[MrTomRN]

Thnak you for this review, it totally confirmed what I thought would be true.

I held off on buying a BB because I had a Palm Pilot and a mobile. I always swore that I wouldn't get a device to do both because if it breaks, you are out two items. I was very tempted by the Pre. But as I was considering it, my nine month old PDA 'broke' for the second time. I will spare you the story, but let me tell you that I have had a Palm device since the days of the m105. And with each 'upgrade' the quality of the device and the support/service downgraded exponentially. It was time to consider going Black(berry). I did my research and settled [rightly] on the 8330/Curve.This is the one ring to rule them all! Even my iPod has to bow down to it!!!

Moral of the story: DO NOT BUY ANY PALM PRODUCTS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

(I will gladly tell of my negative experiences with Palm to those that really want to know.)

[dbpaddler]

considering they recently came out with another OS update I would say it's not since it had a big exchange upgrade which was probably not on his phone. Also considering it is a 1.0 device, of course there are things missing like shortcuts, ringtones and such which can get updated over time. You also have root access to the Pre and many have created home brew apps that are improving functionality quicker than Palm can churn them out. Not that everyone wants to engage in that sort of thing. But they've had a few updates already and seem fairly intent on getting right. Every phone has certain dealbreakers and things you just can't wait or hope for.

That being said, my Pre went back three days after I got it. The PIM is as weak as blackberry's, much less functional than the original PalmOS. At least BB has Agendus and other options. The Pre doesn't yet. And I didn't think the build quality was all that either. Expected better. I'm waiting for gen 2 webOS products to take the plunge again. I've had my Tour for four days now and have used an 8830 in the past. But I'm not sold on the Tour and BB. email and PIM are still too basic. No folder support for email(aol, yahoo and such), no threaded sms. Might end up back with the Treo Pro. Still playing though.

True it was only one day, but most things touched on do not take much time to evaluate. Very good review touching on the main points.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[chelseababyyxx]

Blackberry ALWAYS wins

[mjesenovec]

I liked the review. Wasn't the most in depth multi-page review ever, but it hit a lot of points that might be deal breakers for a lot of BB fans. Overall, crackberry addicts are used to getting the job done quickly, and easily overall. the pre will most likely do well, as the iphone has sold zillions. There are different devices depending on what you want it to do, and how you want it to do it. I personally feel most comfortable jumping on opera mini, looking up a phone number, calling a restaurant real quick, then shooting off a text and updating my twitter all from my bb, than using the iphone or pre interface. Iphones and pres to me are pretty, fancy gadgets designed for the mass market, which it does very well. I just dont have a use for them. The cool thing though, is the new bb's are crossing the line into form AND function instead of just function. the original curve will go down in history as one of the best phones ever for productivity, stability, battery life, and overall awesomeness. sure it's not flashy, but what it does, it does very well.

[dbpaddler]

spoken like a true fangirl. And tell that to my Treo Pro when the Tour goes back.

Blackberry ALWAYS wins

[mjesenovec]

Blackberry ALWAYS wins

I agree. I dont see myself leaving the BB family anytime soon. I had motorolas, i had LG's. they were great phones, but BB is by far my favorite smart phone. i cant stand winmo, and the iphone is too much of a toy for me. i love hearing "I have an app for that." all i can think is yeah, that's great, but i have no use for it.

[mjesenovec]

spoken like a true fangirl. And tell that to my Treo Pro when the Tour goes back.

you should let us know how you like the pro! bb's definitely aren't for everyone. i just found that for what i look for in a phone, the bb fits the bill, and the other phones dont please me as much.

[MrWheelMan]

Today's my one week anniversary with my Curve, and honestly, I don't miss the touchscreen of my Samsung Instinct at all. The functionality, versatility, and customizability of the Curve far exceeds any benefit or coolness of the touchscreen, IMO.

[baseballjmr]

very thorough and informative review! thanks!

[The Bee]

Great review! Will keep my curve for a while longer!

[welchrock]

Definitely a great review. Was considering the Pre when it comes to Verizon but it sounds like I'm better off waiting for the Storm 2 or new Curve.

Call me crazy but hasn't the BlackBerry OS been capable of running multiple applications for years? I get frustrated when the Pre touts it's ability to run multiple applications at once when my old 8703e BlackBerry accomplished this 'feat' in 2006.

Maybe there is some technicality I'm missing but running Opera Mini & Gmail Application at the same time equals running multiple applications in my book.

Stop advertising 'new' features Palm if they aren't new and you weren't the ones to bring them to the marketplace!!

[cdf3]

Nice review. It was very straight forward and to the point.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Armando175]

A coworker of mine was so psyched about the Pre. She would talk about it for weeks until she finally got it. I had the chance to play with it every day on my lunch break. The screen is beautiful but it was sluggish when opening apps and what not. Oh and the keyboard is so small. I thought my Curves keyboard was bad but when I saw the Pre, I thought differently about my Curve. Battery life, let's not even go there. I didn't have to play with the Pre for a long time to realize that my Curve 8320 crushes the Pre. This is only my opinion. I love my Curve 8320!

[probson100]

I am looking forward to trying the pre soon on the uk. I have a bold and to me if the pre keybord does not allow very near as fast and accurate input, I would never change. Second I would look at call quality and screen quality, the pre would have to significantly exceed these to persuade me to change. Third I would look for the shortcuts which make the Bold very quick and easy to use, can the pre knock these out of park ?. Lastly I would expect the pre to give instant response like my Bold even when loaded with a lot of 3rd party software. For the record I don't give 2 hoots about a better camera, or eye candy in the op system and I would compare any browser to opera mini on my bold which does almost everything I need it to very quickly. Do you think I will change to pre?

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Armando175]

I am looking forward to trying the pre soon on the uk. I have a bold and to me if the pre keybord does not allow very near as fast and accurate input, I would never change. Second I would look at call quality and screen quality, the pre would have to significantly exceed these to persuade me to change. Third I would look for the shortcuts which make the Bold very quick and easy to use, can the pre knock these out of park ?. Lastly I would expect the pre to give instant response like my Bold even when loaded with a lot of 3rd party software. For the record I don't give 2 hoots about a better camera, or eye candy in the op system and I would compare any browser to opera mini on my bold which does almost everything I need it to very quickly. Do you think I will change to pre?

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

My guess is that you're not going to get fast and accurate keyboard input as your Bold would. Regarding the shortcuts, I never did try them on the Pre but my assumptions would be that the Pre doesn't have any shortcuts. I could be wrong though. The Pre lags when you open an application, at least to me it did. Those three things alone would make me stay away from the Pre. I love my Blackberry and I don't think I will change to another phone in the near future.

[AaronWasHere]

Very solid review that was pretty much down the middle and fair... unlike a lot of Web reviews you read now a days lol

[larrytxeast]

I have a Curve/8310, body #2 since last Friday (Aug 8st), body #1 Dec 2008-til last July--in-between, I used the Treo 650 & 680, the phones I had used before (Jan-Dec 2008).

I tried out a "dummy" Palm Pre today, and could not believe the keyboard. Not only is it small, it's recessed into the body. I can't imagine 2-thumbing my daily stuff into that thing. I haven't tried out the phone otherwise (like I said it was a dummy/shell), but that keyboard is a deal-killer, I think.

Too bad. Personally, I like Palm, somewhat, in fact I used to proudly let people know my 650 & 680 were NOT Blackberries as they thought they were. (Always annoyed me how people think every PDA phone is a Blackberry.) I do, still, prefer them for some things, especially the threaded/chat-view texting and quick-silence ringer switch. Also, though out-of-box you can't set profiles, a free & small download gives you this--and unlike the Blackberry's native-one, it lets you set the profile to expire after a certain time (really handy for, say, silent mode in quiet places & not forgetting to return it out of silent-mode afterwards) and it also will let you change things like the color of the display. (There may be a Blackberry download that gives you the same thing.)

However, overall, I like my 8310 better. It is MUCH less crash-prone, especially vs the 650, especially when web-browsing (I use Opera Mini on both). It also can multi-task, so if I'm web-browsing I can answer calls, emails or texts and then go right back where I was. If the memos are altered it prompts me if I wish to save changes, a biggie because some of them I don't want altered by accident. The 680 is more stable than the 650, but still a bit buggie when web-browsing with Opera Mini, and its battery life is horrendous.

Okay, I am referring to the Treo, not the Pre. Thing is, I sort of root for Palm, and have heard good thing overall about the Pre, but that keyboard--ouch. I like what they do with their products, but their old Treo line is too unstable when web-browsing, the Blackberry OS is so much more crash-proof. And the batteries roll on like forever.

[dbpaddler]

The Centro was/is extremely stable, better than the 755/680 series. Still dated though. It is a 13yr old OS after all and just wasn't designed to run on this modern equipment. Surprised they squeaked as much out of it as they did.

The Pre itself still has issues. The OS has a lot of potential, and since root access has been obtained, armchair developers are doing quite a bit to it, and a year from now, should be quite impressive. The Pixie/Eos should be an interesting phone when it's released, and I look forward to the next gen Pre as well. I didn't care for the recessed keyboard either. I didn't mind the size. Using qwerty boards for awhile now, it's easy to adjust over time to become more efficient. Though if they would've skipped the curved slider and skipped the sunken keyboard, they would've had more space for a better spaced or larger overall keyboard. Stupid over-engineering at its finest.

Will be interesting to see how the qwerty touchscreen BB will match up against the Pixie/Eos.

I wanted to like the BB, and there's a lot of things I do like about it, but the email is so limited compared to the others. No folders or mail from before you've had your bb. Just makes no sense to me for an email centric device. And not everyone is using BES so that doesn't count. For those that don't need major access to their web email it's fine though. My sister just got a Storm too and I told her to return it and spend more for the Tour. Peeved because I already got her the charging cradle for it too...grrr.

And I may get stuck going to an iphone which peeves me beyond belief. Moving to this new sales/inventory mgmt system and wouldn't you know....there's an app for that. ugh. If there was ever a slogan that got under my skin more than any other....

However, overall, I like my 8310 better. It is MUCH less crash-prone, especially vs the 650, especially when web-browsing (I use Opera Mini on both). It also can multi-task, so if I'm web-browsing I can answer calls, emails or texts and then go right back where I was. If the memos are altered it prompts me if I wish to save changes, a biggie because some of them I don't want altered by accident. The 680 is more stable than the 650, but still a bit buggie when web-browsing with Opera Mini, and its battery life is horrendous.

Okay, I am referring to the Treo, not the Pre. Thing is, I sort of root for Palm, and have heard good thing overall about the Pre, but that keyboard--ouch. I like what they do with their products, but their old Treo line is too unstable when web-browsing, the Blackberry OS is so much more crash-proof. And the batteries roll on like forever.

[crimlaw]

great reviews and so happy to read them. I bought my first smart phone this summer and felt forced to get a BB because I was on verizon and did not want to change just for the Pre. I was a sucker for the hype. Now, I am happy I was "forced" to get by 8330. I love it. I am still learning a lot about it, but I have few complaints. I tried using my ipod touch the other day, I hated the keyboard. My 8330 is the best phone/PDA/multimedia all-in-one device I have ever owned . . . granted it is my first ;-)

[FourEvaTrini]

I had a question does anyone know if there's an easy way to snyc my old Pre to my new Curve when I plug in my pre there really isnt a way to view my contacts or sync them to my desktop.


Thanks in advance for any assistance with this you can PM me with an answer if you have one thanks