Give me back my TEXTS! #palm #pre

After almost eight months, I have had to grow accustomed to my Palm Pre, with the slow WebOS operating system, the cracked screen and the chipped edges (read my thoughts on issues and problems with the Pre). My friends always say, "Sanford - you can easily just get it replaced. Your camera has never worked, just get a new one." Or, just wait until the google Nexus One Phone gets released on Sprint (which I have been thinking about over and over again).

I would happily fix my phone - if it weren't for the fact that I can not get my text messages off the phone! (Makes me think of acting like Mel Gibson in Ransom and screaming "GIVE ME BACK MY SON TEXTS!")

I mean really(!), we are in 2010.

Just because the original concept of texting was short-lived, IM messages that were disposable, today - texting has become almost as important as email. Keeping telephone numbers, conversation threads, other important facts - all stored in the threads of text messages.

I have already spoken to the Palm Development Team about this, and this was the answer I got:

Hi Sanford -- I did check with the team on this, and given what we have in place today it's not possible to do. The only kind of work-around (and it isn't much) is to do a 'copy all' in the edit menu of each transcript, then mail it to yourself. You still can't get them back in to the app easily. (you could probably send them to yourself from an SMS bridge from your computer)

We are in the process of reworking our data models that would enable this, but that is still some time out from being deployed -- my apologies!

Unfortunately, that is not a resolution to the problem. It is more of a frustration than a resolution. I saw Jamie's frustration in his post (read his tirade here "Dear Palm, it's just not working out.) I am astonished at the fact that, even with a Linux distro, there is not a simple way to grab the texts in some form of tar-ball and migrate them from one phone to another. Or what about a simple CSV file of the texts? Why did the data model not take this into consideration?

Texts are not disposable!

In the 15 years I have owned a cell phone, and in the last ten where I have been almost tied directly to SMS though my time in England and Europe, I have retained so many text messages like old emails - simply because of the quaint aspect of the message, the information stored within them, or what have you. Texts are no different than email - just shorter and less likely to be spam.

Why can texts be treated as first-class citizens in the realm of the Internet? Please?

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BTW - I have been building videos on the slowness of the Pre Calendar app (interacting with google Calendar), the dog-slow nature of the Pre Email client, the lack of camera (STILL!) and the general sluggishness in using the global search for friend's names when wanting to dial (though, the release of 1.3.5.1 seems to have speed up this every so often). And, my favorite new act - my phone suddenly dies after being put into airplane mode(!). Oooooh - this is exciting!

One week with the Palm Pre - what's my verdict?

So, I have been carrying the Palm Pre for the past week - and been enjoying it for the most part. You can read my former posts here, here and here on the issues about it - but as my friends comment, it is a Version 1.0 phone.

I learned a couple of other issues that have been demonstrated:

• Word auto-correct function has some glitches
  I love the fact that you can type "u" for "you" and the Palm Pre will auto-correct it - but couple of issues like it does not retain capitalization or when using it with the email app, it keeps the "u" instead of the "you" that is displayed.
• Camera is glitchy
  Sorry - this keeps happening - I have been to Sprint - they do not have enough phones to correct the issue yet. And, this time, when I went to Sprint yesterday, they changed the battery - and suddenly, the camera worked. But today, no working camera. Ugggh.
• Battery life is abysmal
  Again, I have been using the Pre and have had pretty sad battery life. I left the phone home one day - with Wifi off, GPS off - and still the phone went down to 30% battery just sitting there for six hours. Now, the iPhone also has issues (my friends tell me they have to keep their iPhone plugged in every day when not using it), so I guess the removable battery and Touchstone charger are better options that the iPhone. And I learned how to change the brightness on the phone (turns out it is a feature in the Screen and Lock app), which I hope reduces the battery suck.

But, must say once I get my spare battery, the Touchstone and other components from the online stores I ordered them from (yes, Sprint had WAAAYYY too few), I think I will be satisfied with my purchase.

My life on the Palm Pre - Day 2.66

After going through using the Pre for the past couple of days, I have learned a number of things that I am happy to share:

1. Camera problem is more than likely a faulty camera
   Reading at everythingpre.com - I have learned that others have had the same problem with the camera. They have been told that the camera is the problem and that I should get the Pre replaced. I will, after my family leaves.
   
   
2. Pocket dialing is annoying...
   Turns out that the Phone interface, while nice to use, has an interesting problem. After you finish the call and hang up, the phone interface stays active and if you are like me and grab the phone, you can accidentially either hit the numbers or hit the dial button. I think with my treo, once I was done with the call, the recessed screen was not easy to hit after finishing, so I would not accidentially call.
   
   
3. ...but the proximity sensor is terrific.
   When your face is close to the phone, the screen turns off. When you are ready to hang up, the screen relights - and you can hang up. Nice touch.
   
   
4. Pre had great heft, but it slips easy
   I love the feel of the phone - I have always loved how the Palm phones always feel strong and solid - but sometimes, when you are using the phone while eating or doing somethiong else and you grab it quickly, you can lose it like "a greased up pig at a country fair".
   
   
5. Pre battery life is a pain
   After using the Pre for a couple of days, I can affirm that it has a very short battery life. My guess is that, while the processor is energy efficient, the access to the networks and multiple applications open at the same time can be a battery suck. Additionally, the Pre does not have a brightness control (or at least I can not find it) which I would assume could reduce the battery life suck. Even Palm does not show how to reduce the battery consumption, but I did find some suggestions on everythingpre.com.
   
   
6. Selecting multiple attachments is a pain
   Oi - I was trying to add multiple photos to an email and/or text message and I discovered that 1) the text messages only take one attachment, 2) multiple attachments on email takes an insane process of confirmation and attachments. What happened to my lovely list with a checkbox to choose what I want on the message?
   
   
7. Love dismissing alerts with a swipe
   With every alert on the main screen, you can get an insane number of interruptions (if you get email, tweets, IMs, texts, and voicemails). Nicest item is to sweep the item away to the right and they go away.
   
   
8. Text message history and delete via a right swipe
   When I first saw the text app, I was worried because I did not know how to see all of the old text messages in one location. Text message history has come in handy (incredibly handy) when I needed an old text for another meeting. My life was made much happier when I learned with a left ball swipe (across the LED field), I could see ALL of the text messages.
   
   
9. Direct dialing from the keyboard
   On my treo, I used to love just typing out the phone number directly from the keyboard. Now, I can do the same with the Pre and I have more than just phone as an option. To make the call, you need to hit the Return key (bent arrow) on the keyboard.
   
   
10. Missing global search
    Please. Fix this.
    
    
11. How do I get to my photos off the Pre?
    When I had my treo, I could sync up my phone with the computer and go to the photo folder. Where are my photos from the Pre? I do not want to download one photos at a time. And having to do it one photo at a time to my photo is not helpful (even if it is going to Facebook) because I can not get the original photo itself.

But - still enjoying the Pre. Just wish it had a better battery life.

Continuing my odyssey of the Palm Pre - Day 1.33

After charging my phone last night, I decided to see what would happen with the Pre after a full-night charge.

While I still have issues as described in my earlier post, I have learned a little more about the phone in showing it to my family and friends.

Battery power might be lagging

As described in David Pogue's article, the Pre's battery life is somewhat lacking. I was in a badly covered area of the Sprint network, and found my phone getting warm the entire morning. But, when I got into the city, I decided to recharge the phone and see what would happen. The phone was at 2% and after one hour, it charged back up to 52%. But an hor later, the phone gave me the 20% battery warning.

So, while I understand hunting for a network could run the battery down, I would not expect the batter to lose 30% of it's charge in another hour.

Apps have some improvements to go

After being such a treo / Palm OS fanatic, I am missing a couple of things such as:

1. Accidential pocket dialing
   I discovered that the phone app has a sensitivity to dialing - without a lock/unlock feature on the phone app, I worry that I might make another pocket dial.
2. A better set of menu options
   When I would use the productivity apps on the treo, there was always the menu of other options/features that were available at the top. Right now, the apps seem to be missing "something"

What do I love about the Pre?

So, with all of these complaints, why am I still carrying it around? Well, for all of the complaints, I have a slew of compliments:

1. Its not a treo!
   As in, it does not use Windows Mobile or is over three years old.
2. Its a phone with a keyboard!
   The styling of the phone (when open) is amazing. It has great heft and the speaker phone actually works.
3. It works!
   Yes, I know - it should, shouldn't it? But after having smartphones for the past five years, the phone is very usable instead of completely buggy.
4. It does not require a theraputic reboot!
   Yes, one of my favorite acts (sarcasm alert) was to restart my treo every so often when too many apps had taken up all of the memory. So nice to have memory and a stable OS.
5. Love the interface!
   Yes, after this long wait, I love the way the OS operates and allows me to play with the apps. Might not be terribly intuitive (see my last post), but it is fun to play with.

My big concern is that @palm is posting only the good issues, not addressing the bad ones so far. @palm - when you are ready, give me an email and we can talk about how to solve the camera issue.

Problems with the Palm Pre - Day One

I have been a long term user of Palm products (way back to the Palm 5000) and I have been waiting for the Palm Pre since I have played with my friend's iPhones. So, when I found out that the Pre was available on Saturday morning at the local Sprint store, I got up, pulled on my clothes and headed to the store.

Nicely enough, the store was incredibly gracious (Thanks guys!) and within 20 minutes I had the hot little object in my hand going through the tutorial. So, an hour later, when I caught up with my brother and his brood, I was deeply engrossed with the Pre.

Love at first site (yes, site)
Initially, I was enamored. The new cards interface, the interactions within the browser and interface elements (form elements and navigation) are incredibly familiar from using my friend's iPhones. As I played with the Pre, it became evident that the Pre interface had things that I did not see how to address - such as how to take a picture (since my camera app seems to be having problems).

So while you can read all sorts of great posts on the Pre (which I agree with them all), I have my issues with the Pre:

Help Info is "slow"
When I discovered that the camera was not working as advertised in the excellent reviews, I started looking for information on how to use the camera. I started with the documentation in the box (which was limited to gestures and other high-level options) and then went to the Help documentation. Since the docs are online, the speed of the Sprint network seem to impact the access to the Help documentation. Took me a bit of time to find the info (since there is no Search option within the documentation), which made me a little disappointed in learning how to use the phone through the documentation.

-1 point for the increasing difficulty to use the Pre

Camera App is "flaky"
Since I heard that the Pre had a 3.2M pixel camera, I chose to to leave my standard Canon IXUS at home as I headed to my cousin's bat mitzvah. While in the car, I tried to use the Pre camera and wondered why I could not take a photo. I would choose the camera icon, a grey screen would show up, the camera icon would sit in the middle of the screen and sit for 20 seconds, then would go dark and restart the campera app. Twenty seconds later, the camera app would end, restart and go through the sequence one more time until the phone went dark based on the power settings.

After wondering if I had done something wrong, I discovered how to kill the app (toss it north) and tried a couple of times, I thought "Maybe there is an update" and I checked for updates and downloaded the 1.0.2 update on to the phone. Much later, after the webOS 1.0.2 update was installed, I tested the app - and still the same behavior.

Later in the evening, just on a whim, I would try the app. One time out of five, the camera app suddenly worked. And yes, the photos are gorgeous. But still, I have no camera on the Pre.

-2 points for a flaky app or driver management

Pre web browser has weird quirks
The web browser is very similar to what I have seen on the iPhone - full page support, zoom in, zoom out - all of the things that make the iPhone mobile experience wonderful (heck, I even can use the x.facebook.com interface for iPhone, the m.facebook.com interface for WAP browsers and the www.facebook.com interface for normal browsers. But, the Pre web browser has some other quirks:

1. Strange reflection of a short page on the lower third of the page
   When I logged into twitter via their Login link, the top part of the browser shows the login div - but the lower part (2/3rds) should be blank. Instead, there is a stretched out version of the login div in the lower third of the browser. And this is not only on twitter, I also saw it on the opening page of Spymaster.
   
   
2. Form elements do not expand to access the hidden parts of the content within
   On the Blazer browser, if you entered more text into the form field that was visible, the browser would become an editable text field that showed up on the lower third of the page. You could modify any portion of the text that was entered - and did not need arrow navigation to get anywhere, since you could point to the needed correction. Now, with the Pre web browser, you find yourself having to make sure you type everything correctly, or you have to refresh a page if you make a mistake and need to edit character 23 in a 20 character visible field - when the text has already exceeded 25 characters.
   
   
3. On mobile sites, the browser does not support number shortcuts
   On the Blazer browser and other WAP browsers, mobile site designers could set up a situation where, if the browser sensed a number being pressed, it would act as if the link was hit that was tied to the number key (see this action on the mobile version of twitter, Yahoo! Mail and Facebook). Now, when you hit a number key on the Pre web browser, the browser thinks youa re typing a new URL - which makes shortcutting difficult. Additionally, on mobile twitter, hitting the aforementioned number shortcut link via a finger touch changed the page - but has the page still at the same location on the browser (the page does nto refresh with the start at the top of the page).

-2 points for browser issues

Charging up the phone is a bit cumbersome
One of the comments I heard on some blogs was the fact that the Touchstone charger might be an extravagance for $80. But, after trying to charge up my phone a couple of times, I can see why they did the Touchstone. If you try to plug in the USB cable into the phone, you have to work the cover off of the mini jack, which I will bet wears out eventually. Additionally, you need to know that the mini jack has to be inserted in only one position, you might accidentially insert it into the Pre upside down. To extend the life of the cover, you should get the Touchstone recharger.

-1 point for product issues

Conclusion?
Now, all of these issues are not critical - and will more than likely be addressed soon. But it is funny - I was one of the people who got a treo 650 when it came out, and went through 19 (yes, nineteen) returns to the Sprint store (because Sprint at the time did not have a solid tech support for the treo smartphones).

I have only had the phone for a single day (not even 12 hours yet) so i will continue to learn more about the phone as I use it.

I am happy to be a guinea pig for the Pre (and the new one), as I was for the treo 755p and the Centro - but please fix the phone. I want to love this device - I have waited almost two years.