Oh, I really, really didn’t want to write this.
I tweeted this week that I will probably give in and buy an iPhone instead of a Pre. This decision has been brewing for a few weeks now, and though the Pre has a lot going for it, I just don’t think it’s for me.
Here’s why:
- Apps – Android and iPhone have the mindshare. Palm just doesn’t seem to be gaining traction. For example, most of the radio stations I listen to offer a free iPhone app with streaming audio and music news. I’d hoped the ease of Palm’s development environment would make more apps available, but I just don’t see it happening.
- Screen Size – Palm, you just made the Pre screen too darn small to be an enjoyable experience.
- Media – I want a smartphone that’s a solid media player, for both streaming and locally stored content. The Pre is functional, but I want more than that.
And there are two, more-strategic factors:
- You bet the farm on social media — and it isn’t what you thought it would be. The Pre, with all its hooks into the Web, is supposed to be a social networker’s dream. Are any of these social media phones selling well? When I’m out of the house or office, I do want access to Facebook, LinkedIn and such, but I don’t want a phone built around them.
- You’re still playing catch-up — and not making progress. I had such high hopes for the Pre. I hoped your CES showing this year would be impressive. Flash would have made all the difference. It would have drawn a line in the sand that Apple would not cross and instantly made the Droid fans weep. But there was no Flash. Only the Pre Plus and some games which are nice, but too little, too late.
And isn’t that the way with Palm these days?
I used to work for a company with a major operation based in Europe. My colleagues there always wanted to hold off launching projects until they were big, elaborate and impressive. On the U.S. side, we wanted to launch when they were good enough and quickly evolve them into something more. The Pre seems like a great phone, and it would have been a killer product two years ago.
The Pre is impressive, it just arrived too late. (You can thank an ill-conceived strategic separation of the company’s hardware and software units for that — it lost them years of OS development work.)
I’m not totally writing off Palm. The Pre has some great features that are costly in the iPhone universe — like the GPS navigation (through Sprint, at least).
Palm, you can still win me back, but right now, I’m ready to move on.
Sorry.
