First Week with the Palm Pre
So, Saturday last week, I ran out the door at 7:40am in hopes that I could get a place in line to get my hands on a Palm Pre. Arriving at 7:50 at the Flamingo & Maryland Sprint Store here in Las Vegas, I was #8 in line. They apparenly had 30 units. No sweat. Six terminals were available to activate the phone, which took 45 minutes. So I hung out for 45 minutes and got called up and was set up and out in 30 minutes (I didn’t port a number).
Fast forward, first impressions, it ran hot, battery went fast, initial apps were cool. I tried to setup the Zappos Exchange server on it, but didn’t work since we have pin policy enabled for EAS. Unfortunately, the error messages were not very forthcoming. Hit “Update” on a whim, and there was a 2 week old 68MB OS update waiting. (WHY!?) Ended up setting it up with IMAP so I could get my mail. Calendar goes in via Google Sync with Exchange from my desktop at the office, then OTA from Google to the Pre.
IMAP works, they promise a fix for Exchange in 60 days. I believe them. Gotta root for the hometown folks. (I grew up in Sunnyvale).
Sync with iTunes worked as advertised (a hack?). Music and video worked, obviously not the DRM laced stuff. Would Apple eventually block the Pre? Turning away potential iTunes download revenue in favor of hardware(iPod/iPhone) revenue? I wouldn’t. The more downloads they sell, the more money they make.
On the battery, actually runs pretty well when I’m not constantly screwing around on it. MicroUSB chargers and adapters are easy to come by. I bought a couple of adapters to use the blackberry charger (MiniUSB->MicroUSB) for 60 cents, and a car charger (originally for Motorola RAZR2) for around $4.
So instead of paying $30 for a car charger at the Sprint Store, $25 for another wall charger. There I was, $10 later with 2 wall chargers (attached to my old miniUSB chargers) and a car charger so I can play Pandora in the car. They don’t work 100% though, have to plug it in slow-like for some reason for the Pre to go into “charge” mode. Strange.
I have gone 24 hours without needing to charge though, maybe 15 minutes of light email reading, and a few phone calls, so overall, the complaints about battery life I think are from people who spend way too much time on their phones and not enough time in reality.
Biggest gripe so far? Email delete button is too easy to hit, accidentally deleted a few emails before I could read them already. Need an option to confirm a delete.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:12 PM
Thanks for the great review. I’ve been waiting for adventurous cats like yourself to give me the low down before I jump to the Pre. I’ve heard mostly positive so I think I’ll be making the switch.