I bought my Palm Pre on launch day, in June of 2009. I remember the day well, since my wife and I were going to Detroit to watch game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals at the Joe Louis Arena. I got up early, called around, found the one Sprint store in the area that had a few units left, and rushed up there to pick it up. I set it to charge on the drive and played with it incessantly for the rest of the day.
At the time, I had already written my prediction that Android would become the #1 selling smartphone operating system, which just recently came true, but at that point it was still too rough around the edges. After using WebOS a bit, you start to feel like even iOS is unpolished. WebOS is just that much better than everything else out there.
The Pre has served me well over that time, nearly a year and a half. Unfortunately for Palm it didn’t serve them quite as well. Their team built the best mobile operating system of all time, then struggled to cash in on it. They aired one bad commercial after another, didn’t update their hardware in a timely fashion, didn’t roll out their developer program quickly enough, waited far too long to get onto Verizon (by which time they launched their first big Android phone, the Droid) and didn’t respond well enough to a couple build quality problems.
They chose Sprint as a launch partner, rather than Verizon, which was dumb for them. In hindsight I’m glad they did. I switched from Verizon to Sprint to get the Pre, and I’m now dumbfounded that everyone isn’t on Sprint. Their coverage is best in class, especially since you can roam (even for data) on Verizon’s network. Their prices are substantially lower than Verizon’s. They’ve now got arguably the two best Android units on the market in the Evo and the Epic 4g. Their customer service is pretty good, at least at the stores by my house. They’ve replaced two Pres for me at no charge (one of which they really were not obligated too). I’m not surprised that their network is finally increasing in popularity again, they’ve just executed phenomenally well over the last couple years. I’m probably going to pick up a few shares of S this year given what I’ve seen.
And now, with the Pre 2 launching first on Verizon, I’m giving up on Palm. Don’t get me wrong, the new Pre looks good. WebOS 2.0 looks great, in fact it seems they’ve extended their lead over the other major OSes in terms of both usability and functionality. They fixed two of my three main hardware complaints, by going to a glass screen and fixing the USB door. Having double the processing horsepower and a lot more RAM looks great too. And you have no idea how much I will miss the Touchstone, unless you have one, in which case you probably have a hard time imagining having to plug a phone in like I do. Had Palm improved the keyboard (my one major complaint with the hardware, and probably the biggest) and made a 4g model I might have hung in there another 6 months.
But they didn’t, and it’s time for a change. Besides, I have lots of experience with iOS, obviously also with WebOS, and am, amongst people I know, pretty much the only who can really compare the two. I’d like to be able to say the same about Android. Most people you hear talk about the merits of one or the other OS or phone have only a passing familiarity with the one they don’t own, and swear by the one they do. I’d like to be able to actually experience all three as a user. And if anything I’m giving iOS a favorable bias since I’m using it on the iPad and iPod Touch and not as a phone, which has always been its Achilles heel.
I haven’t decided which model to get yet. I’m thinking the Epic 4g. The screen on that bad boy is fantastic. The keyboard is spacious, and it’s shockingly thin and light for a slider keyboard. It’s got 4g data, which I’ve heard has significantly lower latency (the true problem with 3g data) and should be rolled out in my area this year. The Evo looks great too, though I’m still not ready to go without a keyboard, even with Swype. I’ve used the keyboard on the new iPod Touch and iPad, which have to be at least as good as Android’s, and I’m just constantly frustrated by it.
So we’ll see. I’ll probably get one in the next month or two, and will of course post thoughts.
