All I have to say about my SPRINT service is this: I was riding on the N train to a meeting in mid-town and my phone rang. If you have been to New York City and seen our “sub” way system you know it is deep underground and no one gets calls on the train in a tunnel. In other words, AWESOME!!
As for my SPRINT EVDO card, Speedtest.Net is telling me I have over 2Mbps on th UP! What??? I started getting these readings after installing an update that was pushed out – took an hour and a half, but if the speedtest is an indication of the kind of up-grades being made available over “affordable” means, that’s great for streaming!
I know, I need to do more testing and I will. Admittedly the spattering of APPS that were made available did not live up to the hype this past week. Alas.
The one thing I need to do immediately is set up VNC or RDP on my device, then we will really kick around some tires in the field. And I will get to the testing and I will tell the world… I love my Pre!
It is reported that on September 24th, 2009 Premium Apps will be made available in the Palm “App Catalog” – this excites me to no end. Of course this announcement comes amid controversy of Palm dumping Windows Mobile in favor of the Linux-based webOS platform – a strategy I whole-heartedly favor. Linux can be very stable, I have servers that haven’t gone down in 2 years without a restart, so I see this as a good choice to go in a good direction. At least Palm can focus on innovation and not have to deal with MS issues.
Could you imagine a Smart Phone you could use for 2 weeks straight without a restart??? Ahhh to dream!
Palm is also having some financial issues related to sales projections – I am a firm believer in build a product, make it work, stick it out and you will rise to the top of the food chain. This takes patience and the willingness to stick by convictions. I tend to avoid “analyzing” companies based on their “business model” alone since most of what we are shown of a given companies so called business model is built on conjecture and pretty powerpoint slides rather than on the stability of the product that they are selling – I don’t buy for the packaging, but it sure is nice to find a product that works as advertised TODAY (meaning I don’t have to wait for the next release to experience the promise of what I was sold). Hey, and if the packaging makes me happy too, then SCORE for everyone!! That is the company I will stand behind through thick and thin.
‘Wish more products were bought and sold based on stability, compatibility, ease of use, end user experience and a real humanitarian corporate culture.
Why didn’t I go with the iPhone when it first made the scene?
I simply did not ”buy into the hype” – The fact that the iPhone can brag “thousands” of Apps is really good for them. The fact of the matter is, the intuitiveness of my new Pre as compared to my “experiences” with the iPhone far out weight waiting for a few “Apps” that I don’t really need. I need a stable device that facilitates real-time communication not eye-candy. (Although, I have to tell you that my Pre is really, really a stunning gadget ...and it has a built in vanity mirror!! Oh, yes they did!!)
I did a lot of research on the iPhone prior to choosing the PalmPre – in fact, there are many reasons I did not chose an iPhone when it first came out and literally waited years for the Pre. I did not like the idea of a “visual” keyboard, I need to feel little buttons under my fingers to feel like I am writing something. This is one of the reasons I didn’t get a Blackberry Storm, also no WiFi and it debuted on Verizon – and well, Verizon is the devil as I said in previous posts.
In addition to the iPhone’s unappealing visual keyboard, I did not feel comfortable going with AT&T – In NYC a lot of the cell towers that AT&T uses to support the iPhone are the same T-Mobile towers that had been dropping my calls for years.
Ok, so I have had a few days with my Pre and on SPRINT – I haven’t had any dropped calls, I get my emails, texts etc without fail, it hasn’t crashed and I can watch the live streaming on SPRINT TV! I am going to set up an encoder and see how it does for live webcasts, since I am a webcast producer I should be able to tune in to a stream to make sure things are hunky dory. At any rate, I will keep posting about my Pre and experience on SPRINT, I will be going out-of-town next week so this will be my first “roaming” experience.
By the way, the final plus that made me choose SPRINT was their AnyMobile AnyTime guarantee.
On a performance note, my Pre alerts me of new email before I receive it on my desktop with a 10Mbps connection. Let’s see what happens when I head north for the week!
This was Nico reporting on her new Palm Pre, over&out!!
It was not an easy decision, T-Mobile held me hostage for nearly 9 years and making a move was a very emotional and personal journey. The hours wasted on TMo’s dropped calls alone was enough to make a grown woman cry.
My T-Mobile contract expired in July and it took me this long to make the leap – It is so strange to ask myself, “Hey Me? What do you want in a mobile device and a carrier?”
I came up with 3 Key Requirements that I scoped out for myself (:
1. As a “mobile” consultant, I would need a carrier with excellent connectivity, i.e. no dropped calls and good coverage
2. As a grlGeek, I need a fancy gadget that looks like… well… ME?? Or at least something I would carry around and live my life with.
3. As a human being, I need a carrier that is not the devil.
Conversation in my head regarding Requirement #1:
I am located in New York City and quite frankly the best coverage in NYC is Verizon.
Conversation in my head regarding Requirement #2:
The iPhone has positioned itself nicely on top of the gadget ladder with the most storage and the greatest number of APPS. I would have to go with AT&T.
Conversation in my head regarding Requirement #3:
AT&T is not not the devil, but we assume everyone knows that Verizon is the devil.
(*Which means AT&T could be the devil too.) There is always SPRINT.
DEEP DIVE DIALOG IN MY HEAD:
The fact is, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I went with Verizon – the red “V” in the logo represents the devil, as far as I can tell.
AT&T is an *option*, I had them on the table, except they can’t support all the APPS on the iPhone, their coverage is reportedly present, however there are still a lot of dropped call complaints and they could be the devil.
At the end of the day, the Carrier I felt and feel most “spiritually” compatible with is SPRINT – they have a good message, believe in equal access and open applications – i.e. Mathew Oomman at the FCC hearing on Technology/Applications and Devices – and SPRINT-ers are aggressive in keeping up with the anti-christs’ of Telcos with aggressive pricing models and a series of weird commercials that speak to my soul.
The GrlGeek in me is more of a PC than a MAC so I figure the PalmPre is more like a PC and the iPhone is more MAC like…. WebOS seems pretty straight forward, maybe instead of bitching about lack of APPS I will learn their SDK and develop my own damn APPS.
CONCLUSION:
I went with SPRINT and the PalmPre. It took me about 3 minutes to set it up, enter my email address, Google Calendar info – just like it says in the commercial, I was gesturing away spam and downloading Soduku from the APP catalogue.
I am still nervous about the quality of connectivity I will get with SPRINT, I see the bars going up down and back up again, but I haven’t had it long enough to really call it “road tested”.
I will post updates and stories as my service is fully ported over from T-Mobile. But, I have to admit, so far I love my Pre and it does look like… ME! I LOVE HER!! I LOVE MY PRE!!
SPRINT AND PALMPRE AND ME!!