Palm Pre – Business Tool or Toy?

There are many arguments about the iPhone and the Blackberry and which one is better.  Recently, I was witnessing one of these when I quickly interjected that there is a simple difference between the two … one is a toy while the other is a business tool (of course, the Blackberry is also slowly turning into a toy).  When I was told that at work we may be moving from the Blackberry to the Palm Pre, I started to do some research but much of it was from when the Pre first came out.  Since then there have been several updates, unfortunately I could not find any recent opinions.  Well, you may not have asked for it but here is mine.

First, why even choose to switch?  The answer is simple, money.  Not only do we not have to pay RIM $15/month/device (saving us $300/month) but due to Sprint’s mobile to mobile any plan feature, we could cut down our minute pool down considerably.  I have been using the Pre for a little while now so the differences from the Blackberry have started to fade.  Some differences are when you are typing an email address the Blackberry would “know” so you could hit the space bar to insert a ‘@’ or ‘.’  Also, holding down a letter won’t capitalize it on the Pre, it will repeat it – just like on a real keyboard.  The nicest feature that I miss is the space space insertion of a period that the Blackberry would do.  However, the Pre does have the period in a place where you do not have to alt or shift to get to it, it’s just a regular key.  Our Pres came with WebOS 1.1.0, release 1.2.1 was already out and shortly there after 1.3.1 was ready for download.  These downloads required 30% battery life remaining and were 80 MB and 126 MB respectively.  Quite a large size but at least it was an easy install.  Lastly, I don’t know if I will ever get used to not having the LED indicator light that would blink on my Blackberry telling me I had a new message in the last 15 minutes.

Now, to the annoyances.  After you setup an Exchange account, you can not change the login settings, only the password.  The rest of the accounts I setup I can change everything.  Probably due to a limitation with Exchange Active Sync, the memos do not sync.  The contacts that were imported from exchange would only bring over the parent contacts folder.  On the Blackberry, all contacts came over easily, on the Pre the contacts subfolders do not come over … and yes I’ve done my troubleshooting … both level 1 and 2 support at Palm told me it should work, level 3 conceded it does not.  Another annoyance is the NFL and NASCAR and other useless apps that came with the Pre cannot be removed.  I asked around and to my surprise, they apparently didn’t even pay Sprint or Palm for this limitation.  On to tethering, you can do it for another $15/month but not through USB, over bluetooth.  I guess most laptops come with bluetooth now but the less strain on the Pre’s battery the batter.  Speaking of the battery, HORRIBLE.  I use it moderately and by moderately I mean maybe 2 or 3 few minute phone calls and email interactions throughout the day and I’m lucky to get by 24 hours on a charge.

Some annoyances I thought would fade with time … some have and some have not.  At first, I thought the Pre’s reaction time was a little slow, and it may be, but after my use it seems to be appropriate.  I joked around with people when we first got them that they better like their background because they are going to be looking at it a lot (and I think all 20 of us changed form the original background).  I thought the sides of the keyboard “dish” were a little hard and sharp but I don’t notice it anymore.  The keyboard is just a little smaller than the Blackberries that I have used, you NEED to have nails to type on it, otherwise the side of your finder will get sore.  Version 1.3.1 has a lot of taps to go through just to shut it down, previous versions did not require so many prompts and hopefully this will change back in the next release.  I am still having trouble placing the cursor in certain areas when I need to edit something, my tapping just isn’t up to par or the screen is not accurate enough for this to be useful.  This makes copying and pasting a hassle as well, unless you are selecting all to copy.

Keeping in the business perspective while continuing the annoyances, there is no central management.  This is the trade-off of saving $15/month/device but it would be nice if we could purchase software from Palm or have another way to manage these.  Another issue I have is that there is no auto on/off setting, this could be easily fixed with a future upgrade, I would think though.  However, due to this shortcoming, I am forced to either not turn it off at night or sit through 2 minutes of the pulsing palm logo while it boots.  Yes, it take a while to boot, I mean my Vista computer boots faster … yeah right I’m just kidding I would never have a computer that runs Vista.  Also, I had to go through 20 tutorials as I activated and tested each Pre.  It would have been nice to have an option to skip it, and even nicer to have an option to tell it to run at a later time (like next power on) so it would run for other employees.

And now, finally, on to some of the things I really like about the Pre.  First, let me mention that everyone else in our company likes that they can swipe emails and applications away to delete or close them.  It is nice that when you are composing an email you can see what your signature is, and you can easily edit it without having to go through several non-intuitive menus on the Blackberry.  When I connect it to my computer I am prompted if I want to sync the device, add it as a USB device or just charge.  USB device?  Yup, that’s what I wrote … there is enough free space to save 7 GB of crap to the Pre.  Music, work files, videos, whatever you want.  I have mentioned Exchange several times, yup, we connected all 20 phones to Exchange and immediately all of our main contacts, tasks, calendar events and emails came over.  By default, it only brings over 3 days but I easily changed it to all.  Ok, there was an issue with my exchange account and for some reason my calendar won’t come over no matter what I do, I know it is something wrong with my domain account due to the troubleshooting I’ve done and with some help from Palm.  Still, 19/20 flawless is a great start for something that hasn’t been on the market nearly as long as the Blackberry.  Lastly, I really like that I can see all my personal email folders for yahoo, gmail and other accounts.

So here we are, conclusion time.  I know what you must be thinking … 3 paragraphs of annoyances vs 1 paragraph of likes the answer is obvious.  Well, not so fast my friend.  While there are many little annoyances with the Pre, overall I think they can easily be solved with future upgrades.  Also, there is a “new entry” weighted system since the Blackberry has been in the market and had time to improve for many years.  Overall, the Pre could and should take a chunk out of RIM’s Blackberry in the SMB area.  If you use the Blackberry for personal use, you should definitely take a look at the Pre.  Hopefully, with a new hardware release Palm will fix the battery issues for real and stop falsely blaming applications and fix up other minor problems.

UPDATE (2/4/10): With recent updates (in the 10 MB size range) the battery life has improved slightly. However, I have called Palm for an update to my ticket a few times and am told they are still working on resolving the issue.  Sounds to me that they don’t know how EAS works.