It’s interesting how married to Operating Systems people can become. My first computer was an Apple IIGS, but then we swiftly moved to Windows. I used to join in deriding Macs, then I got one. Mac OS, especially 10 and up, became my OS of choice. However, I still used Windows (and occasionally Linux) on a daily basis. I’m basically platform agnostic. A platform is a tool, and the one that works best for you is the best… for you. There is no perfect platform for everyone, for computer or phone.

I mention this because of discussions I’ve been having with some fellow techies. This week I finally broke down and bought a Pre. The reactions from my iPhone, WindowsMobile and Blackberry using friends (Sort of sad, but I don’t personally know a single Android user – no I’ve never met Justin) were almost comical in their predictability. I even got complaints about the Pre from a fellow Pre owner… because he’s really a Blackberry user. I’m not saying they’re wrong – I’m just saying the Pre is closer to my “ideal” phone than most of those other options (In fact, I recalled a doodle I drew ten years ago and it resembles the Pre to the point of scariness).

Every phone does its job in one way or another and every phone does it for someone. The cell market is really big enough for everyone. So how about we all just calm down and let people find the right solution?

So, why is the Pre my “perfect phone” (so far, anyway?)? Click the read link and find out.

[Warning – this thing is a fricking essay. I clearly have no life.]
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Holy cow, what a week. Every time Mordy or I sat down to write a post, something else happened. I’m going to try to condense it all into one week, going by topic. Bear with me:
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Over a year ago, Sprint released the new set of “Everything” service plans to go along with the release of the Samsung Instinct. The new plans allowed users to play with every feature their phone was capable of without incurring any additional fees (Sprint TV, GPS, picture messaging, sms, data, Blackberry service, the works). Charging only $99 for the Simply Everything all-included plan (which includes even unlimited minutes), this is much less than it would cost for the same features elsewhere.
The problem is, they didn’t give Instinct buyers any choice. If you want an Instinct, you MUST get an Everything plan. They won’t even allow the device to be activate on any other plan.
There hasn’t been any official explanation for the policy, but in some strange sort of way, this made some sense… The original Instinct was supposed to directly combat the original iPhone on AT&T, and the big selling point for Sprint was that it could do things the iPhone could not at the time (3G, Voice Control, turn-by-turn GPS, etc). Without paying for those features, however, the Instinct was just a touch screen phone that lost in style and UI to the iPhone. In order to get noticed, its possible Sprint wanted every Instinct user to be able to show off how much “better” their device and service was.

Fast forward to today- Palm’s new Pre, and another Instinct (S30) is now running on Sprint’s network, and all of them require the Everything Plan.
That’s right, unless you want to pay for all the trimmings on your new Palm Pre, you can’t have one. Even if you’ve been using a Treo as a PDA for the last decade or so on a regular basic 200 minute plan, you aren’t eligible to even pay full price for the new Palm phone!
Now, that doesn’t seem fair… Ok, so the Instinct was supposed to target possible iPhone buyers, but Palm already has a large loyal user base, many of whom have been on the same old plan for years. Maybe they don’t want GPS, unlimited text or even Data… they never had them before, why would you force them to pay for it? For their own good?

Since when is it a requirement that every feature should be enabled on a phone? Imagine if they required every RAZR to pay for GPS Telenav service, even if the user already owns an in-dash GPS for their car! This hardly seems logical.

I personally have seen many people who had Sprint for a long time, and after years of adding features to their grandfathered plans, finally have a plan that they are happy with and want to stick with. Some of these folks were very excited about the Palm Pre until it was announced they would have to give up their old plan that fit like a glove, and take on a new one that required features they don’t want or need. These people were turned away, and Sprint missed a potential boatload of renewed contracts.

The effect? Sprint reported a rather disturbing financial loss this quarter, citing that they lost many customers. I very strongly believe that Sprint could have kept a significant amount of subscribers if they had the option to resigned their current contract for a hot phone instead of leaving them out to wander elsewhere.

Even stranger still is that Sprint is not consistent with the policy… Currently, only the Instinct and Pre require Everything plans, while other smartphones such as the Diamond and Touch Pro running Windows Mobile (which came out after the Instinct) do not. Strange, since Windows Mobile rivals the other two platforms in features, and adds some more on top of it.

Meanwhile, current subscribers are wondering how Sprint will view the new Android handsets promised this quarter. Will they enforce the everything plan like the Instinct and Pre? Or will they leave it open like Windows Mobile, since Android is not exclusive to Sprint? Remember, users can buy a G1 or MyTouch on T-Mobile without having to add a special expensive plan, so if someone doesn’t want to pay for the services on Sprint but wants the phone, what would they do?

For their sake, I hope they don’t enforce the new plans.

As many of us know, Apple announced a new iPhone, the 3GS, within days of the Palm Pre’s launch. The release was widely believed to be rushed out the door to steal some of Palm’s thunder since the Pre seems to be treading on all sorts of Apple’s turf (syncing with itunes comes to mind).

The primary difference between the iPhone 3G and the new 3GS is the speed of the CPU and graphics. Most of the time, end users won’t notice any performance difference (the platform was already pretty speedy), however this speed boost is planned to spark a whole new set of high end games, further pushing the iPhone platform as a gaming device.

Ready for the irony?
ZodTTD, developer of PSX4all (an app that plays full-blown Playstation games on mobile devices), has just released a Palm Pre version of his game platform to follow up his version for the iPhone 3GS. And you know what? The Pre version outperforms the iPhone 3GS!

I, for one, find this rather disappointing for Apple. Its bad enough that many iPhone fans are already dismissing the 3GS as not substantial enough of an upgrade to renew- but it turns out that new customers who want top notch game performance might also now dismiss the 3GS (the Pre’s keyboard may prove more useful for game controls as well).

Which begs the question- what demographic is the 3GS for? Is it simply for people who want 32GB of storage?
I’m not really concerned for Apple, however- I’m certain that there are enough fans out there who will buy the 3GS. I’m just underwhelmed.

Here are some interesting things from DigitalLook, but not exactly interesting enough to be their own article (no offense to the vendors, who were all awesome)

Note that I do have photos, but I seems to be mangling the photo functions of the blog, so I will be holding off on adding them.
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Well, the Pre’s release day came and went. If you haven’t been following the press (read: bloggers), the initial impressions are rather promising… however, the inter-webs are full of the standard nitpicking and critics that follow any large-scale launch (anyone remember when early iPhone 3G adopters claimed the battery life would keep it from getting off the ground?).
In fact, ifixit.com has already dissected theirs and shared the images and initial impressions. The hardware is decent, but the OS is what will ultimately save Palm as a company (Quote: “WebOS is so cool! We love how natural it feels to swipe between applications and multitask with Web, Twitter, AIM, and Pandora”).
Of course, it will be hard to win over any Apple fans. Most of them are still holding their grounds with the claim that the iPhone is still the superior platform.

User impressions aside, how did this release effect Palm as a company?
Industry analysts are hesitantly calling the launch a success, with an approximated 50,000 units sold. While that’s a good, healthy number, you have to remember that Apple sold a whopping 146,000 in their opening weekend, nearly 3x as much as Palm. The difference, according to insiders, is that Palm didn’t have the stock to sell more phones than that… “You can’t sell 100k+ phones if you don’t have 100k+ phones to sell.”
In fact, many people who waited in line for their Pre were turned away when store after store ran out of stock.

The bottom line here, is that it may not have taken off with as big of a bang as the iPhone, however it IS doing relatively well all things considered. Only time will tell where it goes from here.
What makes Palm’s stance so uncertain, however, is that there is a planned announcement this afternoon from the Apple camp, with many claiming a new iPhone will be announced. Palm’s thunder may be stolen before they have a proper chance…

In a rather shocking announcement, the upcoming Palm Pre is not only capable of being a music player (that standard 3.5mm headphone jack sure is handy), but it will in fact also pretend to be an iPod when connected to iTunes, sucessfully syncing all your music and photos as if it were a ‘pod itself.

This alone may make the Pre the most compelling iPhone rival yet.
And to think, some tech bloggers such as CruchGear had the audacity to call the Pre an “Also Ran” today (click the link for more info).

I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the Pre now fellas…