[PCWorld]

Post your comments for iPhone 3G S vs Palm Pre: The Battle Begins here

[Certlinux]

I just bought palm pre. The two most important advantages palm pre are: 1)Everything Plan from Sprint $99.00 that includes unlimited data, text and calling where as with AT&T it going to cost around $149.00. that is saving of 449.00 everymonth. 2) Multitasking.

[kingme]

Since the Palm Pre is the 1st generation of its kind, you should compare it with the 1st generation iPhone, as Apple has made huge improvements over its first inception. Just as Palm will.

[2freshinhim]

this is a retarded thought
the xbox came out when the ps2 came out
thats like saying u cant rate the xbox with the ps2 ... u have 2 compare it 2 the ps1 because its the first generation ... the times change ... u compare the current to the current ... not generation to generation ...

anyways

go iphone lol

[thorton89]

kingme is wrong. consumers are not going to compare the palm pre with the 1st generation iphone and neither will reviewers. no debate here - just a fact.

[kingme]

You can certainly compare technologies between the two phones as they both are working with the same available technology. But certain behavioral components like dealing with availability of apps are lame. When the iPhone was first introduced, if you remember there were zero 3rd party solutions available, and the big issue was if Apple was gonna allow it. They've had a a mulit-year head start with their apps, so of course they are gonna have many more apps. This article failed to mention that Palm already has hundreds of thousands of apps available although you do have to run them in a virtual session. Another compared issue was with pricing which is mostly due to supply and demand.

[cpezie]

This article is so pro IPhone that it isn't funny.

I agree with some of the points made such as the price of the Pre compared to the Iphone.

However every negative point the author made regarding the Iphone was followed by a "but.."

[rfceo]

What concerns me about at&t is:

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 not made coments like this, and has cities providing the next generation 4G network.
Message was edited by: smax013 - cleaned out odd coding that came with paste from a Word document

[DTNick]

throton89 is 100% correct: consumers will compare current products with other current products, not two-year-old ones.

[cpezie]

I dont' think it's a point of what product is being compared. It's more of how the author compared them just as Kingme stated in his second comment.

[luanmikevu]

lol, did I mentioned 4G earlier on Sprint current network?

[boonchail]

I prefer Sprint over AT&T because of the cheaper plan. I don't really care which one is cheaper if they are not much different but over the long run what you pay every month is the main factor. I like iPhone but I like pre better because of the keyboard. My daughter text a lot so Sprint plan with unlimited text is awesome. I love the multitasking too... definite cool

3 pres for my family but I guess I have to wait because the Sprint stores and best buy all ran out of pres when we went there on Sat.

[Tuareg]

Apps, apps, apps... 32G storage. There is no contest over here - just ordered iPhone

[epgomez]

One thing i hate about these reviews is that it is so biased to the iphone. Battery life on the iphone sucks but it was never mentioned on prior reviews. Same as video that lack before now it is being mentioned. The inability to multitask and no flash support on browser and slippery back design should also be mentioned. To be fair to other better phones.

[qingwa]

Why would anyone buy the Pre???

It will take at least a year to two years before the Pre has the same utility as Blackberry, Android or the iPhone since Palm hasn?t released the SDK yet to general vendors. That is if developers have enough venture capital to invest in Pre, they already are making apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Symbian.

Guess which mobile platform has the smallest base? And consequently receive the least amount of love from developers?

So, no you won?t see The Sims 3, Tiger Woods Golf, Need for Speed, talking dictionaries or a thousand other entertaining, useful utility apps on the Pre for at least a year.

Not to mention Apple has iTunes, thousands of podcasts, video podcasts, movies and TV shows formatted for the iPhone specifically straight to download.

Yes, iPhone doesn?t have multitask but I think thats a small tradeoff for such a huge disadvantage in just about everything else regarding the iPhone universe.

Its everyones personal choice, IMHO I would rather go with Blackberry, Android or Apple. Palm is too late to the game (and Windows Mobile sucks).

[JimWilson]

Yes the battle begins, however, Apple is going to be challenged, as PALM Pre
is a terrific first-run product against almost every feature the iPhone stands
for... I for one stood in line in south Florida with 30-40 others waiting for
the 8AM Sprint Store opening Saturday. While I was waiting, being very
interested in this entire topic, I "interviewed" a number of those in
line, wondering why they were here... 5 of them had iPhones, and were fed-up
with Apple's lack of attention in upgrading the features, ATT's/T-Mobile's terrible
slow network, AND all hated the touch-screen keys for email and text messaging...
this was a surprise.
Now on to the device itself.

I for one, think the PALM Pre created a nifty balance of
features, physical size, capacity, multi-tasking, user interface.

Ittook me a few hours of getting used to as the GUI is so unique; and now that I
am a TWO day WONDER, I feel very comfortable accessing the huge feature set.

As for the reviewer's remark that 8GB is not as good as 32GB. Give me a break,
stop drinking the Kool-Aid. If storage is such a key, spend $20 and get a
Jump-drive, and not make a pda choice on this silly fact, distract...

Cut, Paste, Copy,,, it took iPhone 2+ years to get this feature working... PALM's got it in
their first iteration... Multi-tasking is another biggie, (Apple's new version
still cannot do this important trick) as one can pause-switch to another
application, and then switch-back, exactly where you left off...
Battery... the life is comparable, and iPhone still cannot change batteries... for the PRE, I
already have a spare battery being shipped to me just for the emergency
situation. The TOUCHSTONE charger is amazing, no more fumbling with wires to
plug in,,, simply, gently, "Land" the device on the charger'smagnetic platform,and charging is automated,

No plugging-in to the PRE whatsoever... I got several Touchstones, one for the office, one for the
bedroom, and one for the front of the house, to park the phone onto, when it’s
not in use.

You can get the unit charging in the complete darkness with your eyes closed !


With Sprint's "30 day no questions asked" return policy, you got to give this device a "test-drive."


In our family, as a faculty guy in the College of Science, at a 30,000 University, I am the
teck-tester... well, in several weeks, it looks like we will be acquiring 5
more of these PRE's, for my wife and our 4 "kids" well not so kids,
the youngest is18... Hope this writing helps give balance to an interesting review.

JimW. B-)


PS: As the story goes, 250 key APPLE engineers were hired by PALM several
years ago to create this PDA device... the notion being, lets out-Apple, Apple,
by placing into this new device all/most of the "wish-list" items that years of
iPhone users have been complaining about... well PALM did it with the
PRE... and the challenge begins...

Competition breeds even better products at even better prices, but for the next 2 years the PRE gets our support !!

[cpezie]

excellent points.

[montex]

The Palm Pre was released on June 6th and the latest iPhone will be released less than two weeks later - I think it is perfectly acceptable that these phones should be compared to each other. To say that it's only fair to compare a two year old product to one that was released two days ago is ridiculous. Especially considering that many of the features in the Pre were copied directly from the iPhone.

BTW, did you notice that and 8GB Palm Pre is $199 and the 8GB iPhone is $99? That makes the Apple product HALF THE PRICE of the comparable Palm Pre. So much for the "overpriced" argument.

[nikolas4129]

LoL, this is such an iPhone biased it's funny. Really PCWorld, please be NEUTRAL when doing reviews.

1) "The main difference is the RAM"??!?!? Are you kidding me? How about a QWERTY keyboard?! This is a huge selling point for Palm. An then as mentioned above, all negative points for the iPhone were followed by "but..." Hey PCWold, does it really make it better that no one was expecting the iPhone to have a keyboard? the answer is NO. No one expected the Palm to have more RAM, but you make a huge point about that.

2) or... What about true multitasking? I'm 100% sure if the roles were revered, this biased website would have touted the iPhone as having multitasking while the Palm Pre didn't. (same, by the way, with the physical keyboard).

3) no talk of the Palms supposed wicked camera software. OK, they both have the same 3mp camera, but that's not all it takes to make a great pic. Software can make huge improvements. At least take shots with both phones and compare before crowning a winner.

I'm willing to give iPhone it's due, and I expect a review to do the same, and not the iPhone fanboy garbage I wasted my time reading here. Buck-up PCWorld.

[fortheclueless]

Pre is stillborn and anybody who thinks else is kidding themselves. It came too late in the game for Palm to have a seat at the table on its own. For this device to have any chance at success Palm needs to be acquired by somebody with deep pockets. Right now their budget has to be nearly dried up, their device no longer has any real advantages, and they have a daunting app shortage to make up on even their nearest competitor. Unless somebody like Microsoft or the government bails Palm out they are dead in a year maybe 2.

Multi tasking doesn't matter if there aren't apps to multitask. Developers are attracted to devices where there is a market and where they can make money. Palm is at the bottom of the list there. They are married to a carrier that itself is not very healthy. I've been in this business a long time and I've seen this movie many times before.