Thus far the Pre has probably gotten as much, or more, positive attention prerelease than any other phone, with the possible exception of the iPhone. Virtually everything about the Pre has been extremely well received and hailed as a fantastic contender.

While it may not be supplant the iPhone as the de rigeur phone of hipster-wannabes and technofetishist iconoclasts, it may actually be the phone to have for people who actually need a serious, capable and powerful phone for productivity and multimedia. It certainly looks as though it'll have a more open software development architecture than Apple would ever allow one of their products, which is automatically a point in its favor.

Apple's tight grip on iPhone applications might be a nice way to prevent sullying the device's good name, but it also inhibits the sort of rampant, creative, "outside the box" thinking that was Apple's initial reason d'etre. If Palm can extricate themselves from Apple's nasty and petty legal posturing, then they may just have a chance to rebuild a brand that once defined very nature of handheld computing, and set a new benchmark in smartphone standards.

 Reply

@BeautifulAgony: it was different with the iphone. The phones that were out at the time of release when Apple made their iphone announcement were horrible. No one had come close to a phone like that. At this point we have some good competitors in the run (none of which have hit the mark), yet some idiot comes around a blog to say "the pre is better" when hes never even seen one in person.

 Reply

We make judgments based on available data. Based on data available to me I think the Pre is great, and I think the iPhone isn't.

 Reply