need 1 device for everything - not having to carry around 2 or 3 and with potential of the PRE there is NO reason not to have this fixed! Please, Palm all you have to do is check every blog from users and this is the number 1 issue!!! Please fix, both the SSL issue and NON-SSL issue for exchange.

How big is this issue, whelp I'm starting to see folks say they might return the device if this isn't fixed SOON! Please review this issue.
______________________________________________


Issue 2: How to move the cursor BACK to the beginning of the sentence without highlighting
Scenario:

The keyboard is so small, it's very hard to get the cursor within a text block back to or before a previous
character. In fact, if your editing a website address - it's almost impossible to correct the url without a back arrow key. Not to be confused with the delete key which will remove your characters all together.

SOLUTION:
However, - an onscreen keyboard might be the miracle (course we would need navigational keys)


Otay, just a couple of other things we are asking too - like control of HOW the pre imports from Google, Aim and any other (including the reported YAHOO addition), so things are all messed up and contacts you don't wont.

Bluetooth appears to be missing some components as well ? Oh, and here's a REALLY BIG one :)

Can you please ADD rotation of the screen with emails, please.
We would like to view HTML emails in landscape mode.

Sorry, Bonnie - boy I got a huge Santa Claus list... But Where's the BEEF ( Oops... where is all the compatible VIDEO CODES. Only I'm able to re-code Mp4.

What would be really nice as well is a "SELECT ALL" text to use with Cut/Copy/Paste function!

Otay, I'm done. But overall - this phone rocks and will take over the world (just kidding) once Palm works on the things above. And I'm sure other have more request so I hope someone's listening :)

Thanks again for the article, Bonnie. You Rock!!!

[PRyck]

Loving so far. Was using the Android G1 before this and im very happy with the switch.

Pros:
No hordes of fanboys i cant stand.
The OS is nice, good eye candy.
Thinner than i thought it would be.
Nice feel when texting or calling, not a square brick.
The multi tasking is wonderful.
Syncing with gmail was super smooth.
The app store is clean cut, nicely laid out, easy to use.

Cons:
Some sluggish controls.
Battery life is the same maybe a little better than the G1, i was hoping for more.
Opening up certain things like email or certain apps there is some lag.

Over all a nice phone. Love the new Palm OS, would recommend getting it.

[nrpruitt]

I bought the Pre on Saturday. Overall I am impressed with its performance. I have jumped ship from AT&T and went back to Sprint. The only problem that I have experienced is that the Pre does not sync contact photos with Google Contacts. I am not sure if the problem is with the Pre or on Google?s end. Sometimes Google Contacts acts a little quirky. On occasion it will not save the contact photos. In other cases I had photos successfully assigned to my Google Contacts but the photos still did not make it onto the Pre. It did however manage to link the Facebook photos. I hope someone has a fix for this. This is a minor annoyance.

[ofmyony]

I need a larger screen and an onscreen keyboard that works in both portrait and landscape. Give me WebOs on an iPhone form factor. Oh I also need to be able to enlarge the text. So lets get to work on that second device Palm.

Someone will probably say just buy an iphone, I don't like AT&T. Plus you can't do Pre-Paid

[TADKHA]

Ive had a very good experience with my new Palm Pre, Ever since waking up bright and early on the big launch day on Saturday morning ive had nothing but good to say of the unit. The one issue that did come to my attention was unfortunately like others have said as well, the battery life is not quite at the capacity that it should be.Especially with the use of all the searching and great applications that the phone has to offer. Hopefully a longer lasting battery will be the next market item we can get our hands on so we dont end up having to carry a charger or extra charged battery everywhere with us...

[wkdsid]

The Palm Pre will defeat the Iphone, in time. Yeah, all those brainwashed Iphone fanatics dont realize that the iphone had such few apps at launch. In reality, the pre is 12 up on the iphone at release, haha. GO PRE. GO SPRINT. Sprint gets so much undeserved criticism.

[Weldon3]

Purchased 3 for the company this Saturday. The phone itself is incredible. You have to actually remember all of the things it can do and how you can incorporate them into everyday life-yeah I'm a first time smart phone user. :-} However, after a few hours of use, my personal phone would starting shutting off with just a minor jiggle. I tried different things and got it to work for awhile but the battery seemed to get so hot it would burn my hand. I have had to wait for a replacement which I hope to receive tomorrow. It just sucks to spend precious time setting everything up and updating the OS to have to do it all over again. Like everyone else, I am also waiting for the bigger battery. My wife, who is a real estate agent is upset over having to keep the thing on the charger all day long - and it still died on her in the middle of a conversation on the first day of use. I wonder if I should have gotten her a more business oriented blackberry?

[jlduran]

I got the Pre on Saturday and have been playing with it. It is not a i-Phone killer. I really thought it would of been much better. Palm missed the boat on the phone portion of the phone. There is no voice dial so when I am driving I have to look up a contact to call them. Bluetooth volume isn't as loud as it is on my HTC Mogal using the same Moto Bluetooth. My HTC Mogal has voice dial and is a much better phone all around. No spell check for email or IM's, or text prediction. I see the Pre more of a toy for kids then anything. I am giving the PRE a big thumbs down, Sorry Palm I thought you would of put a better phone out this time.

[ISA2000]

does the Pre have the ability to send pictures via a txt message?

[Garlidie]

Yes

[Garlidie]

Yes

[WiiZKiiD]

Although I am not able to acquire the Palm Pre at this particular time, my mom brought one. :] When I first saw the phone I thought, "What a beautiful creature?!" Although the phone legally belongs to my mom, I still have it in my heart. Ha I have an i Phone. I honestly like the Pre better. If my mom gave me an opportunity to get that phone, I would take the Pre any second. The touch screen is no joke. It has the ripple effect and everything. I like how you can interchange AIM with SMS. Also, how you can link pictures from your photo bucket account and face book is also linked. The thing I do not like is the... uh... hm... I know I didn't like one thing... aw I forgot. I was so overwhelmed by all the good ha. Its just like magic [j k] ha Well... I have to go ride my Zebra and play with my [mom's] Pre ha... Bye! :]

[modelnet]

Perfect phone - bu hotmail bug will drain battery, this is the cause of heat problems and battery drain. delete hotmail and its fine

[krlynn53]

Picked one up on Saturday. I'd been watching and waiting for a long time. Had 600s, 650s, 700s, 755, all Palm OS. Loved them all. Have recently been using a BB Storm provided by work while still carrying my personal 755. I'm both excited and disappointed by the Pre. It has a cheaper feel to me than the 700 and 755, certainly than the BB Storm. But the functionality, as far as it goes, it incomparably slicker. I mostly love it, but that's mixed with some frustration that Palm has come so close with the Pre, but fell short in a couple of important (to me respects) that reflect the influence of striving for mass market appeal over enterprise quality and functionality. I use these devices heavily for email. I have relatively small hands, but the key board is still uncomfortably cramped for me. Email configurability is pitiful. E.g., I haven't found a way to delete emails on either my Exchange or Gmail account without having them also delete on the server. There isn't anyway I can find to manage more than one email at a time. Hopefully, these issues will be addressed.

[vegahw]

Got to E-mail then tap on the top left menu
then tap >Preferences & Accounts.
select gmail (or whatever e-mail client.)
Scroll down to default folders
select a default folder to send your Trash to.
you can also create a recently deleted folder on your account and then set it as your default trash.

Hope it helps!

[djake1234]

I love my new Pre. I have a few complaints that I can live with (lack of Pre Desktop software, battery lasts about 8 hours...). The one thing I really miss from my Treo is the directional pad. A d-pad makes web surfing and game playing much easier. I find it a tough to use my fat fingers tap a link on a web page especially if there are a bunch of links close together. It works, but it's not ideal.