OSNews

Wow, that sucks big hairy man ass! ;-D

Seriously, I'd of gone with an Android phone myself just to evade the lock in. My last iPod was my last Apple gadget and I'm sticking to that resolution.

Good luck with your new phone and I hope you have less trouble than my friends have had.

I was waiting a long time for the Pre to arrive here in Germany. I held on to my trusty E65 because I wanted the Pre. And then it came out on O2. Personally, I think O2's service sucks big time. So I went with Android on Vodafone and am quite satisfied with the hardware and the OS (I rooted the phone the first day I had it), even if I sold my soul to Google in the process.

Just on a ventilator, with a 106 degree temp (41.1 C), having lost 2 quarts of blood. Also, the heart is in Ventricular Tachycardia, sepsis is rampant, and there is very little brain-wave activity.

But not dead. Palm lives on!

Edited 2009-11-03 21:23 UTC

Why any phone company would lock themselves into the customer base of a single cell service provider is beyond me. Just release a damned GSM version already!!

There's no way that Bell Canada paid Palm enough to make up for the loss of all the Rogers customers. By the time the 6-month exclusivity deal is up, no one on Rogers will want one.

There are a lot of people in my neck of the woods that were chomping at the bit for a Pre on Rogers. Now ... not so much. In a few months when there's a possibility of it coming to Rogers ... probably not enough to make it worth it.

your soul is still intact... Apple only wants the souls of your unborn children...

...a whole raft of new anti-Apple, anti-iTunes, anti-App Store articles over the coming weeks for us I suspect...

You've mentioned it a million or so times. Or is it just your mum's iPhone that you hate?

Edited 2009-11-03 22:28 UTC

I had to literally double take and check who the submitter was. You, buy an iPhone? *monocle* Why not Android? Could you expand upon that please?

Hi Thom,

what I don't quite understand, why didn't you buy an O2 palm from Germany? They are not locked, you don't have to get into a contract the only thing is that O2 is the exclusive distributor. IMO getting a phone by paying upfront is almost always a better deal than getting it on contract.

I hate that I read about new units/programs and services that are only available in the US. Why does it take so long before some things comes to Europe and Norway.
I can't se the logic. Norway and Europe have good economy and like to buy new electronics devices.

Please let us...


Espen

Palm apparently couldn't work a deal with either of the 2 biggest providers and ended up going with Sprint, while AT&T cleaned up with the iPhone. By the time the Pre gets released to other carriers (end of the year, maybe?), I think no one will be that interested here, either.

I'm just glad the Moto Droid is coming on on Verizon. It's about time they pulled their head out and got a really high-potential smartphone. I didn't want to lose my soul AND switch to AT&T

I have a 3gs as well and I must say for the most part I really do like it. There's just one thing that gets me, and that is the build quality. Maybe it's just my imagination, but the kind of smooth plastic Apple used feels like it would shatter to pieces if dropped even once from a very small height. I would've much preferred the construction like that of the iPhone 3g or iPod Touch instead. Still, it's probably not anywhere near as fragile as it feels, but I'm not going to test that if I can help it. My previous HTC phone felt solid as a rock, but broke after less than a year when accidentally dropped from my hand onto my desk, so look and feel are no guarantees of quality. I'm just happy to finally be rid of windows mobile 6.1.

I totally feel you... I did the same thing some time ago. I felt guilty for months...

Still holding out. Not buying anything else yet. But come on Palm!

I was trying to tell my friends about this phone. My friends said, "..Palm, what's that?"

My friends wife said "Oh I used to have a Palm for work."

Now we know why this is a make or break product.

I'm so happy with my 10 EUR Alcatel prepaid phone. Everytime I read stories like this, I'm glad I stick to cheap 'n' easy.

In Belgium Palm is a strong brand, not for phones bur for beer

Palm tried to copy apple's business model.

Normally it's best to fix your competitor's mistakes in several key areas, and to do something very uniquely different to set yourself apart.

And the bad press a couple months ago about their app store and "free" applications didn't help. Nor does the upcoming Android 2.0 help either.

Four countries, thanks :-P Ireland is a country too.

I've been playing around with one since I got it during the Maemo Summit and yes, this is the device you should have waited for. At least your soul wouldn't have had to be sold. Oh well, maybe next year.

As a Pre owner I suggest you save your time and money and purchase another phone! It really is a POS.

1) Keyboard in portrait mode sucks! (keys too small) It should have been landscape mode.

2) OS is slow to respond and I constantly hit things twice (being impatient) and end up screwing something up)

3) No quick method to call a frequent number! (having to open the keyboard or go to recent calls is not an answer). hitting a '2' and dial should be the quick dial! not trying to call '2'?????? what brain dead engineer thought that up?

4) GPS is slow to aquire. I'm usually half way to my destination before I can use the navigation!

5) No VPN! What the hell were they thinking!

6) Volume controls really suck! Step size too big, Lowest headphone setting not low enough.

7) People keep saying the OS is it's strong point! Why because it's Linux based? Ha! What a POS! Its slow, clunky and not very intuitive! My kids (9,11&14) even have trouble understanding how it works!

8) The battery life is really poor even with WiFi & BT shut off!

Many more but don't have time.

I have an iPod Touch as well and this is built better, thought-out better and over all a better device for the things that over lap.

And then you answer your own question: Palm isn't a meaningful brand in the Netherlands, so, that, combined with the small population (only about half that of California) means it makes no sense for Palm to go all out on a limb to sell their phones there, because frankly, the Netherlands just isn't that important of a market! I very much doubt any phone manufacturer with thin potential profit margins would even bother trying to negotiate things for just half the state of California (though they are a rather influential state, technologically and economically, despite a huge deficit) if they can negotiate with fewer other service providers that give them access to a larger potential customer base combined with more pre-existing brand recognition.

While you may think that if they released it in all of Europe quickly it would have become popular, I can assure you that it wouldn't have.

The Pre has been a failure here in the US. In the first three months, only 375,000 have been sold to users. The rest of the phones that Palm sold to Sprint, 175,000, some of which, like the rest, which Sprint then sold to WalMart, Radio Shack, Best Buy and others, were still sitting on the shelves at the end of the quarter.

Since Sprint has expensive phones that have been selling much better than this, Sprint isn't to blame for the falling sales. A problem that is continuing.

Palm has made many mistakes in releasing this phone too soon, making it difficult for developers, poor hardware, a too small screen for effective multitouch, etc. Whether Palm will remain around is the biggest question.

Look at pricing. $199 after a $100 rebate, which you may not get. Then, the phone selling at Walmart (with 2 year contract) for $79. O2 is now selling the phone. Oh, did I say sell? No, they're GIVING the phone away. I wonder why?

The Pixi, which is supposed to sell for $99 after rebate looks lousy. How are they going to make any money on that, with the Pre now selling for $149 at Sprint, a price drop that Sprint says is made by Palm, not them, and the rest of the pricing. You can't get much cheaper than FREE.

I think that Palm is in big trouble.

And why the "soul" bit for buying an iPhone? Thats childish of you. It's a phone, not a new religion. I hope you can keep that in perspective.

And if you didn't really want an iPhone, you didn't HAVE to buy one. You did, because you really DID want one. Just admit it. You could have bought something else.

I haven't had a cell phone in few years, but back when I did I stuck with a few nokia models like the 252 and 3205i. Not fancy phones by any means, but solid. I can't tell you how many times I've dropped the various phones over the years. So I'm curious as to how solid these new phones are. Given that phones are now becoming serious platforms for software with greatly expanded hardware capabilities, I've been thinking about them more and more...

blackrain just came out yesterday, unlocks latest iphone 3g/3gs:

http://blackra1n.com/

easiest way to jailbreak an iphone to date.

And with all those devs that left the platform because of Apple's draconian assessment policies you never know, it could have been 100,005 by now...

In all reality though there's probably only about 1% to 2% that are useful commercial quality apps right? I'm certain there would be significantly more similar apps than that available for Windows Mobile or Windows Phone or whatever they're calling it this month, Symbian, Blackberry etc with their much more user friendly development policies right?

I just picked up the latest and greatest device out there, a Treo 650. It's, like, a phone. It's, like, a Palm Pilot. It's, like, somebody had this idea, "Let's take a Palm Pilot, and a cell phone, and, like, glue them together, and hold them in, like, one hand" (a really big hand, to be sure).

Unlocked for $140 (that includes shipping). Actually, I bought it to replace my wife's aging Palm Pilot, because they aren't made any more. It's pretty much the old Palm OS, but on somewhat more powerful hardware, so the PDA side of things flies. The phone is just a bonus. It accepted her old, pre-paid SIM without complaint.

The other good point, is that Jpilot restored to the new device without complaint, and my wife was good to go. Now there's a novel idea, backwards compatibility.