[EN4CER69]

Hi All,

I have been running a Blackberry 9700 for 6 months and before that a Blackberry 8900.

The best phone I ever owned was a Palm Treo 750.

Has anyone else changed from a Blackberry to Palm Pre and never looked back?

What's lacking in the Pre over the Blackberry?

What's the Pre got the Blackberry hasn't ?

Will is miss my push email and the easy of emailing?

The idea of a touch screen and qwerty keyboard is pushing it as a deal maker.

The only other option is wait from the new Blackberry 9800 slider, that will have touch screen and keyboard

Thanks for any helps folks

[grover5]

I haven't used the pre but I have heard it is a great phone. The only negatives I have heard are short battery life and some folks feel it has a cheap build.

[reeneebob]

I love my Pre - the battery lasts all day for me (and I'm a heavy texter and have it overclocked, I am at 40% at end of day compared to 20% or so on my Storm), the browser is OUTSTANDING, and best of all is Preware. The couple of things I wanted changed about the OS, there is a patch for it. I have a patch for a virtual keyboard and landscape messaging so I can type without the keyboard if I so choose to, there's a patch for just about everything lol. So much more customizable than the BB OS. As far as email? Gmail is push - all I did was forward my mail from hotmail to the gmail account and it gets pushed to me just like a berry.

Coolest thing? The cloud. I had all my contacts added in one go, when I did get a faulty unit (there was apparently a batch of 200 with faulty USB ports and I was one of the lucky ones) all I had to do was turn it on and sign into the cloud and poof! All there. Also if it gets stolen you can killswitch the phone - without using the crap Unite system or a third party security app.

I'm not disappointed and love the phone more every day.

Get a touchstone too - I haven't used the USB port in over a week since, and its so handy to just set it down and poof - it's charging.

Aniweather is great too, I get such a kick out of watching the clouds move, or when it rains the screen gets rain drops on it that slide down. I don't know why but I find it hugely entertaining.

Also media sync - I use iTunes because of my 30 million iPods and with media sync the Pre registers as an iPod, you can add music right from iTunes.

My Storm had 1 theme, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, quicklaunch, meterberry and weathereye loaded and only ran with 38 Mb free even with a shrunk OS 5.

The Pre has aniweather, backgrounds, prewallpaper, youtube, tweefree, google maps, yelp, wapedia, Globe and Mail, CBC News, Convert, Television without pity, flixster, engadget, precentral, solitaire suite, topple ball, yellow pages, Bell mobility self serve, preware, appscoop, JStop, quick system tasks, govnah, uber patch overclocker, and save/restore app and I have over 125 Mb still available....

[MiguelATF#CB]

I used to be in your position. Had a Blackberry 8900 for a little more than a year. Before that, a BB 8830. Both were good phones. With excellent email, decent messaging, and.....to be completely honest, a substandard browser. Decent Calendar App too but for my needs and uses, that was about it. I liked my Blackberries quite a bit, especially the 8900.

Then I went into a Verizon store and started playing around with a new PRE....and I was immediately hooked.

I've had my Pre for around 3 weeks now. My Blackberry's were excellent phones - but the Pre is hands-down the best phone/device I've ever used and owned.

The biggest thing lacking in the Pre is a Cut/Copy/Paste ability. You can do it on a Pre but with limitations and it's a little clunky. One of the few real shortcomings of the OS.

As far as Push email, I have to say something that many BB users may consider heresy but so far, the Palm Pre/WebOS mail system has been....powerful, excellent and superb. It's also been quite fast. Emails are true HTML with all the graphics - and that gets me into another area -

Graphics - both in the Browser and in every other aspect of the phone - are simply superb. Dazzling is another adjective that comes to mind. Though the Pre's screen is physically smaller than the large iPhone or Android slabs, the image quality is simply outrageous. Using a browser on any of my Blackberries was always a frustrating experience; doing it on my Pre is easy, efficient and fun.

Back to email. It's easy to set up multiple email accounts and use them quickly. The Synergy system - doing automatic backup copies to the 'Cloud' - is quite cool. And the Pre's native Messaging App is in my opinion way nicer than that on any of my BB's. Having truly 'threaded' messages is a huge plus. In fact, almost everything about the Pre's look and feel - its UI/User Interface - or OS/Operating System - is elegant, intuitive, easy and powerful.

Having used BB keyboards for years, the truth is that the Pre's keyboard isn't as well designed in most respects. But it's easy to type on and after using it for a few weeks I'm becoming more fond of it. Early Pre's had some software problems that caused sticking keys but my Pre functions perfectly.

As far as battery life - which many Pre users complain about - let me put it this way: if you use your phone/device for a LOT of different Apps other than mere phoning/mailing/texting - that uses battery juice. It's that simple. And since I use my Pre much more than any of my Blackberries - yes, the battery wears a little quicker. The simple solution is to buy an extra battery - which I've done. But the truth is that if you use your iPhone or your Android or your Nokia N900 a lot for browsing and many Apps....it drains the battery on them too. So the Pre is no different in that respect. My first BB got very long battery life; my 8900 was good but not as good as the earlier models. I suspect that's true of any powerful phone hardware/software combo - the more powerful it gets....the more juice it drinks.

The final downside is Apps - there aren't as many Apps for the Pre as for BB's - for Droids - or obviously for iPhones. Palm is to blame for this as they took some time to open their architecture completely to both large and small developers. Not very smart....which was one among many reasons why Palm needed a financial savior....that they now have in HP. But the good news is, there are almost 3000 official Palm Apps in the Palm App store now - and almost another 1000 patches and 'Homebrew' Apps from the unofficial but huge and interesting Palm Pre users Community. One of the cool things about the PRE platform is that Palm is wholeheartedly supporting indie Developers - and the 'Homebrew' Apps are relatively unique among smartphone operating systems. Bottom line is - though numerically Palm Pre's don't have as many Apps as other smartphone OS's - in my real world experience they have a ton....and way more than I will probably ever use.

And - yes - I'm intrigued by the new BB slider as well. It looks like an interesting device.

But what sets the Pre apart in my opinion is a brilliant, powerful, logical and intuitive operating system. The Pre OS is what sold me on the device - and though my earlier BB's (which were all running BB OS 4.something) were quite predictable and functional and relatively easy to use - the Pre's WebOS feels light years ahead of my old Blackberry's systems.

I think it's a great phone. And for my uses, it does everything my Blackberry did very well - and enough other things to put it in a class of its own.

Good luck making your decision.

Miguel

[ImGeorgeous]

I'm trying it out right now.. I have a 9700 and I've been using an AT&T Palm Pre Plus that I unlocked. From what I see, if your main thing with a phone is to "communicate," you can do no better than a BlackBerry. The "always there" keyboard that's more spacious, all the messaging apps you can leave on at all times.. it's just so easy.

Browser is a million times better on the Pre.. but if I want to type something, I find it is not always convenient to slide out the keyboard. A virtual keyboard is neccessary, but I find the one in Preware lacking.

Multitasking on webOS = WIN. I tried to use the gesture area on the iPad and was disappointed to see that it was not there

But very crappy battery life even with no apps in the background, occasional hiccups (especially with Google Maps?) and overall awkwardness of the device bring me back to the 9700 for now. The webOS community is awesome and helpful, but they probably can't get rid of the overall deficiencies of the current phone hardware and the platform.

[EN4CER69]

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to comment. There are some detailed and interesting thoughts here!

Can I raise/ask a few more things:

• [1]How do you do a Copy & Paste with a Pre?
  
  [2]Is it true there is no Auto spell, Auto Capital letter at the beginning of a new sentence and no Auto full stop?
  
  [3]What are the must have Apps on a Pre?
  
  [4]Is there any Sat Nav software for the UK?
  
  [4]Finally, what are the Pre's equivalent apps to Poynt, eBay app (auction manager), Quicklaunch, Capture It ??

Cheers

Win

[ImGeorgeous]

1) Copy and Paste -- in the messaging app, it is very easy to copy the full message by just clicking on the message. It then brings up a menu that has stuff like delete and copy I believe. I haven't tried it in other areas.. but it's no where as near fluid as the iPhones.

2) I am pretty sure I've experienced auto capital (which means it's there). I know there is a very limited auto spell (that corrects simple stuff like itll to it'll) and I'm not sure what auto full stop is.

3) Most people would say Preware, since it gives you access to about 1000 homebrew apps/patches. Other than that, it's very customizable. And of course your Pandora, engadget, TweetMe and Facebook are all pretty nice on the Pre.

4) No idea. I know there's AT&T Nav for AT&T, Sprint Nav for Sprint, and VZW Nav for VZW.. so maybe there's an O2 Nav for O2?

5) Don't think there is an eBay app, not sure what Poynt does, would love a QuickLaunch style app on the Pre but there are no convenience keys on the Pre so a QL-style app (if it exists) would be more limited on the Pre than on BB. For Capture It, there's a 3 button shortcut you type on the keyboard (I think it's key+sym+P) to let you take a screen shot of the screen.

[tumer]

Is this a joke the 9700 blows the pre out of the water seriously the key pad on the per look like little stickers there not buttons come on wake up as for the battery my wife goes two days ++ and browser you guys no opera mini exists right ?

[reeneebob]

Is this a joke the 9700 blows the pre out of the water seriously the key pad on the per look like little stickers there not buttons come on wake up as for the battery my wife goes two days ++ and browser you guys no opera mini exists right ?

1) Apparently your keyboard lacks punctuation keys.

2) I used Opera on all 3 of my BB's. It SUCKS compared to the Pre browser.

3) The BB OS is a freaking joke.

4) I type as fast if not faster on the Pre.

I really need to say this again - if you are going to tell us how lovely the keyboard is, please try to use an actual SENTENCE STRUCTURE. And spell check.

Per doesn't equal Pre.
There is most DEFINITELY not equal to THEY'RE
No doesn't equal Know.

Are you 5?

[ok4a56]

I have to agree with everyone else, the Pre is better than any BB I have ever used. I was using BIS, and have found that the Pre does email faster than my BB did. My exchange email at work is instant on the Pre and I can sync contacts and calendar using the $29.99 plan and I was never able to do that on BIS.

[EN4CER69]

I love my Pre - the battery lasts all day for me (and I'm a heavy texter and have it overclocked, I am at 40% at end of day compared to 20% or so on my Storm), the browser is OUTSTANDING, and best of all is Preware. The couple of things I wanted changed about the OS, there is a patch for it. I have a patch for a virtual keyboard and landscape messaging so I can type without the keyboard if I so choose to, there's a patch for just about everything lol. So much more customizable than the BB OS. As far as email? Gmail is push - all I did was forward my mail from hotmail to the gmail account and it gets pushed to me just like a berry.

Coolest thing? The cloud. I had all my contacts added in one go, when I did get a faulty unit (there was apparently a batch of 200 with faulty USB ports and I was one of the lucky ones) all I had to do was turn it on and sign into the cloud and poof! All there. Also if it gets stolen you can killswitch the phone - without using the crap Unite system or a third party security app.

I'm not disappointed and love the phone more every day.

Get a touchstone too - I haven't used the USB port in over a week since, and its so handy to just set it down and poof - it's charging.

Aniweather is great too, I get such a kick out of watching the clouds move, or when it rains the screen gets rain drops on it that slide down. I don't know why but I find it hugely entertaining.

Also media sync - I use iTunes because of my 30 million iPods and with media sync the Pre registers as an iPod, you can add music right from iTunes.

My Storm had 1 theme, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, quicklaunch, meterberry and weathereye loaded and only ran with 38 Mb free even with a shrunk OS 5.

The Pre has aniweather, backgrounds, prewallpaper, youtube, tweefree, google maps, yelp, wapedia, Globe and Mail, CBC News, Convert, Television without pity, flixster, engadget, precentral, solitaire suite, topple ball, yellow pages, Bell mobility self serve, preware, appscoop, JStop, quick system tasks, govnah, uber patch overclocker, and save/restore app and I have over 125 Mb still available....

You have been very helpful, esp with listing all those apps

Thanks to everyone else as well for all your input. can't wait to get the phone now

[grover5]

I prefer the 9700 personally but I can respectfully state that without flying into an anti palm rant. Good luck with your pre, I hope you enjoy it.

[dwaynewilliams#WN]

I liked the Pre in concept. My user experience wasn't that great, but it could be that I just got bad units. I hear the AT&T Pre Plus is a lot better than the sprint version. I did find out after I gave up my pPre for my tour that some of the things that I thought the Pre couldn't do, it actually did do. I didn't read the user manual. That would have helped a lot. If the AT&T version had a free hotspot like the Verizon model, I would have considered getting it again. But I have a BB now and love it. I hope your Pre is good to you. And one of the previous posters is right. The screen is absolutely amazing.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[jchapman01]

I'm considering getting a Pre Plus on AT&T. I usually carry a Bold 9700 but actually prefer the 9000 if it had asmuch app memory. Also I miss the track ball (call me crazy, its ok). I am currently using a Moto Backflip (or backflop), but find the hardware extremely lacking (love Android tho). I work for AT&T and have been playing with the Pre a lot. I think its OS and User Interface is brilliant. The only reason I use the backflip is because I won it from selling so many of them during a contest when it was first released. I was actually excited about it at first, but halfway throught the contest about every other device I sold was returned. Obviously this dampened my excitement. So far I haven't had any Pre's returned at all. That's definitely a good sign.

I know there are some differences with the Blackberry that I'm gonna miss like how I can long press a letter and it will auto capitalize. And if you double space it will enter a period. I like that feature and even wish my laptop would do that. The reception on the blackberry is best I've ever had. I'm sure the Palms is ok, haven't really tried it out exept for in my store. And the battery on my Bold can't be beat. I used to download music all daylong and play movies from my SD and it would last forever. I know I'm gonna sacrifice there.

The browser is absolutely amazing on the Pre. Better than any browser I've used on any phone. Love skyfire on my backflp and can't wait till its on the Pre. That'll be a deal maker for me.

Through every smartphone I've tried-- Moto Backflip, Moto Q, Nokia E71, Samsung BJ 1 &2, original iPhone, I've always gone back to the BB.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[dwaynewilliams#WN]

I'm considering getting a Pre Plus on AT&T. I usually carry a Bold 9700 but actually prefer the 9000 if it had asmuch app memory. Also I miss the track ball (call me crazy, its ok). I am currently using a Moto Backflip (or backflop), but find the hardware extremely lacking (love Android tho). I work for AT&T and have been playing with the Pre a lot. I think its OS and User Interface is brilliant. The only reason I use the backflip is because I won it from selling so many of them during a contest when it was first released. I was actually excited about it at first, but halfway throught the contest about every other device I sold was returned. Obviously this dampened my excitement. So far I haven't had any Pre's returned at all. That's definitely a good sign.

I know there are some differences with the Blackberry that I'm gonna miss like how I can long press a letter and it will auto capitalize. And if you double space it will enter a period. I like that feature and even wish my laptop would do that. The reception on the blackberry is best I've ever had. I'm sure the Palms is ok, haven't really tried it out exept for in my store. And the battery on my Bold can't be beat. I used to download music all daylong and play movies from my SD and it would last forever. I know I'm gonna sacrifice there.

The browser is absolutely amazing on the Pre. Better than any browser I've used on any phone. Love skyfire on my backflp and can't wait till its on the Pre. That'll be a deal maker for me.

Through every smartphone I've tried-- Moto Backflip, Moto Q, Nokia E71, Samsung BJ 1 &2, original iPhone, I've always gone back to the BB.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

For some reason, I really like the Palm Pre Plus. I didn't have a great experience with it when I had the Sprint Pre, but for some reason the device still intrigues me. I would have a hard time giving up the 9700 for one though. In my opinion, the 9700 is a superior device.

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[ADGrant]

Hi All,

The best phone I ever owned was a Palm Treo 750.

...

What's the Pre got the Blackberry hasn't ?

Will is miss my push email and the easy of emailing?

The only thing the Palm Pre has in common with the 750 or any Treo is the name Palm somewhere on the phone. The 9700 has more in common with the Treo line.

Unlike either the Treo 750 or the 9700, the Pre does have a decent browser and can do push email. For non corporate users email on the BB is overrated, its actually not that good.

However, unlike the Pre, both the 750 and the BB have decent PIM software.

[bergeronjc]

Hi All,

I have been running a Blackberry 9700 for 6 months and before that a Blackberry 8900.

The best phone I ever owned was a Palm Treo 750.

Has anyone else changed from a Blackberry to Palm Pre and never looked back?

What's lacking in the Pre over the Blackberry?

What's the Pre got the Blackberry hasn't ?

Will is miss my push email and the easy of emailing?

The idea of a touch screen and qwerty keyboard is pushing it as a deal maker.

The only other option is wait from the new Blackberry 9800 slider, that will have touch screen and keyboard

Thanks for any helps folks

I'm went from a 9700 to a Pre Plus. The quality of the email tool on the BlackBerry just can't be appreciated until you go to another phone. If you write lots and lots of email, you'll end up hating the Pre. It's not that it's bad for emails, it's just the BlackBerry is so damn good at emails.

I LOVE the WebOS UI (it's so much fun, with the swipe feature), but sometimes I long for the BlackBerry's keyboard shortcuts. From what I can find, WebOS doesn't support keyboard shortcuts.

The web browser is a billion times better on the Pre, but with 6.0 around the corner, RIM will finally be on par with all the WebKit browsers.

The large keyboard on the Bold is great, but the smaller one of the Pre isn't horrible. It's not as good as the old Treo 650, but almost.

The Pre is a solid device with excellent potential and really great right out of the box. I don't think you'll be dissapointed if you go with a Pre; just remember you can't keep comparing it to a BB or you'll be dissapointed with it. Just like the BB OS, WebOS has it's own idiosyncrasies.

[EN4CER69]

I'm went from a 9700 to a Pre Plus. The quality of the email tool on the BlackBerry just can't be appreciated until you go to another phone. If you write lots and lots of email, you'll end up hating the Pre. It's not that it's bad for emails, it's just the BlackBerry is so damn good at emails.

I totally agree, spot on.

I LOVE the WebOS UI (it's so much fun, with the swipe feature), but sometimes I long for the BlackBerry's keyboard shortcuts. From what I can find, WebOS doesn't support keyboard shortcuts.

I agree and you are correct. I also love the multi-tasking

The web browser is a billion times better on the Pre, but with 6.0 around the corner, RIM will finally be on par with all the WebKit browsers.

I agree, but maybe RIM's browser will match the Pre !

The large keyboard on the Bold is great, but the smaller one of the Pre isn't horrible. It's not as good as the old Treo 650, but almost.

I agree, but Pre's keyboard is dam easy to use.

The Pre is a solid device with excellent potential and really great right out of the box. I don't think you'll be dissapointed if you go with a Pre; just remember you can't keep comparing it to a BB or you'll be dissapointed with it. Just like the BB OS, WebOS has it's own idiosyncrasies.

The few let down with the Pre is no spell check, no voice activation, poor battery life and finally no natural sync to Outlook, so i'm using Pocket Mirror which is cool but expensive.

EN4

[reeneebob]

I dunno, I compare it all the time to my BB's and am disappointed in the BB's, not the Pre.

*snort*

[tedzone]

OP. If the idea of touch screen and qwerty gets you excited. Why the heck wouldn't you wait for the 9800?. Then you get the stuff you want PLUS push PLUS you get the smartphone that is the best PHONE in the business.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[EN4CER69]

From your response, I can tell you have't experiened WebOS . The idea was to run the Pre until the 9800 was released, but hooked now.

WebOS has got the lot!

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[tedzone]

Yeah. Ur right. I haven't tried it. I never took it seriously because of the seemingly flimsy body/shell. My bad. I buy phones like underwear, seriously. It's the only platform I don't have in my current collection. I think I WILL try it.
On a side note. I still think the 9800 with 6.0 and the all new browser will be the ultimate.

Good luck

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[TheOne01]

OP. If the idea of touch screen and qwerty gets you excited. Why the heck wouldn't you wait for the 9800?. Then you get the stuff you want PLUS push PLUS you get the smartphone that is the best PHONE in the business.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Fanboyism at it's level best!

[EN4CER69]

Come back to this tread after you have tried WebOS its great!

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[tedzone]

Fanboyism at it's level best!

Be nice Mr One. It's my first time in the Pre forum. LOL :-)

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