schnoid's Rantings

The Pre is by far the best phone I’ve ever used. It’s more powerful than any phone I’ve seen and most problems I have with it will probably be worked out with time. On that note, I’d like to focus purely on Issues/Annoyances/Hopes/Wants for both this Pre and the follow on ones.

Hardware:

• Battery Life is pretty bad (this may be partially fixed through software, but it would still be nice to have a higher capacity battery. I would like to be able to leave wifi/bluetooth/gps/chat/push email on all day without worrying about it, and make it so the screen doesn’t go to sleep after a few seconds)
• slider wiggle / oreo twist / gap (apparently not everyone has this, but a significant number do)

Software:

• If Palm Profile is defaulted, changes on phone do not sync to gmail. Would love to be able to see what data is stored on which account (lots of other issues with synergy like this)
• as screen dims out you have to type something on the keyboard before it activates, so sometimes it takes two presses before you start typing again when you’re texting back and forth
• Currently there’s a limit to how many apps can be installed. This seems very stupid and I would hope they would fix it very soon.
• Would be really nice to have other languages supported.
• landscape virtual keyboard when phone is in landscape mode
• copy/paste that works throughout the phone
• sync between gmail tasks and pre task app
• have the ability to open PDFs from a web browser
• lag when answering phone call and doing other time critical tasks. Answering call and setting to speaker phone takes at least a few seconds
• If battery dies, the phone is unuseable for at least 10-15 minutes while battery is charging.
• Startup time is soooooooo slow
• seems to be not enough volume options. When listening to music, sometimes you have a choice between very quiet or very loud
• signal strenth seems to jump significantly even when standing in one place
• No option to sign in and out of chat networks separately
• backup does not backup all the phone’s settings (at least have an option to sync the settings to a local computer)
• only 3 pages of launcher icons (would be nice to at least have folders)
• There should be an option to answer the phone when the keybard slides out.
• Make universal search really universal (search music, videos, pictures, etc)
• visual voicemail / voicemail transcribe

Lack of Apps/Missing Apps:

• Official apps are being released VERY slow or not at all. Fortunately the homebrew scene is kicking butt so this doesn’t bother me that much at the moment.
• Flash support on the browser
• voice dialing/voice typing/voice recognition
• video and voice recording needs to be added
• No VNC/Logmein program yet

Accessories:

• would be nice if the earbuds had a volume control on it
• charging on touchstone gets the Pre REALLY hot
• touchstone does not come with its own power cable so you have to keep taking out the plug and putting it into your computer to drop files onto it until you buy an extra plug.
• touchstone for the car very necessary so I don’t have to keep taking off the little microUSB cover

Features that would be nice on Pre 2:

• AM/FM radio (the TVs at the gym use FM to transmit sound and its frustrating to have to carry in a separate mp3 player if I want to watch TV)
• microSDHC slot
• 32+ GB of storage space
• GSM/CDMA/World phone with SIM card
• Slightly bigger OLED screen
• 6+ MP auto focus camera with real zoom
• More sturdy casing (use light weight metal instead of plastic)
• Three way on/off/vibrate switch (third option to set everything to vibrate instead of just on/off)

If Palm added all these features and fixed all these problems and the 3rd party apps started flowing like crazy then I can’t imagine I’d ever have to switch phones. I’d just upgrade every year or two for faster processors, better battery life and more storage space.

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