A little redesign. Be sure to read the document file included for installation and known issues please.
I’ve not really hidden it (at least on twitter) but a little more than a month I totally switched from an iPhone 3G S to a Palm Prē Plus. Since then I’ve only switched on my iPhone to install the latest OS 4 beta and gave it a spin for only 5 minutes before shutting it off again.
Why did I switch?
To be honest, when the Palm Prē was announced back in 2009, I wanted one. The whole user interface and user experience was so much better than the iPhone’s… and it a really had well-done multitasking experience.
While I didn’t really miss having this feature on my iPhone, sometimes I was frustrated having to quit a youtube video right in the middle of it because I received a text message (with a modal alert breaking the whole experience too) I had to reply right away. When I was done with the text message, opening youtube.app again not only lost the streaming progress of the video but I had to search for it all over again.
I can already hear people saying that multitasking is coming to iPhone OS 4 but it’s not good and is really not well executed compared to the Prē’s. The iPhone wasn’t built for it and you can tell when you use it in the beta. Maybe it’ll be different and better with the new iPhone HD/4G coming up but I really doubt it. However I’m curious how they’ll do it on the iPad.
Multitasking is one part, what is the other part that made me switch? Curiosity.
The Prē has a lot of amazing things the current iPhone OS version doesn’t have or will never have:
• Gestures based user interface,
• No intrusive notifications,
• Instant Messaging (AIM & Google Talk),
• Universal inboxes,
• Facebook contacts sync,
• PDF file viewer from the box,
• Transferring files directly to the phone by mounting it to the desktop.
• Palm is ok with the homebrew scene,
Some things like Universal inboxes is coming to the OS4 (it took Apple three years to do it though…), but you’ll still have to use iTunes to sync everything onto your iPhone and this is getting really frustrating (especially on the iPad).
Not everything is pretty though, the battery obviously like any other phones sucks nowadays. However applying some patches and installing UberKernel with Govnah to tweak the frequency made it a bit better (the phone is using less power when the screen is off). The App Catalog lacks some apps but I’m not a guy who had a lot of apps on his iPhone so I’m really not bothered by this.
Overall I’m really happy with the Palm Prē Plus, it’s a nice device and WebOS is so much superior than iPhone OS in so many ways that going back is a no for me. Am I exciting for the next iPhone? Not at all. The latest iPhone OS 4 beta didn’t convince me at all since I got my Palm Prē Plus and to be honest, when a good WebOS/Android tablet is released, consider me switching from the iPad and never look back.
For the lol, when I’ve to use my iPad or iPhone’s girlfriend, I always try to do Prē’s gestures haha… :-)
