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While I was in New York City, Plaz and I visited a Sprint Store and had the chance to try out the new Palm Pre. At first I thought the Pre was the first phone that could challenge the iPhone but after using the device it seems the Pre still needs to be developed signifigantly to be a true iPhone competitor.
The device itself is significantly smaller the iPhone also leading to a smaller screen which makes the device harder to use. The other major issue is the keyboard, while the iPhone has a generous touch screen keyboard, the Pre has a minuscule plastic hardware keyboard and makes it difficult to do long writing on while on my iPod Touch I can easily write full blog post and data entry to me is very important in choosing a mobile device.
The Palm WebOS is nice but has a steep learning curve. The gestures to operate the phone are quite confusing and makes getting started using the phone complicated. The multi-tasking is the one feature that makes iPhone user jellous and it is well done in a Mac OSX expose style. However at first using this powerful feature is hard to use. The other major flaw is the lack of and app store and it’s over dependance on web apps. This enraged early iPhone users and I had hoped that Palm had learned from Apple’s earlier mistake.
Overall, I think that the Palm Pre was a good first try to challenge the iPhone but still needs a lot of improvements before becoming a real iphone challenger. It has potential but if they fix the problems I pointed out, then it could be a rival to the iPhone. But for now and with iPhone 3.0 Software and the new iPhone 3Gs on the horizon, they are still the best smartphones on the market.