Palm Pre Plus, Day 16

I just got back from a 4th of July vacation with the family (see some photos) and this past week was a great opportunity to put the Palm Pre Plus to the test. Here are my thoughts, so far:

The bad:

1. I can't get used to the battery life... It really is that bad, although with a Touchstone charger in the house and a car charger, I've been able to go around trips with the family with the phone mostly charged.

2. I am really disappointed with the WebOS Internals Virtual Keyboard. This past week there has been a couple of updates to the software that broke the app itself after the update. The first time, I was able to figure out the workaround and get it working, but the second time, when it somehow made my 'show desktop' button stop working, I decided to just uninstall it... I am probably done with it for a while.

3. On the real keyboard, the backspace and enter key are too close to each other, I don't know how many times I am in the middle of writing a txt message and I send it halfway cause I click on the enter key instead of backspace... a bit annoying.

4. The USB connector is on a very inconvenient location on the device, trying to use it while plugged in is very awkward cause I have to keep the usb cable between my fingers... This is mostly an issue when it's charging in the car since I am using Touchstone charger at home.

5. The facebook app sucks! I hear it used to be even worse, but currently it's very hard to see comments, specially on photos!

6. The Touchstone Charger message 'Battery Charged' (or something like that) every few seconds once the phone is 100% charged is extremely annoying. I've installed the patch to turn the sound off, and I've found a post online (don't feel like searching again for it right now) that says there is a way to get that fix, but it involves opening up the phone and doing things I am not comfortable with.

7. I've mentioned it before, but I will add it to the list: the boot time is ridiculously long... like over 3 minutes or so.

8. The youtube app doesn't let me login to my account so I can see my videos only (although I can search, but that's messy).

9. Haven't taken a photo with the flash on that I've liked so far.

10. I don't like that I have to open the keyboard to take off the USB cap (even though it is not required, it's much harder if it is closed).

11. Integration with Google Contacts... This will show up as good and bad. The bad is that I have so much junk on my Google Contacts that I had to by hand and clean it all up, and as time goes by they start showing up again.

12. Google Maps takes an awful long time to load.

The Good

1. MyTether is awesome! IMHO the best non-official app available for webOS. It literally just works: bluetooth, usb or wifi.

2. WebOS multitasking is awesome. It's so good, that I keep telling myself that's why the battery life sucks so much.

3. Although, I am not a fan of the built-in flash, I do like the camera. I like it for photos and videos...

4. The back speaker, I really like the speaker on the phone, listening to music on it comes out loud and clear.

5. Preware for the Palm Pre (Plus) is pretty awesome. I specially like that I can download the patches, and app directly from the phone, and not have to use something on my PC everytime something needs to be tweaked.

6. Being able to drop mp3 files on the music folder w/o needing an app like iTunes is sweet!

7. Online radio (Pandora, Net2Stream) is great as well (although not any different than other phones).

8. Aside from my rant about the enter and backspace key being too close, I really do like the 'real' keyboard. I specially like that by clicking shifting or the symbol button twice it sticks.

9. Saving files to the filesystem. I don't remember if that was native of a patch, but I was able to download a PDF to the file system of the phone and access it anytime I wanted.

10. I like the headphones quite a bit, the sound is pretty clear... although, I will confess, I am not picky with headphones.

11. The integration with Google Contacts. It's very nice to my contacts auto-synched with the service.

12. Even though Google maps takes a long time to load, I actually like the menu choice offered on the WebOS version. It makes sense.

13. So far, the browser has been pretty good, I really like the 'speed dial' style of bookmarks.

14. Govnah, the app that manages the overclocking of the Palm Pre (plus) is really slick. I really like to get the extra 'power' when running apps like Google Maps which are (as I said) quite slow.

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To build up on my previous posts, I think WebOS has a lot of potential and I can't wait to see what HP is going to do with it. The phone itself has been a bit of a disappointment for me, but not enough for me to regret getting one, but I sincerely hope the new versions put out by HP/Palm will resolve some of the issues I've found so far.