xiaxia
Newbie  Posts: 1 Registered: 1/6/09 Status: Offline |
posted on 1/6/09 at 00:47
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source: []
iPhone or Palm Pre?
Sprint, Palm Pre’s exclusive carrier announced that Palm Pre would be
launched on June 6. Then this summer that’s the question many
would-be-smart phone purchasers just might ask themselves. Both have their
pros and cons. The iPhone has a huge profile and market presence, but the
Pre has the old-school Palm faithful who have been waiting a long time for
their Next Big Thing. The iPhone has massive channels and even Sprint
admits they won’t be advertising the Palm Pre much due to low initial
supply. But those most likely to want the Palm Pre already know it’s
coming, where to get, and may well be reading this while already standing
in line.
But what about the consumer on the edge? The consumer who has an older
iPhone or Palm, or the one who’s about to move up from a feature phone for
the first time. What about the dreaded “undecided”? This article is for
them. Now let’s get it on.
Display
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IPhone: beautiful, large (3.5 inch diagonal), high-resolution (480x320
screen) multi-touch display.
Palm Pre: Beautiful, large (3.1 inch diagonal), high-resolution (480x320
screen). The screen is not as large as the iPhone (0.4 inch smaller) but
this is balanced against other hardware features such as the removable
battery and sliding keyboard further below.
Advantage: Tie
Keyboard
Palm Pre has a physical, hardware-based QWERTY keyboard while the iPhone
has a virtual, software-based keyboard that can be QWERTY (or anything
else).
For those who need to feel those keys, the Palm Pre is the obvious choice.
However, the Pre’s keyboard is reportedly somewhere between a Treo Pro and
a Palm Centro: softer, more gummy keys with a narrow width overall. It
might not be to everyone’s liking. That said, at least the Pre has one, and
it’s a slider to boot, which means if you don’t need it, you can just tuck
it away back under the screen where it came from.
The iPhone, can draw any kind of keyboard it wants. So if you need to type
occasionally (or often) in Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, or most any
language, you can easily switch between those exact keyboards. You can also
automatically be presented with web-optimized, or video, audio — any task
at all — specific keyboards.
The iPhone is an excellent touch screen phone, no doubt. But for heavy
texters and e-mail addicts, the lack of a physical keyboard can be
annoying. Now Palm Pre combined a touch screen and keyboard, pleasing both
touch screen and keyboard fans. So Palm Pre wins.
Advantage: Palm Pre
Network
In the US — which is the only country with initial availability — Sprint
has exclusive rights to the Palm Pre, much as AT&T has a lock on the
iPhone. When you choose mobile phone, also make a choice between the
carriers. There are two factors to consider:
1. AT&T is a GSM network, which means you can theoretically pop out
your SIM card and put it in another mobile phone. It is great in
emergencies, and if you travel and don’t want to deal with roaming charges.
Sprint is CDMA, so any phone switches involves a call to your carrier at
the very least.
2. Sprint doesn’t currently allow simultaneous voice and data. This means
if you’re talking on the Palm Pre, you can’t use the web or email, and vice
versa. If you’re using an iPhone on AT&T’s EDGE service, you’ll have
the same problem, but if you’re on 3G, there are no worries at all. For the
Palm Pre, you’d have to switch to Wi-Fi to do that.
Again, for me, using voice and data at the same time has become a must.
Looking up information while out and about on a call is a frequent
occurrence. If you’re not accustomed to it, you may not miss it, but once
you are, it’s hard to go back.
Advantage: iPhone
Applications
Installing new applications on the iPhone is a complete joy. It’s ultra
simple and quick – an absolutely superb experience than virtually nobody
has matched today. With 15,000+ apps now available there is something here
for everybody and although there is a lot of rubbish there are also many
superb applications.
Palm has already confirmed that it will create a full App Catalog – one
that will presumably have the same functionality and ease-of-use as Apple’s
App Store. Though maybe there will not (initially at least) be as many apps
available for the iPhone as for the Palm Pre.
Advantage: Tie
Multimedia
For Palm Pre, it offers a 3-megapixel camera. Unfortunately, I didn't get a
chance to snap any photos, but early reports say that the quality is pretty
good. Disappointingly, the camera won't have video recording capabilities
at this time, but those could be added in the future. In terms of music and
movie, it is reported that the music sounds very beautiful, also the movie
looks perfect with the 320*480 pixels screen. However Palm Pre can only
play MPEG-4, H.263, H.264 videos and MP3, AAC, AAC+, AMR, QCELP, WAV audio
files. What if you have large music or video collections you want to carry
around with you on your mobile? I have got third part software to do this
admire job: use [] to convert DVD collections into Palm Pre and [] to
convert video or music collections into Palm Pre.
As far as iPhone, there’s no doubt that iPhone is wonderful music mobile
phone. Listening to music, viewing photos and watching movies/videos is
just “something else” on the iPhone. IPhone can play MPEG-4 videos with
resolution of 640 *480, up to 160 Kbps. Also it supports audio formats
including AAC (16 to 320 kbps), MP3 (16 to 320 kbps), and WAV. With its
beautiful 3.5-inch wide screen display and Multi-Touch controls, iPhone is
an amazing iPod. Watch movies and TV shows in wide screen, iPhone brings
you a video experience unlike any other portable device.
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Advantage: Tie
Conclusion
So there you have it. Two companies that both pride themselves on their
high-skill products. One who’s Newton spawned an industry that the other is
Pilot defined and dominated, went on to converge with the Treo only to fall
behind and get eclipsed by the iPhone, and is now poised to come back with
the Pre. Apple is going on to the third version of their smart phone line
while Palm is introducing the first version of their third act.
If it seems like the only real deciding factors are where you live and
work, what you want to do, and how you prefer to do it, well — yeah. That’s
it.
Bottom line, the competition between iPhone and Pre is good for Apple and
Palm — it keeps them on their toes and on top of their games — and it’s
better for us. We’re lucky to live in a time and place where we have such
increasingly awesome mobile options to choose between.
Come this summer, we’ll have a few more choices as well. Which one will be
yours?
[Edited on 1/6/2009 by festprint]
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