Choosing a new phone

[DaMadFiddler]

I've been holding out on getting a new phone, with the hope that a CDMA iPhone would eventually show up for either Sprint or Verizon. However, it was recently confirmed that AT&T is in a 5 year exclusive deal with Apple, of which only three years have passed.

My carrier (Helio) merged with Virgin Mobile about a year ago, at which point the quality went significantly downhill. Now Virgin Mobile is being absorbed by Sprint, and they're actually discontinuing support for all the old Virgin Mobile phones and plans. As of a week from today, my cell phone will be a useless chunk of plastic and silicon.

So, I need a new phone. I was really set on getting an iPhone. I've had an iPod Touch for the last two years, which I love (and for which I've bought a large number of applications). All of our computers at home are Macs, and all my important info (calendar, contacts, music/videos) is stored in Apple's bundled software (iCal, Address Book, iTunes).

Verizon has the best coverage in my area, plus my girlfriend and my family are all on Verizon, so that seems like the best carrier to go with.

That decided, I've tentatively narrowed it down to two phones:

HTC Droid Incredible:
http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/htc ... 64029.html


Palm Pre Plus:
http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/pal ... ncol;lst;1


The things that are most important to me (besides, y'know, being able to make phone calls):
- good web browsing
- good maps/navigation software (a good implementation of Google Maps will suffice)
- plays nice with a Mac (see above)
- decent email management
- takes decent pictures (image quality--particularly indoors--is far more important than resolution)

It would also be really nice to have something that can actually sync properly with iTunes so I don't have to carry my iPod around as well, but based on Apple's monopolistic control over that stuff I figure I'm pretty much out of luck. (My library is organized via a system of user ratings and smart playlists, so the barebones drag-and-drop approach isn't really sufficient for my needs).

The main things I use my phone for besides making calls are surfing the web on my lunch break, getting directions if I get lost and finding restaurants/things to do when I'm out of town, and checking/responding to urgent email (I'm a union officer, and sometimes things can't wait until I get back to a computer). I'd also prefer something that has a decent camera and a robust MP3 player, so I don't have to carry around more than one pocket gadget.

...However, not having used either phone, and needing to make this decision ASAP, I'm having a tough time choosing. So please, pitch something to me. And if you know of a smartphone that might work better, let me know.

[Jeeba Jabba]

The Palm Pre has the most impossible keyboard ever. Steer clear.

[choujij]

The Palm Pre has the most impossible keyboard ever. Steer clear.

Aye. I was pretty excited about that phone, until I heard about the vertical slide-out keyboard. But I thought I would still give it a chance, and I tested it out. Yeah, it's pretty bad.

[not just souLLy now]

Stop being silly and get an iPhone

[DaMadFiddler]

Stop being silly and get an iPhone

All my AT&T bashing aside, they actually don't have very good reception in my area. Patchy coverage, and lots of poor/dropped calls. A phone that can't connect to anything is useless.

[AuroEdge]

My buddy has an HTC Incredible. Has a good keyboard and is snappy.

[Specially Cork]

[Roofus]

The Incredible. Palm is dead. The nice thing about Android phones and playing nice with a mac is that you only ever connect your phone to the computer when you want to copy stuff to or from the SD card. All the syncing and stuff happens over the air.

[choujij]

Stop being silly and get an iPhone

lol The Droid Incredible is much better than the iPhone

[not just souLLy now]

Stop being silly and get an iPhone

lol The Droid Incredible is much better than the iPhone

HI NO TROLLING ON THE FORUMS THANKS

[Zealous zerotype]

My friend got an incredible. His only complaint is that with all android phones they don't all get updated at the same time and afaik the incredible has not been rooted yet so no custom builds could be used. It not being rooted also means that you are stuck with the HTC sense UI which some like and some don't (again, I don't know if you can change that w/o rooting the phone I'm really not sure). My only complaint about the phone is that it isn't as smooth and "together" as iphone os systems seem to be, but still seems like a great phone.

The battery life is pretty damn good, it has the 1ghz snap dragon cpu and hell you can downclock the thing and get even battery life and not really notice the difference (performance wise depending on how far downclocked etc...). The only reason to choose palm over the android is on verizon tethering with a palm device is free where with the android it is 30+ a month. I'm pretty sure an app exist to get around this; but you know, if they catch you they will charge you for all that bs. Personally, in my book I haven't counted palm out of the game yet, but android is certainty doing well atm.

[choujij]

Stop being silly and get an iPhone

lol The Droid Incredible is much better than the iPhone

HI NO TROLLING ON THE FORUMS THANKS

Why are you shouting? Popping in this thread and calling someone silly because they don't share the same view as you, can also be misconstrued as trolling.

While it doesn't have as many apps available, hardware wise it is a better phone. So, thanks for coming out.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/dev ... phone-3gs/

[DaMadFiddler]

Everything I've seen so far has pretty much confirmed what I "knew" anecdotally. In other words:

Equivalent
- Neither one syncs natively with iCal or Address book on a Mac. In either case, I'd either have to buy a third-party solution (not worth it) or tie my desktop programs into a Google account (not what I want to do).
- Both have very good WebKit-based browsers
- Both appear to tie in very closely to Google services. I prefer desktop programs for my personal info rather than having it online, and my primary email address is a Yahoo address. So blah.
- The Pre Plus only has a cramped keyboard, and the Incredible only has an onscreen keyboard, so that's sort of a "pick your poison" situation.
- Neither can play locked iTunes content (duh). Normally I wouldn't give a crap about this because I try to avoid purchasing proprietary media, but I have a fair amount of music from my girlfriend that was bought prior to iTunes Plus, and several of the movies I bought on Blu-Ray came with iTunes downloads. This is really Apple's fault more than anyone else's, but it still makes any non-Apple device get in my way. It means I either need to take the time to weed out and transcode all these files, or just do without them.

Points for Droid Incredible
- microSD slot for expandable storage
- 800x480 display (more than 2x the resolution of the Pre Plus)
- 8 MP camera
- Android has a lot more developers (and thus a lot more software)
- apps load/run faster due to better tech specs
- more 3rd-party hacks/patches/add-ons to address missing functionality (though this does add to the "hackiness" feel of Android)

Points for Pre Plus
- better, less fidgety UI (Android still feels kind of tinker-y to me, regardless of the skin)
- deeper cross-app integration
- better indoor photo quality (though camera resolution is significantly lower)
- more internal storage (16GB)
- can be used as Verizon wifi hotspot for free
- better music player
- significantly cheaper


It seems like either one would more or less meet my needs. The Pre Plus gives me more out of the box for less money and a cleaner end-user experience, but the Droid Incredible (A) has better hardware and (B) is infinitely more expandable, due to having a much larger developer base.

I work for the local school district office, and I've found over the years that a good PDA or equivalent is indispensable. When I was first hired four years ago, I was using a Tapwave Zodiac, which I got some time ago because they were cheap (the company had just gone belly-up and stores were clearing them out), and aside from the much more expensive Sony Clies, they were the best convergence handhelds at the time for PDA functionality, games, and media consumption.

However, I was never really happy with how clunky that all was; true it could be made to do all those things, and do them pretty well, but it always had this "hacked together" feeling that comes from having a hundred totally separate programs and patches, leading to a very inconsistent user experience.

When I upgraded to an iPod Touch two years ago, I was absolutely blown away. It did everything my Zodiac did plus more, but it was *so* much cleaner and better integrated that I think the Zodiac would drive me nuts if I tried to go back to it.

From what I've seen, webOS is even better at this than the iPhone interface. Android, though I admittedly haven't had much experience with HTC's Touch Sense skin, feels like a step back toward that junky feeling of a loose conglomerate of only vaguely related programs.

That said, the upside to a hacky platform is, well, you can pretty much do as you will with it. There's a hell of a lot more Android software (both official and unofficial) than there is webOS software, though to be honest I think the built-in apps on both phones cover the vast majority of things I'd want to do with the phone. It's the old Windows vs. MacOS debate all over again, on which I've found myself on both sides at various points of my life.

End result: still pretty torn. I wish there was a way to test drive each for a week or so, to see which would actually be more comfortable in my day-to-day routine.

[choujij]

Do you know anyone with either of them, that you could possibly borrow for a day? Chances are if you're not exactly happy with it after a couple of hours use, you'll probably end up hating it.

[AuroEdge]

I will say that I prefer the UI on my Droid to most things found also in Sense. All in all I like how small of a profile the Incredible has. Can't really say much about battery life since I don't know exactly how my friends use it but they don't have any major complaints. One thing I will say is that I haven't bother to root my Android device because it already does pretty much everything I would want it to. Again, I appreciate how well the touch keyboard works on this HTC phone.

Just a little intro video that overviews it.

[Stormwatch]

Palm is dead.

They were bought by HP for $ 1.2 billion last month. I wouldn't exactly call that "dead" yet.

[DaMadFiddler]

Palm is dead.

They were bought by HP for $ 1.2 billion last month. I wouldn't exactly call that "dead" yet.

[nods] Specifically because of HP's interest in developing and expanding the WebOS platform. How that'll affect updates for existing devices has yet to be seen.

I stopped at the Verizon store on the way home today, hoping that getting to spend some hands-on time with each platform would make the decision for me. I really do like the Pre's interface a lot better, but the Incredible's better feature set is really making this difficult.

That said, here are a couple of very strong pulls on each side that I'm struggling with:

Pre Plus:
- can be had dirt cheap. Amazon is currently "selling" it for a penny (!) with a new contract
- can be used (without breaking contract terms) as a mobile hotspot for free (this feature costs $40 a month with any other phone, which makes it not worth it to me)
- has a much cleaner UI
- Incredible's screen is pretty much unreadable outside

Incredible:
- faster, better tech specs
- more expandable (due to more developers Android platform)
- bigger, better screen
- has voice dialing and speech-to-text (the Pre does not)
- has turn-based navigation and street view (Pre's implementation of Google Maps is pretty barebones, and you have to pay for Verizon's turn-based navigation app)
- "better" camera (8MP vs the Pre's 3MP, auto-focus rather than the Pre's fixed focus)


The conclusion I'm coming to is that technically, the Incredible is better. It does more, and does each of its individual tasks better. But the Pre integrates those tasks a lot better (which is something I've really come to appreciate as a Mac user), and very significantly, is a MUCH better deal financially.

Oh, one other point of significance. My current phone will no longer work as of Wednesday. The Pre Plus hasn't sold very well, and I could have one within 48 hours. The Incredible is popular to the point of being back-ordered, and if I went with it I'd have to wait until early-to-mid June for one to arrive. (The local Verizon dealer would give me a loaner dumbphone in the interim, but it's still something to consider... I'd be paying for three weeks of a high-end service plan I wouldn't really be utilizing).

I'm going to try to make this decision tomorrow.

[Jeeba Jabba]

Did you try to type a text message with the Pre?

[DaMadFiddler]

Did you try to type a text message with the Pre?

Yeah. The keyboard wasn't great, but it wasn't really any worse than my Ocean. And I've found that I make a lot more mistakes with onscreen keyboards than with physical ones.

[Zealous zerotype]

One thing I would say you have to try is swype. My friend let me try it and that is now the one thing I wish the iphone had.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCWwuIXxBuI[/youtube]