Results tagged “Palm” from BrainDrain

For the record, I'm posting this because I believe that Palm (and perhaps Sprint) are doing things all wrong and are hobbling the Pre due to dragging their feet on getting a plethora of apps available in Palm's App Store. Apple's "there's an app for that" has already become ubiquitous and for the Pre to succeed (in spite of Sprint's continued hemorrhaging of customers due to terrible service), Palm needs to quit trying to promote quality over quantity when it comes to available applications and allow people to post apps. Palm's current catalog sits at 34 official apps, whereas the homebrew app community - applications that have not been officially sanctioned (and are therefore free) - sits at somewhere around 137!

Granted, a lot of those apps range from the very useful to the downright silly which I just won't use. But being beholden to Palm while they put a stranglehold on the app community and just dole out new apps in a trickle doesn't work for me. I believe that this kind of activity will only serve to confirm the Pre as an also-ran when it's two main competitors (the iPhone and the G1/G2) already have dozens if not hundreds of apps available - whether they're useful or not.

To tantalize any Pre owners out there as to why they might want to do this, let me ask one question: do you wish you could have a different sound for system alerts, or change the sound for the calendar alerts? Right now, Palm doesn't offer you a way to do that, but the homebrew community does. Both precentral.net and pimpmypre.com have applications that will allow you to do this. Within the homebrew community you can find ports of old favorite apps as well as new apps that are done specifically for the new WebOS.

So, if you want to know how to open up your Pre and allow installation of homebrew apps in 15 minutes or less, hit the jump and see the procedure I followed.

Here's an update to the Pre Protection post that I wrote last week or so now that I've had a chance to use the stuff for a few days. After some initial reservations on the BodyGuardz skin, due in large part to the difficulty of applying it, I have to say that the new protection polymer works fantastically well. It's crystal clear, protects well, and is even easier to clean than leaving the Pre naked. The touchscreen sensitivity may be ever-so-slightly diminished, but not enough to raise alarm. The skin gives better grip, but may make it a little too sticky for pockets if the back skin is applied as well (I did not apply it as I'm using the flat black Touchstone back). They also have skins for iPhones and some other phones, so I would highly encourage you to use them if they have one for your mobile. Since this is the same material as the clear bra on my G35, now my phone matches my car. Genius.

The choice of the Golla case was also a good one, as application of the BodyGuardz made the front face of the phone a little stickier (due to the plastic polymer skin) and therefore made it harder to extricate the phone from the pocket of my jeans, as I mentioned above. The pouch is loose enough that the skin doesn't affect the sliding and having the extra pockets and the ability to quickly remove it via a quick flick of the carabiner is fantastic. I love it. It's stylish, it's functional, and it's easy to use.

I'd recommend both of these for your Pre or iPhone. Way better than a plastic holster, fo' sho'. The geek utility belt is so 10 years ago.

If you've been following my Twitter feed today you'll know that I went to Sprint to get an Airave in order to boost the cell reception in my apartment. Sprint licensed Samsung's femtocell technology ("femto" being a prefix that is smaller than "micro", indicating a small area of coverage for personal use) which effectively creates a small cellular node in a residence or office. It supports up to 3 phones and Sprint also has plans available for unlimited long-distance calling and such, as the device is basically a PCS-to-VOIP converter. I have finally had enough of not being able to have reliable reception at home and having to go outside just to take calls which still may end up being dropped. Now that I'm doing the consulting thing, I need to have the confidence that my calls will not be dropped in the middle of conversations. As of this writing my Pre is now sitting at a full 5 bars of reception since installation of the device. It looks like it doesn't assist with my EVDO reception, though, so I may still end up switching on the wi-fi while at home in order to interact with the online world via the Pre.

This device is a bittersweet option for resolution, however. Sprint's charging $99 for this little beauty plus a $5/month service charge, most likely to recoup their original cost for the device. I've been doing some research over the last week and the cheapest I've found cell signal boosters for - even on eBay - has been $154 dollars, with most coming in well above the $250 mark. I can't figure out why they're so expensive. As it turns out, I'm basically just amortizing the cost through Sprint that I would pay up front by buying a booster somewhere else. As my man Sammy Hagar once sang, "They gotcha comin' in, they gotcha goin' out, same amount, in 'n out."

I'm reading that some people are getting the devices and/or the service for free via the Sprint Retentions department (the people responsible for keeping existing customers). My problem is that I'm totally boned in that respect because my contract got reset when I bought the Pre in order to get the paltry $75 discount that they were offering. So I can call Retentions, but I'm not sure what good it will do because they know that I can't go anywhere for the next two years and I don't think I have any bargaining chips. All I can do is say that I'm irritated with the service and say that I'm going to bad-mouth Sprint and Palm all day long, and maybe contact the BBB, but I doubt that will sway a big, soulless company like Sprint. They've got my money and they're going to keep getting it for the next two years because I'm not going to spend even more money to get out of the contract.

Thus, I'm really hoping that this Airave thing will give me enough cellular use out of the Pre so that I can not think about getting screwed over. And, hopefully, Palm will get off their buttcheeks and release a software update that will actually effectively manage the cellular antenna so that I can cancel the Airave service and not have to use it anymore.

This is the price of early adoption, technolust, and my indentured servitude to same.

I've had my Pre for nearly two weeks now, and so I figured that it was time to give another review of the overall experience now that some of the immediate, out-of-the-box sexy factor has worn off. Don't worry, I'm not all blase' about it yet, I've just had some time to use it and allow it to take over the role that was previously held down by the Centro.

Overall, I really like the device as a whole. The app store is coming along, and hopefully soon there will be a lot more useful applications to put on the phone that don't necessarily require internet access (for those dead zones like interior bathrooms in office buildings where no cell signal can survive). I love the gesturing and the touch screen, and the apps are pretty well laid out and thought out in how they interact. The flippable web browser is everything I've dreamed it could be. I'm totally in love with Tweed, and looking forward to giving Spaz a try in a bit.

I've pretty much come to grips with all the idiosyncrasies of the thing except for one - the dismal,abysmal, and just downright terrible cellular reception of my phone. It seems like the antenna is just woefully underpowered and unable to maintain a solid signal in any location other than a completely unobstructed outside setting. I've been complaining that this new apartment is terrible for Sprint reception ever since I moved in, but now I literally have to go outside on my porch to take calls and even then there's no guarantee that they won't be dropped. I'm finding the reception to be as equally terrible inside office buildings (I got one bar inside the client site this week) and restaurants (my reception yo-yo'd up and down the spectrum while in Pluckers). I'm finding the phone alerting me of voice mails for calls that never came in, text messages that show up hours or days late, and an overall inability to maintain connection to any online services without wifi being enabled.

It is really, really frustrating to have a device which performs the way I want it to in just about every other way fail at performing the single most important and basic function for which it was designed. I want a communications device and this one seems pretty incapable of doing that reliably unless I'm able to use a wifi connection (and that means that I pretty much have to keep the phone plugged in while it's on because the wifi connection can drain the Pre battery in less than a day). The Pre is just like the little girl with a curl from the old nursery rhyme:

"There was a little girl,
With a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very, very good;
But when she was bad,
She was horrid."

There was a WebOS update released this weekend (Palm WebOS 1.0.3) that had some minor fixes in it but none of which seemed to be related to the reception or antenna quality. Note to Palm: Please, please, please fix this soon. I want to love this phone completely. I want to give myself over to it and commit to the long and happy relationship that I know we're both dying to have. But I can't do that if we can't communicate, and so I need your help. Please fix the reception problems! Help me help you by being able to give the Pre all the warm fuzzy reviews that I possibly can...and mean them!

I'm not alone here. Gizmodo posed the "how good is your Palm Pre signal?" question a few days ago and out of 4100 responses to the survey at the bottom, 41% of them (1666) at the time of this writing list their signal as poor. If you look at the picture of the Pre in the article, my reception bar looks like that on a good day at home.

There's a new contest over at the Palm Pre Blog for another chance to win a Palm Pre. It involves following "preblog" on Twitter and then posting an @reply for a chance to win a feebie on the day that the Pre is released.

I want this phone pretty much more than life itself right now, and I know that there are others of you out there anxiously awaiting it as well, so take every chance you can. If you do sign up for Twitter, feel free to follow me there....I'm Wyntermute.

Good luck!

Wanna get a free Palm Pre and 6 months of service? Try your hand at taking a Palm survey on why you think you should be a Pre beta tester.

Good luck, but be forewarned - I applied an hour ago and my application is good. *crosses fingers*