Thinking about swtiching from Palm

[KrazyNick]

Wow I've had my pre from day 1 and I still have it. Why are you guy's going through so many pres? Jeez I still have my Launch pre, no real problems what so ever, still works great. I will be getting the Evo though, I need something new.

 

[Yourdogsdead]

Wow I've had my pre from day 1 and I still have it. Why are you guy's going through so many pres? Jeez I still have my Launch pre, no real problems what so ever, still works great. I will be getting the Evo though, I need something new.

They are not the only ones who are having issues with the phone. I myself am on my second phone (Headphone Jack broke). Palm dropped the ball with the build quality. Even though I love WebOS, I plan on getting the Evo when it comes out.

 

[mmcnamara43]

Well...you are a very lucky i've have had 6 Pre's for different reasons. I watched the Pre from when it was announced, love WebOs Hate the hardware. I've been following this as well hope it's all it looks to be.

 

[gabbott]

They are not the only ones who are having issues with the phone. I myself am on my second phone (Headphone Jack broke). Palm dropped the ball with the build quality. Even though I love WebOS, I plan on getting the Evo when it comes out.

Well...you are a very lucky i've have had 6 Pre's for different reasons. I watched the Pre from when it was announced, love WebOs Hate the hardware. I've been following this as well hope it's all it looks to be.

Exact reason I'm looking at the EVO. The Pre build quality I've found to be lacking. I had my Pre exchanged 3 times for hardware issues and the 4th pre I was on had a keyboard backlight issue, so I decided enough is enough.

 

[rfs830]

I really think that sprint is targeting all the launch day pre buyers buy having evo comes out exactly one year after the pre. So for people that got it on launch day will all be getting the evo. Just like everyone said webos is just not keeping up. Sad part was that it died about 4 months after the phone came out.

I must say i love the pre as an everyday phone. Very easy to use. Its the only phone that I have every kept for a full year but I want to do more with it and I cant. Everything is make for the iphone and android. Nothing for the pre. This year its the evo for me.

 

[JERAVICIOUS]

Wow I've had my pre from day 1 and I still have it. Why are you guy's going through so many pres? Jeez I still have my Launch pre, no real problems what so ever, still works great. I will be getting the Evo though, I need something new.

You must be one of the lucky ones who got a good pre. Hah!!!

They are not the only ones who are having issues with the phone. I myself am on my second phone (Headphone Jack broke). Palm dropped the ball with the build quality. Even though I love WebOS, I plan on getting the Evo when it comes out.

I feel your pain and have to agree with you that palm did drop the ball on quality build. Other than freezing, my pre's slider was very faulty, had automatic shutdown when i closed the slider, etc.

I hope palm's next phone is better quality. Til then, Imma be using an Evo

 

[PhantomPhreak53]

I've been paying very little attention to PreCentral lately.
I stop in to see if there's any news of new hardware but that's over.
I'm 1st on the Pre-order list at my Best Buy so no going back now.

Play with the incredible pay no attention to the optical ball and "goofey" aspect ratio. The Evo is a prettier device but will fuction mostly the same.

Android could do a couple things better, *cough mulitasking, but what is has will make up what I'll miss on my Pre..I can from WM and had tons of apps. The Adroid guys at work have a lot of the funtionality I've missed.

Switching will be a good. It'll force Palm/HP to step up their game if they want to win back the ones who switched plus new customers.

I don't feel bad at all.

HAHA I'm the same way. I don't really check PreCentral any more either. I don't have my Evo yet but check this site more often now.

 

[hk-usp45]

I have Pre, and planning to continue to have Pre. actually my plan to have both!!!! Pre and Evo (or Incredible if the EVO hardware or battery will not be good)

 

[PaulyZ]

Good to see I'm not on my own... hoping summer-Santa brings me a shiny new EVO on/around June 4th.

I do hope palm+hp will be able to right that ship - if they can stay away from crap hardware and be more nimble with software updates (and friggin' let me back up my friggin' text friggin' messages!!!), that will be a great start.

And call me crazy, but I'm not expecting any new hardware releases between now and June 4 as some have hoped & pined for... in fact, we're prob more like 3-9 months out from any earthshattering news from the palm+hp camp. Wasn't the Pre was spotted in the wild like 10 months (if not more) before it was 1st released?!?

Anyway, I'm no palm hater, rather a frustrated Pre user who hopes to return to a far superior product sometime in 2011.

 

[austin.n]

for those who say you havent had any problems with your pre and love it "wow" i have gone though 4 pre's, i am always having to restart it, the apps suck, the only cool thing about it is cards, gestures, and the touchstone. i am so ready to sell my pre to either someone on craigslist or to sprint and get a phone from a company who knows what they are doing.

 

[darreno1]

The EVO will be a blast! And I cannot blame Pre owners for defecting. I'm drooling over it and will be hoping for an equivalent 4.3" monster to hit Verizon soon.

 

[krwren#AC]

I love my Pre and HP can put it much better hardware and get the app store going I will return. But the hardware is just a little to slow and not enough apps in the store.

 

[xavierm23]

I posted in another thread but I'll share here too. I went from the Mogul to the Pre and now I will be getting the Evo. There were three shortcomings outside of the shoddy hardware that make me want to make the change to the Evo.

1. Can't search the Pre's calendar. Palm's strength prior to the Pre was PIM and they totally borked it on the Pre..

2. Can't transfer files via Bluetooth on the Pre. Really? COme on now...

3. Lack of a "Home" screen that shows by basic needed info at a glance like Weather, Time, and upcoming appointments.

I loved the Pre for WebOS but these shortcomings and releasing what I still consider to be inferior hardware and a Beta quality experience has caused me to look for another SmartPhone.

Can't wait 'til the 4th.

I am also a Pre user. I love webOS but the Evo sure looks tempting. As a non-Android user, can Android do the above things mentioned? How does the email app, txt and calendar functions differ?? Better on Android or Comparable??

Thanks!

 

[jeffreytz]

I'm another launch day Pre owner who has pre-ordered an Evo at Best Buy. My progression over the last two years has been:

Treo 700p (2 years)
Treo 800w (4 months)
HTC Touch Pro (7 months)
Palm Pre (6/6 launch 11 months)

So far the Pre has been my favorite phone, but I'd hesitate to call it the best due to sluggish and inconsistent performance. I love nearly everything about webOS and I know I will miss my Touchstone but the hardware is in need of a major refresh and the Evo has what I'm looking for. Overclocking my Pre has kept it usable but even then it suffers from (what I consider at least ) slow performance at times. I've been lucky on the hardware front, still on my launch day Pre, but the screen has plenty of scratches and there's a crack underneath the surface (but it still works fine). I'm sure that over clocking it is reducing it's lifespan but it only has to last another couple of weeks at this point

If Palm were releasing hardware in the next month or so that was similar to the Evo (and with a slider!) I would probably stick with webOS but that's not happening, so the Evo it is. However I will be hanging on to my Pre and if the Evo (or more precisely Android / SenseUI) doesn't live up to my expectations in the first 30 days I can always switch back.

I don't think that will happen, though, based on my research of Android and Sense. While I like the functionality of webOS I have missed the home screen widgets I had in windows mobile and so far I love everything I've seen on the Evo in videos and screen shots. I just hope there are similar touches on the Evo like being able to turn on/off radios easily, being able to just start typing on a screen and have that launch the google search or browser URL, I've gotten really used to all the shortcuts in webOS.

No OS is perfect and I'm sure there will be many things I miss from webOS but I'm hoping there are just as many new things in Android that I'll like as well (the 50,000 app catalog is a start, although the webOS home brew community has been awesome, there's actually little that I need on my Pre that I lack).

Guess I'll know in a couple of weeks!

 

[janto50]

I bought the Palm Pre on July 1st and I can't wait to get my hands on the EVO. As a matter of fact I contacted Sprint to ask them to bump up my renewal date by a Month so that I can get the EVO in June. Wish me luck !! I have been fortunate and been able to keep my original Palm Pre but I have had a lot of little problems with the phone that add up to big steaming pile of Palm crap. As soon as I read about the EVO(supersonic) a few months ago I knew I was jumping ship as soon as it was released. Nice to see I am not the only Palm fan defecting for a bigger,faster,better phone.

Gelst, my upgrade also takes effect on July 1st. How did trying to get it moved up to June work out for you? I tried and the Premier department told me to wait until the day it comes out and call telesales and they can get it moved up if I find a nice salesperson. The regular customer service reps can only move it up 2 weeks. Let me know.

 

[DirkBelig]

I have a launch week Pre and must be one of the lucky ones because I never had a problem with dead pixels, Oreo-ing, dead keyboards, bad battery life (after conditioning), and various other HW failures. The flimsy USB port door fell off after 9 months and I've got a small crack in the bezel, but those aren't severe problems.

In fact, the only serious problem I've had was with the TeleNav "account expired" error when trying to get a route in Sprint Nav and trying to get it fixed has taken me into the depths of Sprint CSR Hell which is why so many people hate Sprint. All my previous contacts were pleasant and efficient, but the 3-1/2 months - you read that right; MONTHS! - of banging my head against the wall in trying to it fixed w/o hard resetting my phone have filled me with a hatred for Sprint so deep that whenever their ads come on TV, my g/f covers her ears because she knows I'm about to bellow the 13-letter plural for someone akin to Oedipus at the TV. (Note: Only slight exaggeration.) If it wasn't the fact that Sprint is the hands-down bang-for-buck leader, I'd be outta there. However, I'm not about to spend Verizon money to spite Dan Hesse.

All that said, I, too, am looking very seriously at jumping to the EVO because I'm tired of the sluggish performance of my Pre. Getting a "too many cards" error when trying to open ONE program is ludicrous. The 3-minute reboot period - is the entire OS written in Javascript and being compiled from scratch or what? Having to download patches for something as basic as landscape email. Not to mention the insane decision to make the phone as slippery to hold as a bar of soap just to keep it shiny instead of an oleophillac material like my Flip Ultra HD has which may be a matte finish, but not liable to slip out of my hand. (My g/f is scared of dropping it.)

If Palm had been bought by HTC and we were likely to get a webOS phone on EVO hardware, I'd wager 85% of the people here talking about bailing would stick around. Unfortunately, all we've heard about is a tablet and nada about new phones. After another year of killer Android phones and whatever the iPhone 4 is like, what does HPalm expect to do; launch something at 2011 CES? Talk about being a year late and a million dollars short!

webOS is a wonderful OS with great potential trapped on a merely OK piece of hardware that managed to destroy itself out of the box one of the worst marketing campaigns ever. I swear, future marketing classes will study how a company desperate to make a lifesaving "Hail Mary" product launch of a revolutionary multi-tasking mobile OS decided that instead of showing the features - like ANY OTHER PHONE AD WOULD'VE, STARTING WITH THE IPHONE - they would have some creepy Borg Queen weirdo murmuring about how the phone was reading her mind and going, "Bing! Bing! Bing!" The fact that Palm to this day refuses to own that steaming pile of epic failness is why they're likely doomed to be a case study on how not to do things more than a leader in tech. Shame on them.

 

[PedroS#WN]

I gave the Pre a chance.

I've been using a Palm device since the first U.S. Robotics PalmPilot came out over 15 years ago. And, I was the first out the door with my Sprint Palm Pre on launch day almost a year ago.!

I am the EXACT same type of user! I have been a faithful palm user since the USR Palm 1000. I switched from PDA to Smartphone with the Treo, and then jumped over to the Pre on launch day...and finally after 15 years with Palm, I'm ready to say goodbye and jump to the EVO.

To say that Palm messed up big time with the Pre is the understatement of the century.

First of all, they absolutely RUINED the PIM functionality that made the PalmOS the PalmOS. Todos, memos, calendars, the DESKTOP CLIENT, where a perfectly functioning ecosystem. By killing memo and todo syncing and then ruining the calendar by making it dog slow and harder to use, they instantly made me less productive than I was before.
I actually carry around pen and paper because I can't sync my damn todos anymore. Who on God's green earth thought to leave this feature out?

Second of all, the Pre hardware is terrible. Great design, nice keyboard, but a piece of junk with the worst battery life of any device I've ever owned.
I just got my 2nd pre (a refurb), and after only 2 weeks already has the stress fractures my launch day one did.

And the battery life. HOLY CRAP. Do you know many problems I've had where it's the end of the night and I can no longer use my phone? Or even times where I need to make a call, and I forgot to charge after work, and have to shut every feature down to eek a few more minutes of battery life. TERRIBLE. And to those who say to carry a 2nd battery. How in the world are you supposed to crack open the back of a pre while out at a bar, swap batteries and click everything together? Oh, and then wait 3 minutes for the damn thing to start again.

Sorry, Palm. The Pre was a great concept which was obliterated by execution. I really can't wait anymore. I need a device that actually acts like a next generation smartphone, and has the apps and performance and battery life I expect.

Sorry for ranting a bit on this, but since there are a lot of Pre owners considering the switch, I figured there will be a lot of nodding heads reading this.

Hopefully someone at Palm is reading this and has the power to bring threads like this back to the powers that be. The fact that none of these issues have been resolved a year after launch makes me think that they think the issues are elsewhere.

Simply put, if I had the PIM functionality of the Treo and decent battery life, I would not be buying an EVO 4G on launch day, and I'm sure there are hundreds, if not thousands of longtime customers who feel the same way.

 

[VaccPalm]

Another long term Palm USer. I go back to the Pilots, handsprings and all the Treos and Centros. 800W and was the first on line at my store at 2am for the PRE . But it never became the phone it was meant to be. the software is buggy, slow. the HArdware is horrible. And count me in as another user who loves WEB OS but Android seems to be the future. Keep living in the past and you get left behind.

 

[DerekHall]

+1 to Pedro's rant.

The Pre was a great idea, great design, interesting OS....but it sucked, IMHO. It would do the mot ridiculous things...little things start to drive you nuts, like having to click the "end call" button two or three times before the sluggish OS realizes, "oh, my owner is trying to end a call."

Or...memory management...or lack thereof. Opening ONE SOLITARY CARD, and then getting the dreaded beep-beep tone, and your "smart" phone telling you that you have too many card open. Brilliant. (Like Pedro said, there's a lot of you nodding your heads right now.)

 

[PhantomPhreak53]

+1 to Pedro's rant.

The Pre was a great idea, great design, interesting OS....but it sucked, IMHO. It would do the mot ridiculous things...little things start to drive you nuts, like having to click the "end call" button two or three times before the sluggish OS realizes, "oh, my owner is trying to end a call."

Or...memory management...or lack thereof. Opening ONE SOLITARY CARD, and then getting the dreaded beep-beep tone, and your "smart" phone telling you that you have too many card open. Brilliant. (Like Pedro said, there's a lot of you nodding your heads right now.)

+2 I am looking forward to switching.