Everything this article states is true and verifiable, except one thing!

the Palm Pre CAN sync to iTunes! No excuses for the media lovers. I can take my iTunes content with me, including video.

Can't beat the apps on the iPhone, but I'm waiting to see how WebOS plays out (btw, I can run legacy apps from PalmOS too)

I currently own a 2g iPhone unlocked on Tmobile.

I have played a little with the Palm Pre at the Sprint store. I say the iPhone is and will continue to be the standard all with shoot for. I think it is a superior product with the ultra responsive touch screen and seemingly never ending anmount of apps. That being said ... If I were going to buy one of the two today and use the carrier designed for the phone I would choose ...the PALM PRE!!!

It boils down to dollars and sense. OK so AT&T has a special pricing structure for the iphone. WHY? Because it is so data intense? Because Apple users are used to paying more for thier products? I call BULLSH*T!

AT&T will charge you $99 for the unlimited minutes and $29.99 for the unlimited data and that included ZERO texts! So you add the $20 unlimited text plan and you are at $150. You know you will have JUNK FEES, TAXES, etc. that will bring it to what ... $170?

REALLY? $170 a month? REALLY? To use my cell phone the way I want too? REALLY? What is this 1999?

Oh yeah APPLE announced MMS messaging for the iPhone and guess what ... AT&T will not support that until late summer. But several other countries will at lauch. Wait APPLE has it's global HQ in the US ... and one of it's biggest upgrades will not lauch here but in other countries? WTF?

Oh yeah APPLE also announced Internet tethering for the iPhone. Same skipping record. AT&T will not support that at lauch either and have made no official announcement that they will. I am sure Apple will force that on them ... but guess what? AT&T will be sure to charge for that too. The RUMOR (Macrumors.com) is $79.99 for data and tethering! WOW why so cheap? REALLY? You always could jailbreak your iPhone and do this before but big brother AT&T could tell you were tethering and would often charge their customers loftly data charges as this broke their contract terms. REALLY?

OK this brings me to the Palm Pre on Sprint. They charge $99 for EVERYTHING! Minutes, text, data, ETC.! So I am sure with their taxes ... blah blah ... it will be about $120.

So is the iPhone worth $50 a month premium over the PRE? $600 a year or $1200 over the life of the 2 year contract?

HELL NO!!!

I LOVE THE IPHONE! Mine is on my night stand right now ... But 1 of 2 things have to happen with the iPhone ....

1. AT&T needs to match Sprint's unlimited $99 plan OR
2. Apple has to add other US carriers

PSSSSST ... APPLE fans ... Let's hope that the PRE makes a big enough splash with market share to achieve #1 because AT&T has the iPhone on an exclusive for at least another year from what I hear.

OK thanks for reading my rant! Sorry to carry on! SO remember APPLE #1 .... AT&T plans SUCK! SO buy the PRE on the now network until things change because $600 a year is $$$ in your pocket ... recession or no recession!

Jody

Um...iPhone OS 3.0 still won't allow multitasking. FAIL.

Does the palm pre look good? yes but, you are also lookin at a phone that has alot of lagg from all the videos I've seen!! #2 is the size, from what i can see it's pretty bulky, unlike the iPhone!!!

Btw how can you give a tie , when it comes down to apps, are you damn serious? Hahahah this guy must be a sprint hopeful!!

Iphone wins in a landslide!! Can't wait for the new 3.0 OS!!! Them features are all the iphone needed!! Enough said

Treo was created by Handspring, (A company started by a group that came out of Palm to drop prices and create competition), not Palm and only came back to palm after the Treo mobile flip phone, (I believe the 300) was offered on Sprint. (Which I owned a Handspring Visor and the first generation of Handspring Treo AND HATED it! This is all a side-note and only added here to say, I have owned all the newest gadgets in the Handspring, handheld and Palm lineup and would NEVER BUY first generation of anything again since they always crash and lose data.

Having been and currently being a Palm Centro owner and Microsoft beta tester for many years, I actually am going to give some weird advice.

DO NOT BUY THE PRE YET OR MAYBE EVER!

As with Apple's first iPhone and the first release of Vista, there are ALWAYS BUGS!

This may be an iPhone killer as some are saying... I doubt it. But, no matter what the case, from a developer's standpoint, owning the first version of anything as an end user, you always stand to be ticked off. (Take it from a person who found one of the first bugs in the Treo on T-Mobile's network. It wiped out all my contacts!!!!!!!)

Advantage: iPhone

Palm is heading under - and their latest attempt to stay afloat is to mimic the iPhone with an underpowered, cheap copy.

In two or three years, there will probably be no Palm, Inc - and no Palm, Inc to service their weak hardware.

And to both fanboi camps: although I dread it happening (and hold out secret hope that it never does happen), the threatened patent fight between Apple and Palm could be a game-changer. Both firms have a huge and valuable patent portfolio, and I'm sure both have infringed on each other (although in the end, I think Palm would prevail on legal issues given their 7-year head start)

Bottom line: these are both good, maybe even great, phones, and both have advantages & disadvantages vis-a-vis the other (and both of them seriously kick WinMo butt). Vive la choix!

I have never been a GSM user, and I admit that data and voice at the same time would be great - but I think AT&T has a long way to go in terms of network capacity and coverage issues.

Verizion is the undisputed king of coverage in the U.S., but I switched to them a year ago and have more problems in more places than I did with Sprint. Sprint also tied with Verizon for coverage in the west in J.D. Power's most recent carrier rankings. AT&T didn't come out on top in any region. Even U.S. Cellular in was #1 in one region, the northeast if I remember correctly.

Sprint had great data service and reasonable plans when I was with them before, from the looks of things now there may be less choices but the options seem fairly easy to understand.

Also, the article mentions something about the advantage of the ability to change SIMs with GSM phones.

Is this true with the iPhone's implementation of GSM? If not swapping SIMs doesn't apply to this comparison.

LOL

First, about the networks. We have two iphones/ATT in the extended family and my wife and I have Sprint in the same area. We live in south orange county California and spend a lot of time in Colorado, between Denver and Colorado Springs. From our combined experience, ATT has lousy coverage in those areas, especially compared to our Sprint coverage. My wife and I hardly ever lose connections (I honestly cannot remember the last time one of us did), while my in-laws are constantly losing connections (multiple times a call sometimes) in the exact same areas. Point is, this is subjective and based on your own experience and area. To say that "Sprint sucks" or even "ATT sucks" makes no good sense.

Carriers: People hate Sprint, but the truth of the matter is that they have made a ton of changes in the last year since becoming the laughing stock of the cell world. Their Website finally makes some sense now and, speaking as someone who has used both, my experience with Sprint customer service has been MUCH better than my experience with ATT. Again, this is just my experience, but broad, sweeping generalizations mean nothing really. When I call sprint, I get people who speak clear english, who answer right away, and who show respect. I appreciate that. Last time I called ATT I was trying to cancel my dead grandmothers services. They tried to keep me (my dead grandmother, that is) from canceling for nearly 45 minutes before they finally gave up.

Plans: As far as I can tell, Sprint is simply cheaper. Perhaps it should be in your neck of the woods, but in the places I live, Sprint has much better connectivity and has always been much faster. My father-in-law HATES how slow his 3g iphone is compared to my old Palm treo 700p - and the fact that I pay $15 right now for unlimited data. Which technology has the most potential? That's a different debate. In the real world, holding one next to the other, which one is consistently faster? That's what ultimately matters to me. In two years, the "potential" might become a reality at which point we will be two or more generations down the road phone wise and all of this will be moot.

As far as current plans go, considering the unlimited family data plan (1500 minutes per month) which we would use, my wife and I can both get set up with unlimited data, texts, etc and twice as many minutes as we currently use for much less than ATT.

Bottom line is that all of this is fairly subjective. I love my iTouch and would love an iPhone, but I can't afford ATT, their service sucks where I live, while Sprint is great where I live and their service is affordable and customer service has been great for me. Now, if the Pre would just put the tethering back in, I would buy one immediately. I am pissed off that that seems to be off the table, but oh well. Things change. A tethering Pre and an iTouch would be cool.

I'm not so sure about the point made about synergy. My iPhone, its default applications, and my mac are very well integrated. It's what I love most about the iPhone. And with 3.0, Apple has made APIs available to access the music library, etc.. You can't get more synergistic than that.

Singing Risin' up, back on the street Did my time, took my chances Went the distance, now I'm back on my feet Just a Palm Pre and I need you Prenatics to survive

So many times, it happens too fast And then Palm and Garnet changed their passion for glory Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past You must fight just to keep them alive

Chorus: It's the Palm Pre eye of the tiger, it's the cream of the cell phones fight Risin' up to the challenge of our rivals And the First known Palm Pre Prenatic stalks his prey in the night And the competition watchin' us with their eye on the tweets!

Face to face, out in the heat Hangin' tough, stayin' hungry They stack the odds 'til we take to the street For we kill with the skill of our WebOS

Risin' up, straight to the top Have the guts, got the glory Went the distance, now Prenatics not gonna stop Just a Palm Pre and I need you Prenatics to survive

I want to check the Pre out to see what it is all about. I think this phone will force Apple to make better products along with everyone else in the market.

As for Sprint vs AT&T, AT&T has a pitiful 3G network that has far fewer high speed 3G locations than Sprint(or Verizon for that matter). Sprint's data network is superior, not to mention Sprint's pricing kills AT&T's ripoff rates.

Iphone/AT&T own one category though...marketing.

Better the devil you know, for me at the moment.

The Apple haters are a minority... I felt the user meant hate vs. love/like. In that sense, they are a minority. In market share, of course they aren't a majority, they haven't been in the game for 2 whole years yet.

@oneAwake

iPhone WebApps, not the ones from the store.

I love my iPhone (well loved, it got jacked.) but i'm leaving AT&T and all that mess. I can't wait for the 6th!

Since webOS is based on Linux, it should theoretically be similar to the iPhone as far as security/robustness/scalability are concerned. Of course, that's only half the puzzle, so we'll have to wait and see how the webOS userland turns out. If that's a mess, then it doesn't matter how rock-solid the core OS is.

Also, a little bit of the clarification on the Networks section. True, swapping phones on Sprint isn't as easy as pulling the SIM card and tossing it in the new phone. But you can log into your account on Sprint.com and do an ESN swap there to activate the new device. I haven't had any reason to do it, but from what I hear its very easy and only takes a few minutes. Not really that useful for folks who regularly switch devices depending on their needs, but for phone upgrades it's still convenient.

For me, if it's iPhone vs Pre, the Pre wins out due to the hardware keyboard. Based on my limited experience with soft keyboards on the iPhone and other devices, I just don't think they work for me. I'm sure I could get used to it if I tried, but I prefer having the hardware keyboard. There are a lot of nice things about the iPhone, but the keyboard is a dealbreaker for me.

To all the Sprint haters, yes, there are people like myself out there who willingly use Sprint. Yes, their customer support used to be terrible, but the handful of times over the past few years I've had to call or go into a store to get taken care of have been nothing but pleasant experiences. Also, the SERO (and their replacements, the Everything Plus Referral Plan) are by far the best deal in wireless. I'm on a SERO plan and I pay $30/mo plus tax for 500 anytime minutes and unlimited nights/weekends/texts/data. A similarly priced EPRP plan is $60, which is still a better deal than any of the other carriers.

I'm really excited about the Pre, because on paper and from the demos I've seen it looks like it'll be a slick little device. But I'm going to wait until it's been out for a while and I can read reviews and see what all the App Catalog has to offer and play around with one in store before I decide if I'm going to switch. I really hope the Pre and webOS do well, if for no other reason than to have another option out there in the smartphone marketplace.

The Pre is based on a linux kernel with the GUI being a web server so OS wise it has equal development behind it to BSD/OSx. It will actually run on just as many hardware platforms as the iPhone. More, actually, since there are a couple of linux phones already on the market with drivers (Android)

I think iPhone users are underestimating the classic apps. There have been many, many million Palm devices sold with thousands of Palm applications out there and those people now have an upgrade path via the PalmOS Classic emulator.

That's not to say those apps aren't dated but they will likely work and for anyone who already has an application ecosystem that's a bonus.

And not having to worry about Apple's weird App approval process is another perk. Having a documented, unrestricted SDK is going to mean a lot of 3rd party apps will start hitting the market pretty easily. I don't have anything particularly bad to say about the iPhone other than I don't trust Steve Jobs to know what apps are best for me. That alone keeps me out of the iPhone pool.

Well that and I hate AT&T with a passion when they were acquired by/became/something Cingular and FUBARed my account several months running. But that's nothing against the iPhone.

Apple's censorship will come up to bite them in the butt. Palm can easily their differentiate their phone with a campaign "There's NO app for that".

Want to up your flatulance? There's an app for that.

Want to program your pvr to record a show you see advertised at the transit terminal? Apple rejected that. Want to improve your love life? Apple rejected that. Want to integrate contacts, todo, email and schedule? Apple blocks that. For that, you need a Palm.

Funny for a company that started as a fight against Big Brother.

Looks like a win-win for me. iPhone was obviously inspired by the touchscreen smartphones that came before it and they did a great job of bringing that tech to the less tech-savvy masses. They lit a fire under the asses of the industry and now, as iPhone built on Palm's old innovation, Palm is building on iPhone's current innovation to bring a better product. Competition kicks ass.

That's not going to happen.

But what is going to happen is that the bar is raised yet again - and the blackberry, palm, and iphone have to deal with that.

I don't use either, but I find the Pre more interesting these days. I also think that the iphone's big lag is the AT&T network; it's interesting to hear everyone here call Sprint a horrible network. Sprint gets consistantly high ratings for their network speed and availability; Verizon and Sprint are tied in most areas as number 1 and 2 for the network. But, Sprint's customer support sucks the big one, something they are desperately trying to fix, which is why sprint "sucks". Don't get the two issues confused though. I use Sprint at work and AT&T at home - my Sprint connections are much better (re: faster and more reliable) than my AT&T ones, and I'm thinking I may drop AT&T with the Pre's release.

We shall see. At the very least it's refreshing to have another phone to choose from.

Pre doesn't win either hands down, unfortunately. Design wise, I'm preferring the iPhone GUI. It scales better. Pre looks muddy from a distance. They made some choices that would have gotten them yelled at by my high school art teacher. And, unfortunately, rather than extend PalmOS or push the innovation, Pre is taking a lot of the iPhone UI behavior, so no credit there.

OS wise it's too soon to tell. BSD/OS X is rock solid and has years of dev time behind it (that they can deploy the same core on ARM, Intel, PPC, etc. is awesome). webOS is just coming out the door and we won't know for a while how secure, robust, scalable, etc. it is.

"Apple-haters hate because they are in the minority..."

I would not go so far as to say that Apple-haters are in the minority by any stretch. As far as the iPhone goes, it is a superior device, but the fact is that even though it has sold millions upon millions of phones, Apple does not hold more than 50% market share meaning it can not be in the majority. As for OSX, it is nowhere close to being in the majority, as they barely make a dent in that market share. So, no, I would not say that Apple-haters are in a minority.

On topic...I think that both will be great phones, but it will be a long time and a hard battle to truly compete with the iPhone.

What if you compared the out of box applications of the iPhone vs the Pre? It's just too bad that half the applications that Pre offers for free on the device we have to buy at the app store, and will occur additional charges from ATT for using them, where as Sprint offers all in one data packages. Why doesn't the author compare the UI and the OS, the two most important factors?! The Pre wins hands in both, easily. So if I was buying a new device, it would be the Pre. My iPhone looks cool on the surface, but feels old inside. Plus I have grown sick of the on screen keyboard. Can't wait for June 6th!

I also have a lot of old joint injuries and would get sore tendons and ligaments tensing so much to type, so I stopped doing it.

iPhone keyboard is like heaven to me. I can just touch and type. I don't need (might not even want) tactile feedback.

Networks should be a tie IMO. You listed good points for AT&T. But there's the dreaded slingbox incident. Also AT&T is more expensive. Sprint is cheaper and offers better 3G coverage and won't get bogged down due to its being more mature. But still, it varies on your location. Tie..

Apps i think you're being kind but shows maturity in thinking about the future. I also think Palm can catch up in a hurry here. Remains to be seen how the actual app catalog works. Sideloading is also a huge part.

Nice of you to even pick "cloud support" as a category.

All in all, a nice comparison without being very biased. It's appreciated. One is media/apps focused, the other is pda/multitasking/apps focused.

nothing can touch the iPhone, others can keep trying and keep releasing lower priced subworthy phones that are half @ssed - good for paper weights.

dont be a noob, get an iphone

My question would be if the Pre could background process the following out of the box on day 1? - Pandora/Slacker/LaLa running in a card - Google Maps running in a card - Mafia Wars for Facebook in a card - Composing an e-mail to my boss - Creating a meeting request on Exchange - Accepting a facebook event

All of these at the same time? Is that possible? If so I think you have your compelling argument for the Pre

I'd love to see Palm and Sprint do well with this product, however, my prediction is that it will only attract those who are already Sprint customers for whatever reason, and those who cannot get acceptable enough service with AT&T to buy an iPhone. There may be loyalists to the Palm brand from "back in the day" that the Pre will attract, their numbers are nowhere near that of the iPod culture.

Fanbois of any platform don't do any favors to the cause. It is worse now than it ever was... Check out the comments section of ANY engadget or gizmodo article

I don't really care if people hate Mac because they perceive them as arrogant. Apple can be as arrogant as they like as long as they provide me hardware and software that rarely fails and lasts for years. I have an 11 year old iBook that still works great.

People that are the BEST in their field usually are arrogant. Or at least perceived to be. Being second best at anything will alway make you envious of number one. Kia owners will always be envious of Mercedes owners.

I can only upload pics on my computer but I hope copy,cut and paste would allow me to do that.

I expect the Pre to be a credible device. However, a report like this is a bit premature. Palm has to prove that they have the chops to go up against the iPhone and we're talking about a moving target because we don't completely know what Apple has in store yet.

I think the Pre is good competition for the iPhone. It will get its own cult of fanboys and we will have to hear them whine just like the Apple fanboys. But that is okay because the Pre will never outsell the iPhone or establish itself in the market as a dominant player. Looks like Palm and Sprint have come together to offer an amazing 30,000 Pre's on release day and this shortage will continue for up to two months. What a very poor decision by two companies with one and a half feet in the grave.

When you think about it Palm was floundering BADLY with their next-gen offering until the iPhone (and apparently an infusion of ex-Apple staff as well) gave them something to aim for.

But noooo... Apple haters will still hate, and tell me that my purchase decision is invalid.

The point you made was the exact same reason I wanted the iPhone. My fingers would really start to hurt after using my old BlackJack II.

About the ecosystem: Since I already had an iMac and an iPod, the iPhone did make a lot of sense.

And who?? Uses sprint??? LOL" ha ha ha!!!

Again, I love my iPhone and all things Apple, but Steve and his crew need to step up their game rather quickly I feel. If marketed right (which I don't think it will be), the Pre could truly be the "iPhone killer."

I was unaware of how competitive they both will be.

I side with the report that the Pre will impact sales that would have gone to BB. The iPhone will continue to dominate where service is offered.