Wednesday 28 October 2009

New Palm in my palm...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Recent bollocks~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


_______________________________________________________________________


see that? ^^^^^^

That's me drawing a line under the events of the last couple of days. It's all a bit bemusing really and I don't have time to let it drag me down, got too much on!

Besides... I'm in love


Big time

With my new phone

*swoooon*

Okay so its battery has the lifespan of a donut in my office, but it's lurrrrvly

Yes, I am quite besotted. Clearly. But look at it, it's beautiful!
 
Obviously this isn't my actual phone which is rather more smudged from my eager paws being all over it! :-D
 
So, I have in my grubby palms, a Palm Pre and I am super impressed already. You should have seen me in the O2 store, I was like a kid with a new toy, I literally clapped my hands with glee when the transaction was complete and I was free to take my new baby home.


Sad eh? But you see I have had my BlackBerry for about 20 months! That's a hell of a long time for me to go without changing phones, I'm such a super phone geek, always have been.

I got my first phone in 1996. The mother and baby hostel I stayed in only had a payphone on the wall, and that was downstairs near the front door - several flights of stairs down from me! When you're a new mother looking after a teeny tiny baby, the last thing you want to do is drag him down the stairs and balance him in one arm whilst trying to cradle a phone and feed it money with the other!!

So I bought a Nokia 1210, ahh, my first phone. It was the size of a brick and weighed as much too. I couldn't hold it to my ear to make calls for any length of time as I didn't have the strength in my arms! I'd have to balance it against my shoulder and ear or rest my head back on a chair - ridiculous!

From that moment on I was hooked on mobile phones and went through quite a few including the earlier incarnations of Sony and Ericsson, when they were two companies. I think the Ericssons were the first flip phones, with the stubby aerial - so sweet! My first Sony phone was years ahead of its time... it had a jog-dial on the side so you could scroll through the menus, very impressive!

I had a few Nokias (and obviously one popped my mobile phone cherry!) but I've never really got on with them. I didn't find they had as intuitive a feel as the SonyEricssons, and when SE brought out their colour phones I was in my element! I can't remember the first colour one I got, it was either the T68i or the T610 (I actually still have both phones!), but when they brought out the K range with the awesome cameras with digital flash I thought I'd be loyal for life!

Then my boyfriend bought a BlackBerry.

The phone he got came with a pink fascia. As comfortable as he is with his own sexuality he decided that he really couldn't go around permanently with a pink phone, clients and colleagues just wouldn't take him seriously!

So he persuaded me to abandon my super duper Sony Ericsson with amazing camera for a BlackBerry with a pathetic 2 megapixel rubbish camera, but came with a dark blue fascia... hmm

It took me a little while to get to grips with the qwerty keypad but it wasn't that long before I was totally hooked. Our BlackBerrys are pretty much identical except that mine has Wi-Fi, his GPS - (not quite sure why they couldn't put both in the same model!), the nifty rollerball and the fact that you get visible feedback from the arrow 'mouse' pointer on the screen really made it for me.

However, the browser is naff, really really naff!

a few of the BlackBerry Pearl 8120's good points:

* LED flashing when new notification arrives
* BB messenger (rocks and rolls but then that's not much use if none of your friends own one!)
* instant mail notification
* memo pad - I write *everything* from my strength workouts to my shopping/packing list!
* Wi-Fi very handy if you're in another country and don't (for some bizarre reason) want to fork out for mega roaming data fees!
* can receive calendar invites from Microsoft Outlook/Lotus Notes/Google mail etc
* quite dinky, can fit in my front jeans pocket (and don't forget girls' jeans have shallower pockets than their male-specific counterpart!)
* can have multiple applications running at once
* can get a few nice apps like TwitterBerry and Flickr uploader
* compatible with google manager, e.g. calendar, mail, google maps (v handy if your sense of direction is as appalling as mine!!)

errm that'll do for now, there are plenty others but can't think of any right now

a few of the BlackBerry Pearl 8120's bad points:

* rubbish browser (says it supports JavaScript but can't view the Twitter homepage!)
* magnetised semi-solid case wipes any paper train ticket (and gym card!!) that comes into contact with it!
* no touch screen
* screen size rather small
* HTML email messages look rather shoddy
* using apps like Facebook for BlackBerry draaaaaaaaains the battery life!
* camera is rubbish, flash is too bright for nearby objects and not bright enough for further away ones, plus it's only a 2 megapixel camera - why can't smart phones install better cameras?!!!!!!
* can't ever discretely take sneaky surreptitious pictures of interesting sights... and people (a la GymBunnyHoney stylie) as the camera makes a 'cloookkffff' sound when you take one - and yes, even on the silentist of silent modes!!

okay I'm really slating the poor BB and to be honest I really loved it despite its failings, it served me well for almost 2 years!

But I'm quite happy to banish it to the back of some drawer now as the Palm Pre does poop on it from a rather great height!

I'm not going to bore you with all the specs, check it out here if you want more info and to look at more pretty pictures ;-)

But, in brief (as brief as it's possible to be, and we all know that's not a lot!), here are:

a few of the Palm Pre's good points (that I've noticed so far):

* the touch screen is great, you can do the squeezy pinch, flick etc to move, throw away, zoom in/out etc and of course, if you tilt the screen it adjusts accordingly ;-)
* the browser is fab, I really like it
* although only a few apps out at the moment (including necessary ones - like Twitter!), I imagine it'll only be a matter of time before this increases significantly
* you can have multiple apps open at once (unlike the iPhone!)
* physical keypad - yes it's teeny and you have to type using the corners of your thumbnails but that's how I type on my BB so I'm quite happy with that... I like having feedback when I press a key and not having to type on the actual screen - now the whole thing is a viewing window... definitely prefer having the keypad separate!
* when I plugged it into my PC and selected 'media syc', iTunes automatically opened up and recognised the device! It treats it like an iPod - woo hoo!
* GPS (woo hoo, no more getting lost for me!)
* Wi-Fi
* the camera is pretty good! Not amazing, but better than the BB's.
* it's perty
* there's a mirror on the back - I thought they were just being thoughtful but Joe tells me it's to enhance the flash, d'uh!
* you get informed immediately if you have any email, you don't have to 'login to the app' like with an iPhone - very handy if you've got BlackBerry withdrawal and you're used to your message retrieval being instant!

there are other things that are pretty small but I like... like the trash can symbol in the bottom of the screen that you can use when reading mails... deleting anything with a BB required too many clicks for my liking!

ooh and there's a 'back' feature, but it's not on the screen or the keypad... it's underneath the screen and you just swipe your finger, it's very cool. I've not yet worked out how to use all the 'gestures' yet, need to play around a bit more ;-)

so, onto the negatives... here are a few of the Palm Pre's less than positive points (that I've noticed so far):

* no predictive text (from what I can see... okay I know it's *full* qwerty but I'm lazy!)
* teeny (albeit raised and easy to use) keys
* can't seem to select images on web pages, i.e. 'right-click + save image' function
* don't like the charger adapter! BB uses a mini-usb, which you can find anywhere, no idea what this connector is! You can get a 'touch stone' which looks rather tasty but I think it's a tad on the pricey side and having just shelled out for this bad boy I'm not likely to be able to afford any gimmicky charging units anytime soon!
* poor battery life (if you're an app fiend or just like playing with your new toy - a lot!!)
* sharp edges(!)
* no external storage supported, only onboard... no idea how long the 8GBs will last

I have only had this phone 24 hours so am yet to discover more of its fab (and not-so-fab) attributes, no doubt I'll be whinging/enthusing about it in days/weeks/months to come ;-)

have to get off now and resist playing with my Pre some more... have very complicated scary functions to write 8-O

will be back soon with a round-up of the last few day's events but just had to share my new love interest with you :-D

Hope you're all well and thanks again for the support these last few days, means a lot :-)

TJx

3 comments:

  1. hot assed phone, yo! sorry i meant communication device...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oi!
    The iPhone does immediate push of emails too. Another MAJOR selling point of the iPhone is that is by Apple, and that makes it one of your five a day.

    I had my first mobile when they were still analogue...of course I was only 5 years old at the time, ahem. Good old 'Cellnet' as the network was...and do you remember 'Peoples phone?' *sigh*. Happy times....

    I was always a Nokia gal, although did briefly move to Samsung for the pretty flashing lights, then to the K800i which did have a fab camera, and then of course, some horrendous dark months with LG Viewty....I rarely went 6 months without swapping but now I am Apple iPhone to the core....pun intended ;-)

    ReplyDelete