Moment or Pre

[486sx33]

I get to upgrade soon and was pretty set on the Pre, then with just a Moment's notice I have a dilemma. It's all about getting the features I want and the Pre had the most until the Moment came along. I am just looking for some opinions to help me decide. Here are the core features I like about both. Touchscreen, QWERTY, E-mail/Push, Full Internet, Social Networking, Flash/camera, Wifi/stereo BT, overall performance- not overly sluggish or behind the market for most tasks. Obviously no phone is quite perfect yet but this generation is getting there. I am not afraid to hack the hell out of my phone (sense UI, rooting etc.) here's a quick rundown of the contrasting features i appreciate.

PRE:
WebOS (strong platform but still young)
Intuitive UI
Multi-apps
Multi-Touch
Dedicated development (Palm's flagship created and produced by Palm)
Apps low but promising development
Notify LED(hacked)
Plus more i can't think of right now...

MOMENT:
Android (open, strong, more mature)
AMOLED (drool factor!)
Fast Processor in market for platform
Apps I like Android apps!
Removable/Upgradeable Storage
Vanilla UI is minus but I feel tottally fine to hack to Sense or other
Not sure how phone will perform with hacked UI
Is it Multi-Touch capable?
Did I mention AMOLED!

Price is close in my mind i can find a deal on either so not really a factor more of a tie breaker where Pre would win.

As far as Android phones go the specs on the Moment make it attractive. Know that the HERO just doesn't do it for me it looks good but the specs just are not there for me. Also I love Sprint been with them since 2000 and I'm sticking with them! So chime in and let me know what your thoughts are push me over the fence one way or the other i'm about to flip a coin here!

All opinions are appreciated (except iphone garbage!)
thanks!

Final note I am double posting this at PRECENTRAL to get both perspectives just FYI.

 

[spatel9114]

I had a Pre before I got an HTC Hero and I'm glad I switched. While WebOS will be amazing in a few years, right now it's not too great, the OS is very laggy and the battery life is beyond horrible, plus the fact that there are only about 250 apps in the App Store, so if it were me, I would definitely wait for WebOS to develop more and go with Samsung Moment.

 

[wodin#AC]

I've had a Pre for a couple of months, and I'm increasingly getting the feeling that I dropped the hammer too soon.

It' just got too many little things that work, but not quite right. Like Synergy filling up memory and creating duplicate contacts all over the cloud. No mature Outlook sync. Many many homebrew (unautorized) patches just to get functionality to what it should have been out of the box. etc. etc. etc.

I seriously considering buying a Moment on my step son's contract, giving him my Pre and keeping the Moment for myself.

 

[486sx33]

so Engadget just reviewed the phone and they are not too impressed but it's the same old story... other than a few personal preference details the phone is great except for the software. Now i posted on the android forum cause you guys would know best, can't you just steal some other android UI? it ships with cupcake but donut is already released can't you just push it onto the phone with a PC? Droid is releasing with android 2.0 can't you just push that onto the moment when that comes out? Or sense UI so it's a faster HERO with a keyboard and flash? I was under the impression that as long as u are willing to hack it u can do just about anything to it. Maybe ppl will try it when it comes out. Am i wrong? I undersatnd the reviewers can't hack for their reviews but it's pretty simple to do right?

 

[doublebullout]

Love your user name. Big props for that!

Nobody really knows with any certainty whether you'll be able to update the Moment to a 2.0 ROM that includes SenseUI, as SenseUI is proprietary to HTC. Maybe, maybe not.

I'd answer your original question this way:

Are you a heavy calendar/tasks/memos user on your current device?
If so, you will probably not be happy with the Pre. The calendar app is very sluggish, does not have a search function, and does not have an agenda or "today" view. The tasks app is very basic, with limited sorting functions and no Exchange category support. The memo app is a toy, nothing more.

If your primary need is for a multimedia "entertainment" phone, I think the Pre is probably a better choice. Palm is no longer the same company it was, and the Pre is a very poor PDA/phone combo. If you do need a solid PDA/phone device, either the Moment or the BB Tour are superior to the Pre.

 

[IIJBII]

I just posted a review of the Moment, Hero and the Pre here:

http://forum.androidcentral.com/samsung-moment/1034-moment-hero-pre-review-long-post.html

Hopefully it helps!

 

[nickster#AC]

I returned the Pre to Sprint yesterday for the Moment. I had the Pre for about 3 weeks and the phone was constantly dropping calls and the signal strength would jump up and down erratically. I could not even walk around in my house without dropping calls (which never happened with my 2 previous phones), even though a Sprint tech told me there were 4 towers within 2 miles of my house! I drive the same route everyday and today the Moment never once dropped a call or cut in and out like the Pre did.The Pre felt flimsy and cheap to me , while the Moment is heavier and feels solid in your hand. The Moment is a great phone first and foremost with a bunch of cool features to boot. If you're looking for a good solid phone, you should seize the Moment!!

 

[486sx33]

thanks for the replies... finally some info that i'm asking for!

Right now I use a G2 phone (Samsung Upstage) I have always gone a Gen. behind because I didn't want to spend over $200 for a phone.
I use it:
#1 as a phone(absolutely most important)
#2 Texting
#3 Java Games (i love Million Dollar Poker!)
#4 Check movie times sports scores watch TV Listen 2 Musicetc.
#5 GPS (yup free SprintNav on my G2 phone! i like Sprint)
#6 Camera (Rarely it's 1.3 no flash)

So now with the price in my range for top of the line Smartphone I am ready to jump in!
The features I am looking foreward to the most are:
#1 Full web browsing
#2 Keyboard for entry
#3 touch sensetive
#4 E-mail (especially like text)
#5 Social Networking
#6 Useable Camera WITH FLASH!
#7 Apps that make my phone do other interesting stuff and entertain me.

Because this will be my first Smartphone the OS doesn't matter as far as learning to use it, more so as once i learn 2 use it i'll be most likely to stick with it. I am a techie for sure and can figure out how to maximize functionality on whatever device. I do like things that just work though (and apple crap doesn't as advertized IMO) At this point I really like the Palm Pre and am excited about WebOS Gestures are very nice and the hardware is top notch. The big plus though with the Moment is Android, it already has tons of great apps and ongoing development/improvement. The single biggest plus to me with Android is the future. Android is open OS software and as such when it comes time to upgrade, if trends continue, i will have a ton of options while with WebOS i may have 1 or 2 devices and they might not fit my needs at the time.

I just don't know...
RIght now the Pre is better but for the future Android has a better outlook -for now.

 

[vincarrillo]

Get the Moment. This is the best built phone with the most stable O/S I have ever had.

Based on your points:
1. Browser works great, if all you want is a browser - noticed some of the video reviewers were ridiculous expecting the browser to serve them a hot meal with their hyperlinks.

2. Keyboard is the absolute best even with some minor layout quirks.

3. Screen is of course touch sensitive, clear and nicely lit.

4. I use Outlook so syncing contacts and calendar was very important. Got gSyncit and all is well now.

5. Not big on any social networking so can't recommend on that point.

6. Camera has autofocus and a nice flash. My only complaint is the flash is not auto but the pics come out very nicely exposed.

7. Apps galore on the Marketplace. I downloaded about ten yesterday and got the phone to look just the way I need it to.

Since the O/S is pretty much bare/vanilla, it just goes to show how much more intelligent Sprint and Samsung were in regards to this phone, compared to HTC with all that crap hogging resources just to make it more marketable. If I had to compare the Hero and the Moment for instance, I think of it this way - HTC is nothing more than an ugly chick wearing a lot of makeup just to get a date while the Moment is a fit attractive chick with no makeup and a whole lot of common sense.

 

[Ms_Kady#AC]

I had the Pre for 4 months before finally deciding to bite the bullet and trade for the Samsung Moment. So far, very happy that I did.

webOS on the Pre is great, however Palm still has some bugs to work out, including the limited space to add applications. Speaking of applications, the selection was very sparse and the apps that have been released left me scratching my head as to why they would choose to release them. Not only that, but the majority if them were paid apps. The one upside to the Pre is the availability of Homebrew apps and the ability to root the phone and customize it that way. However, you do need to be a tad more than tech savvy in order to accomplish this.

My biggest gripe with the Pre were the software and hardware glitches. The phone would randomly go into offline mode and the touchscreen was sometimes unresponsive. The actual phone application could be improved as well. It did not switch over to incoming calls smoothly if you were on another line and the way contacts were set up from the phone application was a chore.

Now let's get to the hardware: cheap. I had the Pre replaced 3 times and each one had a varying degrees of wobble to it. There is a noticeable gap on the left side of the phone that Palm and Sprint will tell you is normal, but it causes the top half of the phone to wobble. One Pre I had had a gap so large, I could see the internal circuitry inside.

I have had the Moment for 3 days now and so far it has not experienced any of the issues above. It's a solid phone with much more customization available than the Pre. The UI is smooth and easy to use and the availability of apps and widgets is amazing.

 

[dannzeman]

Is there a reason you aren't considering the Hero? Is it because it doesn't have a hardware keyboard? If thats it, then I wouldn't rule it out. I had the Pre for a month and then the Touch Pro 2 (huge keyboard) for a month after that. I swore I'd never own a device without a hardware keyboard, until I used the Hero. Its predictive text is so good I'm at least twice as fast with it than I was with any hardware keyboard I ever used. After using the Hero for the last month I picked up the Moment to compare it to and in all honesty, the keyboard isn't that great. I'm having a hard time adjusting to the quirky layout I'm just much slower on it than with the software keyboard.

The Moment feels like a brick in your hand too, albeit a solid, well built brick, but still a brick. For me, the Hero feels perfect with only the Pre beating it by just a smidge.

As far as Sense goes, I have to totally disagree with vincarrillo. I didn't notice any slowness or lag due to Sense and the 7 home screens really are a benefit. The thing I miss the most about moving from the Hero to the Moment is all the cool, beautiful, custom HTC widgets. Not to mention the Facebook/Twitter integration. Plus, the Hero was just rooted and the first custom rom is out. With it being an HTC device the guys (and gals) over at XDA will be hacking this for a long time to come. Where's the hacking scene for Samsung devices? (Thats a serious question because I would love to know so I can be on top of it when it gets rooted). Speaking of which, if the Moment does get rooted the first thing I would want to be able to put on there is SenseUI.

 

[486sx33]

i hear u about the hero but the three biggies are no keyboard slower processor(almost 2 slow for UI) and no flash which makes 5mp camera usless 2 me. at this point though i just saw the pixi was gonna be at walmart for $30 and at that price with none of the Pre's slider issues maybe it can hold me over for 2yrs until they finally get the phones right webos or android.

-EDIT
oh btw a rooted moment now that is a nice thought!!

 

[jeffgus]

I have a Pre and a Moment. I really want to love Android, but I keep coming back to the wonderful Pre UI. Yes, Palm does need to speed it up. But boy is it slick! Switching between apps is so simple! It has been reported that Palm is currently not making much use of the graphics chip in the phone. Since they hired the Linux graphics driver from ATI, I suspect his new job will be speeding up the Pre/Pixie's graphics.

The *BIGGEST* issue I have with the Moment is that the GPS does not work without a clear view of the sky. Samsung apparently shipped the phones without backporting the AGPS on CDMA support from Android 1.6. So all you are left with is pure GPS which will not work inside a building. Is is a major problem and makes all the wonderful "find a restaurant near me" or geo-tagging photos almost useless. Samsung *must* fix this soon even if it is just a temporary patch until a full 1.6/2.0 upgrade comes along.

I also love the cloud contact/calendar/IM support in the Pre. They are adding Yahoo! support in WebOS 1.3 that releases this month. Android only recently added cloud support in 2.0. I would really love to see how well it works compared to the Pre. The Pre has *one* mail app that supports Exchange, GMail, and generic mail servers. The Moment has one app for Exchange, one app for GMail, and one app for generic Internet mail. Fortunately this will be fixed is newer Android releases. The question is when will Samsung update the phone?

If you love a ton of apps, get the Moment. If you love a phone that has a solid interface (you can use it with one hand), a working GPS, and solid social/cloud core, get the Pre.

 

[Cathy9887]

From a Palm Treo 755p for a Moment... and back to Treo 755p?

I had a Palm Treo 755p for a year & thought the Samsung Moment would be a fun upgrade. Boy, have I been disappointed! The functionality of the Moment has been horrible compared to the older PalmOS. We have friends who have the Pre & like it, but knowing the calendar on the Pre is still Google based, I wouldn't move to it. I've been terribly disappointed with the 30-day view of the Google calendar. What's the point of having multiple calendars with various colors if I can't view them in a month-view??

Additionally, I have not been able to figure out how to use my Hotmail account without having to double read and/or double delete everything. Yes, the hotmail messages pull to the phone, but there seems to be no sync between the phone & the MSN server after that. If I read/delete it from my phone, it stays on the hotmail server as unread. *sigh* How frustrating.

I believe I will be returning my Moment this weekend. It's a great "toy" with all the apps & games, but what I TRULY need is a functional PDA phone. This just doesn't cut it, in my opinion.

Anyone have any suggestions or ideas to help persuade me to keep it?

Cathy

 

[jeffgus]

I had a Palm Treo 755p for a year & thought the Samsung Moment would be a fun upgrade. Boy, have I been disappointed! The functionality of the Moment has been horrible compared to the older PalmOS. We have friends who have the Pre & like it, but knowing the calendar on the Pre is still Google based, I wouldn't move to it. I've been terribly disappointed with the 30-day view of the Google calendar. What's the point of having multiple calendars with various colors if I can't view them in a month-view??

As of today the Pre's calendar is not only Google based. You can save your calendar to your Palm, Google, or Yahoo accounts.

 

[dannzeman]

i hear u about the hero but the three biggies are no keyboard slower processor(almost 2 slow for UI) and no flash which makes 5mp camera usless 2 me. at this point though i just saw the pixi was gonna be at walmart for $30 and at that price with none of the Pre's slider issues maybe it can hold me over for 2yrs until they finally get the phones right webos or android.

-EDIT
oh btw a rooted moment now that is a nice thought!!

I would give the software kb shot before you dismiss it. It's very good, but it will take a few days to get used to.
After using the Moment for a solid week now I can say I've experienced just as many stutters and lags as I did with the Hero, even with its slower processor and SenseUI.
As for the flash on the Moment, yeah it works, sometimes. But, most of the time it just blows out the highlights on your subject. I though the camera on the Hero was much better, and it had much more options for the camera settings.

I'm not sure if you know this or not but the Pixi doesn't have wifi. Just wanted to make sure you knew that because it's a deal breaker for me.

 

[486sx33]

so I went into sprint yesterday and finally got a chance to play with all the phones... getting my hands on them was huge! The moments screen was great and for a full slider the size was nice... but the vanilla UI didn't really impress me and the camera was slow and not really impressive. The Hero looks and feels fantastic the UI is beautiful and I didn't notice much lag, but I HATED the keyboard I typed fine with it but i really need buttons or something to feel the push. I use touchscreens every day at work (server) but at that size virtual just doesnt do it for me camera was great but I need the flash as I spend most of my time out at night. the Pixi was phenomenal the keyboard was great I LOVE GESTURES!! so easy! Everything flowed and lookd great love that form factor too. I could live without WIFI 1 more phone cycle as we get great Sprint coverage in San Diego but the camera at 2megapixels is a let down. at $30 it's hard to complain if u can live without WIFI but I cant get that price being with Sprint for 10YEARS! So for the price my trip pointed to the PRE the keyboard was fine for me and if i get shotty build I'll trade it till I get a good handset. In the end I really want to know when I get the phone if it will keep me happy after I leave the store. The Moment can be customized if I had time and info and if they get the camera ironed out and android 2.0 may be the best. Maybe with more time I could get over the virtual keyboard of the hero and with the price drop on both and Android OS (I love some of the Android Apps!) maybe one of them would make me happier just not sure and about 30days out from decision time

 

[Applejackson]

The UI on the Moment is pretty vanilla, but quite easily customizable with Pandahome, or any of the other home apps (Panda's free though and you can use the themes from pretty much any other one). You can make it have just as many screens as the Hero, give it the Hero clock and Icons if you want. Once the phone is rooted (and I'm sure it will be) the customization will be even more diverse. If you don't want to do any setting up and have a bunch of stuff HTC picked for you, then the Hero would be fine for you. If you want to start from scratch and build up the phone the way you want, the Moment is great. The Hero can be customized as well, however. I don't care what anyone says though, the physical keyboard is WAAAAAYYY better than trying to use an onscreen, especially without muti-touch enabled yet (custom ROMs and 2.0 will fix that soon on the Moment) so it's a bit easier to type onscreen with a Hero because of built-in multi-touch, but it's still way worse than the slide-out. The Pre's keyboard is unusable for me. It's incredibly small, and the phone feels cheap. Most other CONS I've seen about the Moment can also be remedied with free apps in the Android Market. For example, Cathy's calendar issue could've been fixed by grabbing Android Agenda Widget, which gives you access to all different calendars according to the description (I haven't used it, just did a quick search for "calendar" in the market).

 

[Sassy Lass]

I hated my Pre and got the moment 1 hour ago.

Pre Pros ( I like to start with the positive)
Browser was fast, it was ligthweight, and had large notifications on screen. Easy to add pictures and ringtones.

Cons- it turns on, when it is supposed to be off. You know- like when you are flying and have turned your phone off. Or in the middle of the night, when you have turned your phone off.

It turns off and won't come back on unless you remove the battery.

Virtually zero aps- I think they understand it tanked and have given up

Until recently, you could not get a different alert for an im versus an email.

There are lots of homebrew aps to cover many of the features that should have been included with this phone.

Updates are not tested and you can't opt out. The first one caused many pre users to be unable to use their phone.

The ringer would suddenly stop working- with full volume on etc.

Cases- many of the cases would hit the off key when you slid the keyboard back.

I am excited about the Moment and I wish you luck

 

[itsall4tay]

That is why I returned the Pre and got the Moment.