Early Thoughts on The Palm Pre

I Really see the Pre As the return of Palm,

its sad to say it but blackberry dropped the ball here so far, Apple made a phone that revolutionizes the industry and they made the storm which angered their customers that were so used to instant response times and zero lag contacts searching.

The Pre has a great user interface, great concepts (touch area outside of screen on body, program "cards", multitasking, java/CSS/Html apps), And i have a feeling their going to do a great job with it, yet im curious to see what other competition comes out of the woodwork.

a Few things,

Unobtrusive alerts= Amazing, Give me a vibrate and a mini banner, thats all i want, if i want more, ill tap it , great, amazing keep it.

Accelerometer: Great yes, but you have to keep in mind, Sometimes when im reading news in my bed, and im lying on my side (my head being sideways) my phone is also sideways so i can read it, yet this is impossible with the pre or iphone, as the phone automatically rotates, The accelerometer should be able to be either turned off or overridden very simply and intuitively on-the-fly if you ask me.

Light sensor= Amazing, phones have had it for 5 years yet only now people think its a revolution... great... ive heard of solar batteries too, yet if they came out with an OEM phone with a solar panel in it i would be surprised.

Proximity sensor=Again, amazing

facebook integration, Yes amazing, Most facebook users would love to have little pictures of their contacts from facebook next to their name in their phonebook, But there are a few problems here
A. Some peoples pictures are quite scary
B. Some peoples pictures are not of them, nor anything in relation to them.
C. I really dont want everyone on my facebooks phone number... especially not automatically like that, a whole new layer of customizability as to who could see my information would have to be added to facebook for me to be comfortable with that.

I really like the G-Mail like threading of conversations, even if the reply is something other than an SMS or whatever the original message was, thats great.

Touchstone charger....A few things, I like it yes, nifty yes, but more convienient? only by a little... If i were a phone company making a revolutionary accessory (albeit, one that is already available 3rd party in a more "placemat of power" like structure) I would do it in a revolutionary way, 3rd party solutions like power mats etc are much more luxurious, and more likely to be actually purchased as an after device accessory.
I have used docking stations for phones that are very easy to use and came with the phones, i just think if your going to use inductive charging, dont make it so stable, magnets holding the phone to a podioum isnt really magical, its just tricky.

the keyboard, I actually kind of like the centros keyboard, im just not entriely convinced that making the keyboard slide out horizontally rather than vertically would've been all that difficult. bigger keys are always better in the same form factor.

apps,
Dear palm, Thats great and all, CSS and all that jazz, but those should be one ( one BIG) part of your app store with the other, being Device specific powerful core applications and games that arent restricted by web-like code.
PS. Please bring back the Clie....Pretty please? Clie Phone? Pre Flip'N'Fold? ;-)


All in all i think the pre will be the answer to the question every sprint customer has been asking that isnt alright with having just a phone thats a phone. The question "why the hell am i still with sprint?" Please Mr. Dan Hesse, Dont make me regret saying that.