A power reason I'm hating Apple...

[hanky]

http://www.seidioonline.com/product-p/basi13pmx3.htm

Ughh... this happens with every phone I used to have. Serious envy as my phone is always at 30% by dinner time with some morning commute usage, 20-25 minutes talk time, and an hour usage... and that's without 3G and dimming.

I'm happy to have a 2 year discounted AppleCare. I will make sure to demand they change the anemic battery at every convenience and make it cost 10 times the amount I paid to AppleCare. :) I wonder if it dawns on them that Android, the Pre and whatever new stuff comes from Microsoft are going to give this iPhone a serious run?

[S2_Mac]

What's that old saying? "The charge indicator always seems greener on the other phone." ;-) Jon Stokes, a guy who knows a thing or two about tech <g>, just wrote up his disappointing Pre experience (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/07/taking-flight-why-the-iphone-still-beats-pre-for-air-travel.ars) after a weekend of flying. His take-away? "[T]he Pre is a pretty boring travel companion who tires way too easily."

[hanky]

What's that old saying? "The charge indicator always seems greener on the other phone." ;-) Jon Stokes, a guy who knows a thing or two about tech <g>, just wrote up his disappointing Pre experience (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/07/taking-flight-why-the-iphone-still-beats-pre-for-air-travel.ars) after a weekend of flying. His take-away? "[T]he Pre is a pretty boring travel companion who tires way too easily."

Hehe... great article. I really wanted to like the Pre but, IMHO, for a company that made virtually the perfect phone for a long time (Treo), Palm must have been drinking creating the Pre. Looks cheap, feels cheap, lousy keyboard. Why? But still this device and platform is barely out. Make fun of it now but I can see them catching up to Apple with just 1 Treo-hardware type release. And we haven't even talked about second generation Android phones. I think Apple's arrogance may be its undoing:

(1) The Pre will blow away the iPhone for all the system customization gripes. Like the old Palm, at least developers are welcome to make changes and they will make numerous. On the dark side, it can make the phone less stable but, if you knew the phone and tried things out, you found those that worked for you and everything was efficient bliss.

(2) With a same size extended battery in the Pre, the battery drain issues will go away, including with battery saving software (you can't get in the iPhone if you kick, scream, yell and threaten.)

(3) The Palm Pre will have a multitude of applications by December. Unlike the huge $100 fee you need to pay Apple and the wait period for them to "approve", you'll have thousands of useful applications. I've found the majority of the 50,000 iPhone applications about as useful as roadkill and, unlike with the iTunes store, chances are I don't have to pay Apple to find out with a good demo. The parading around this gripe is short lived although Palm has its head in its rear end not having a dev kit ready for several months. Idiots, really.

Right now my iPhone 3GS 32GB is easily 20% depleted from 30-40 minutes usage. Total usage time - with no talk time or video/audio - is probably no more than 3 hours at best. There is no way it makes it through the average day every day without my fearing it will die before bedtime. I'm cringing at battery life in 5 months and whether Apple will replace the battery for me when we dispute whether it's lost enough charge...

Great article though and thanks. :)

[S2_Mac]

Palm must have been drinking creating the Pre

More like too many "energy drinks"... After all the OS gaffes, Palm needed to get something out there to drive new revenue; Pre is what they could deliver.

I think your Pre-monitions are overly rosy. To get the kind of sales volume Palm needs, the Pre has to be usable (and maintainable) by a large number of non-geeks. Give 'em too many options and they'll screw things up and want help from Palm; then you'll see that policy change ;-)

Unless the Pre ships with a batt extender at no extra charge, it's still just an accessory; use an iPhone batt extender and the field is more than level. And really, Apple's at least a generation ahead of Pre and Android in having experience tweaking the software to make the phone less power-hungry.

An "open" app environment may not turn out to be as cool as everyone seems to think.... I've done my share of "software reviewing" (several years as a cybrarian for AOL's Apple Software forum), and the amount of junk that gets written is truly astonishing. Crap that doesn't run, has no documentation, rips off somebody else's code verbatim, contains malware or viruses or performs malicious actions...just tons of it. (And not just "doesn't run" -- stuff that blows up your system software ;-)

Apple's qualifying requirements certainly put a damper on instant and total gratification, but at last you can be reasonably assured that the code isn't poisonous or harmful. That's a pretty solid foundation for a Joe Sixpack-caliber user base piloting an insanely complex gizmo.

If it was easy to beat the iPhone, somebody would have done it by now -- match the iPhone's buld, abilities, and performance in an unlocked platform and you're a winner. Hasn't happened yet, p'bly because the line between wish-listing and actual engineering is tough to cross ;-)

[Shameless1]

This phone is going to give the pre and the iphone a run for it's money

http://pomegranatephone.com/

[daihard]

This phone is going to give the pre and the iphone a run for it's money

http://pomegranatephone.com/

Can't view the site from my iPhone. LOL

[S2_Mac]

Meh; its design philosophy has already been compromised. I've got a friend in Halifax who knows a couple of people on the Pomegranate dev team. The early word is that the blades in the electric razor will not be user-replaceable, so strike another blow against DIY.

This thing may not even get off the ground anyway -- apparently the EU is upset that the harmonica is a de facto "infringing device" whose only purpose is to reproduce copyrighted music. So far, the only compromise EU will allow is that prospective buyers must demonstrate at the time of purchase that they can play original compositions. (But Pirate Party opponents are claiming this is just a thin excuse to test out a new generation of IFPI-authored "uncompensated performance detection" software at public expense.)

Really sad to see politics get in the way of the next step in convergence...

[radtech]

i talk on my phone more than that, text, facebook, check email, etc and i'm not at 30% by dinner. i have brightness like 30-35% roughly, GPS OFF, Wifi ON, and bluetooth OFF i thought 3.0 was killing my battery cause i paired my Moto S9's for music and left the bluetooth on and my battery was way lower with the same use. i noticed that as soon as bluetooth is opened up in settings it says "now discovering". this needs to be fixed make bluetooth discoverable when the user sets it like on a motorola for 60sec at a time

[radtech]

LOL

i cant beleive someone spent the time to make that. once i saw the coffee i knew it was a gag but i thought it was for real till then

This phone is going to give the pre and the iphone a run for it's money

http://pomegranatephone.com/