Review roundup: Palm's Pre and its fledgeling WebOS - Page 4

Please, mind your temper!

No name calling.


I think it is media & tech industry jargon, dictionary definitions don't apply literally. It's something like NDA used for news outlets among other things. They get advanced access to something early in exchange for a restrictions on when the article may be distributed.

If that is the case, it should be obvious that Apple is not going to allow advanced reviews of a product that it has not officially acknowledged even exists.

Seriously - please review GTL215 posts that I was responding to. He has called me a lot worse and written in a much more hostile manner. Thank you.

I just need a phone to last the day, and even then not really. The great thing about the dock connector is there are, well, docks! My clock radio has an iPod dock connector that my iPhone sleeps in (actually, it plays AmbiScience PureSleep for me at night but I digress), I connect it to the stereo in my car as I commute which charges it, when I get to work it docks with my logitech speakers at my desk which charge it.

The only time I need "extended" battery runtime is when I am on travel, so I have a Richard Solo battery/charger I got for $40 on sale. I think I have used it once to recharge my iPhone. I use the built in flashlight and laser pointer on it far more then I use it as a backup battery on my iPhone mainly because, quite frankly, the whole battery thing on the iPhone tends to be WAY overblown. Because my iPhone is also my iPod, it tends to be plugged in way more then I would have cause to plug in a traditional phone, therefore I don't even think about it.

Would I like it to last a week like my blackberry? Sure! Who wouldn't. But I prefer the compromise in size and weight they took to produce the whole package rather then just focusing on one checklist item.

This is where Apple excels. Any device is going to have compromises. Apple rightly focuses on the total experience, and ruthlessly compromising on things that, in the grand scheme of things have little impact on the overall experience. For all the whining and complaining, a non-removable battery that barely lasts a day doesn't seem to significantly impact the experience of the iPhone. A battery lasting less then a day because of multitasking does adversely impact the experience. I have several friends with Android, and when they get past gushing about it, all I hear about is the horrible battery life.

People still care about swappable batteries? This is 2009. LOL.

Kindly checkout the new Nokia 5800 device. It can do flash as well as flash vedio without taxing battery life much. Better check your facts before open your mouth.

Amen.

Apple gets slammed for built-in batteries in their phones and computers, yet the market inevitably heads in that direction anyway. Apple is the only company taking risks and breaking the status quo.

I read them, but we're getting more than a few complaints about your posting here, and on the related thread.

Therefor, I've respondedmildly.

No they won't be that reluctant. ActiveSync is maturing - ironically, Apple is driving it's maturation

Why would I want to pay for and maintain a BES, pay a Blackberry data charge and send all my data through Canada when once MS has feature parity through ActiveSync there will be no need?

Between the iPhone and WM phones, BB is dead in five years - or less if ActiveSync get's it's act together quicker. I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a joint Apple/MS announcement at WWDC for the few remaining enterprise management features BB has over ActiveSync. Apple wants into the enterprise, and they know they have lost the desktop war. But mobile devices are a whole 'nother story and the playing field is WIDE open.

Oh, it's not Exchange only, the other dominant player in Enterprise Email - IBM with Domino announced their intention to support ActiveSync within a year too (Yup, that was a pig flying overhead and a snowball flying by).

We do indeed live in interesting times....

At the same time, don't make it worse.

I keep seeing people mentioning the lack of video recording and flash.

One person even went as far as to say the Pre was incapable, and that flash and video encoding would drain the battery (hilariously putting the battery life at 40 minutes.)

Palm has already said that video recording and flash are coming to the Pre. Is it really so difficult for people to understand that these features need some time, just as copy and paste on the iphone did?

You can come up with reasons all you want as to why you don't like the Pre, but completely making facts up is ridiculous and shows that you're trying to convince yourself more than anyone else of this phone's shortcomings.

I remember flash support was one of the selling points of the 5800. I've never seen a review where they actually tested the battery life from flash playback. Or more importantly the battery life of 5800 with flash playback vs the iPhone with H.264 playback.

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I've got no problem waiting for a technology to develop if it's not quite ready for "prime time." But people are legitimately peeved because everybody bashed Apple for not including video recording, Flash, and a host of other features. Turns out, Apple was right. From Day One, people hated on the iPhone b/c it didn't do video recording. "My phone X does can do it since X years ago" blah blah blah. Now, 2 and a half years later, the best competitor the iPhone has seen to date cannot manage to do these same things. It's just a little bit vindicatiing, that's all. Apple doesn't simply withold features for no good reason.

Its because when the iPhone first came out people complained that it missed many features that other phones had had for years. Even though Apple acknowledged that features would be added over time people still complained.

Now the Pre will launch missing some of these same features. Video recording is likely one of those features that will take some time to polish. Flash on the other hand is a plug in owned by Adobe. The problem is that flash is a resource hog. There isn't anything Palm can do to make it any more efficient.

I also just read that copy and paste on the Pre is not universal. You can only copy and paste certain documents, its not a system wide feature.

I'm gonna poof him if he calls one more name. I haven't got time to delete all these complaints.

Talk about epic FAIL for all those iphone haters who complained ad nauseum about c&p.

That's a bummer on copy and paste. Maybe they'll perfect it.

As far as flash goes, I'll have to agree, it's cpu intensive. I'm very curious as to see what they come up with. Like, will it be true flash, or like flash lite like I have within my opera browser on my touch pro. Or maybe even a representation of flash, rendered on another system like skyfire does.

I remember in a systems analysis class, we had to look at a pizza delivery website, and say what we would do to make it better (like purchase process from start to finish.) When we loaded the site up on an older computer, everything lagged while a huge flash animation played (talking about domino's deals and stuff.) One of the people in my group was convinced it was the website and not the computer. He wouldn't let me check the task manager. So I hopped on a PC right next to us, checked out the cpu load while on the website, and sure enough it was at 100%. I don't think the cpu was any older than a P4 either.

So ya, true flash on a phone will definitely be interesting to see.

Perhaps they decided they'd put out what they have now, and use 2 years to perfect it rather than fore go the feature and release it entirely in 2 years like Apple did.

You never know man. Either way, I think this isn't epic fail. More like what said, bummer. lol

But see, you gotta look at the timeline. Two and a half years ago, everybody hated on the iPhone b/c it lacked copy/paste. They all said, "my phone had copy-paste X years ago, there's no reason iphone cant do it...blah blah." The jailbreakers even managed to implement it in some capacity, as well as some Apps which attempted copy/paste. So if you have a feature which was "standard" as of 2.5 years ago, what's Palms excuse for not having it now (or only having it in limited capacity)? It just goes to show that the blogosphere is largely a bunch of know-nothings who rant and rave about stuff they really don't understand. It's obviously harder than it looks, and Apple has finally figured out how to do it. Palm now needs to do it.

I don't find myself needing copy-paste often on my iPhone, but maybe i'll use it more once it's available. I just like looking back at all the haters who are left looking stupid.

"Copying and pasting only works in text fields where you can write, not when reading emails or SMS or web pages."

From the Gizmodo review.

A lot of people were bashing Apple for much more than "hurry up and do it" reasons. Basic MMS was withheld even though there were apps that could do it. The lack of MMS was an artificial limitation. I could understand perfecting code, but if the code is obviously there and working, why not let people use what works? MMS on the iphone isn't going to be like normal MMS. It's going to have the ability to send more than what you see on other phones. That's cool, but what's the point in waiting?

I think you are grouping people into too much of a generic group. Besides that, on one hand people made excuses for Apple with these delayed features, and on the other they are now bashing the Pre for the same thing. So it goes both ways man.

i'm not bashing the Pre, i'm just pointing out hypocrisies.

As far as MMS, let's not forget about the carrier. Who knows what role AT&T played in that.

Yikes. I'd love to be on the engadget forums to hear how they defend that tidbit.

They have some form of it though, which means they have something to build off of from day one. I see the positive traits in releasing a fully functional feature, but I also see the positive traits in having a partially functioning feature from the get go that can be improved upon.

It reminds me of Creative's vista x-fi drivers that lacked some of the features already found in the xp driver set. If they had waited to release when it was fully functional, people would have had nothing.

Without Apple telling we can only go with educated conjecture.

Originally we all thought Apple was not going to implement MMS to push the adoption of Email.

The other theory is that the type of MMS Apple is using is 3G only and time was needed for its world wide carriers to adopt the protocol.

Whatever it is, Apple has surely decided that normal MMS was not worth the trouble and that they have some plans that are more pronounced. I hope that they also have devised a way that will allow it to be sent between iPhones for free.

I think you're missing the irony here. Apple, a newcomer to mobile phones, is bashed for not having copy and paste (and other features). They finally deliver them, which is all well and good. Palm, who has been in the mobile industry for 15 years, somehow cannot manage to deliver these various features either. Trust me, my beef is NOT with Palm. It's with all the people who bashed Apple day after day - now all of a sudden the "iphone killer" cannot provide these features either. Actually it's all pretty funny, if you ask me.

Dear god, I wouldn't.

It'll run to something like "LOL fanbois anyway Xerox your messiah iPhoney fanbois you suck shutup no replaceable battery multitasking sheep sheep shutup fanbois"

They still don't have a desktop OS, or any kind of ecosystem. Remember, Apple already had the biggest ecosystem for handhelds because they greased the market with iPod gear years ahead of time. Everyone is saying Apps are Palm's weakness. Sure they don't have apps, Apple didn't either, what Apple had to start out with was iTunes (65,000,000) accounts, and an ecosystem. Now, Palm might be able to sell some phones, but they, nor anyone else, has the incredible growth machine Apple has. OS X, iTunes, all the iTunes services, the App Store, a new iPhone + new iPhone OS, plus gaming, plus any number of ways in which this could (and is) growing.

And no one knows what Apple's end-game in all this is going to be. Secrecy and generally playing it close to the vest is an advantage here. Palm doesn't have the luxury of forward-planning yet. They need to move units, and badly. Apple is already three steps ahead of Palm, and Apple already has a solid ecosystem in place on which to build.

There's absolutely no reason for Apple to be worried, all they need to do is stay on this course. It's their game to lose, not Palm's to win.

Noooooooooo. If you speak their language they will come.

Actually, expect a large influx of new posters next Tuesday.

I'm not missing it, simply not getting as worked up over it as you are lol. Every major company will get criticism with things and Palm IS getting criticized for their shortcomings. Heck, they're getting criticized right here by people on these forums lol.

Back when the iphone came out, the ones who were bashing Apple the most over the copy and paste issues were actual iphone owners. At least, this is what I always saw on youtube comments and geeky tech forums.

Apple was a new comer to mobile phones, yes, but they weren't a newcomer to mobile devices, and software. The Newton MessagePad had copy and paste back in 1993. Apple and Palm are very similar in this regard being that Palm also has previous mobile devices with copy and paste. It is very aggravating for anyone to praise the Pre and then judge the iphone so harshly. It shows favoritism instead of a genuine interest in the evolution of technology as a whole.

So when someone brings up the fact that the iphone is finally getting copy and paste and the pre does, simply inform them the Pre SORT of does, and that even the most promising of new devices need time to be perfected.

The difference is that Palm has had a continuous line of PDA's and smartphones for many years now, and have had this feature in many of them for a large part of that time, while this is Apple's first phone. so Palm should know what is needed, and have a very good idea as to how it should be done, while Apple had to sweat it out for the iPhone, while adding a lot of other features that many people wanted more.

That has to be taken into consideration. And we can't really take the way computers do it because of the very different abilities.

I don't know, wouldn't MMS be more money for AT&T? That's part of why I don't really care if it's there or not, I would avoid using it if I can. In the same vein, I would like a way to shut off SMS service, I hadn't found one last I checked.

I don't think he's a troll. He has a different opinion then most and I enjoy reading those posts at times. Tekstud has also helped out the community with a lot of good tricks and tips.

You have added to the community as well. But dude, you gotta stop starting these flame wars.
Appleinsider is now being pointed to by the likes of google and other large media outlets as top stories. This flame crap is devaluing this site.

If you feel you need to flame... at least keep it clever. You two are sounding like 2 pre-pube tossers going at it.

I just called AT&T. There is no option on the phone, but you can call them and have SMS turned off. The only ones youll get are from AT&T about your account. For example, if your payment is late.

In terms of flash, apple cooked their own pig by making the claim (using the UK version)


You never know which part of the internet you'll need. The do you need sun cream part? The what's the quickest way to the airport part? The what about an ocean view room part? Or the can you really afford this part? Which is why all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone


Do Palm make a similar claim?

In terms of the video, the iphone can do it, its just apple does not let you *yet* which is what I assume palm is doing. But it will probably appear once Apples finally comes out of the woodwork and into the general population.