Best phone to replace a Palm Pre

BnB

I had a Blackberry Curve (8900 I think). I loved it. It was a good phone. But it had two unfortunate incidents that lead to it's premature demise.

When I went down to O2 to replace it, I was faced with paying €250. I had a rush of blood to the head, and I bought the Palm Pre for € 50 instead. What a shocking shocking mistake that was. The worst phone I have ever had the misfortune to own.

Now, I am looking to replace it again.

I use the phone as a business phone. I am on the road 2 or 3 days a week and on those days I would use e-mail, mainly to check mails but sometimes to reply as well.

To follow the outline reccomended above.....

*What features are important to you in a phone?
Must Haves :

• Phone...!!!!
• E-Mail
• QWERTY Keyboard
• A Semi-Decent Battery life. (The PRE is shocking)

Like to haves :

• A decent Camera.
• Sync with MS Outlook Calander

Not at all interested in :

• MP3 Player
• Facebook / Twitter / Bebo

*Form factor - i.e. touchscreen, slider, flip phone, etc.

• Don't really mind as long as it has a qwerty keyboard.
• One thing I really don't like with the Palm Pre is that it has no buttons for the everyday functions. Everything is touch screen. If it was touch screen, I would like to at least have easy access buttons to answer a call etc.

*Internet - is 3G/mobile internet important, or WiFi/EDGE

• 3G/Mobile - Yes
• WiFi - No

*Operator - have you an operator preference

• O2 - Already in a business contract with them.

*Pre-pay/Bill-pay/SIM-Free - have you a preference for either Price range

• As I said. Already in a business contract

Thanks in advance

Brian

Nokia E71 would probably suit, but you might find it very old fashioned coming from a Pre.

Honda08

BnB wrote: »

I had a Blackberry Curve (8900 I think). I loved it. It was a good phone. But it had two unfortunate incidents that lead to it's premature demise.

When I went down to O2 to replace it, I was faced with paying €250. I had a rush of blood to the head, and I bought the Palm Pre for € 50 instead. What a shocking shocking mistake that was. The worst phone I have ever had the misfortune to own.

Now, I am looking to replace it again.

I use the phone as a business phone. I am on the road 2 or 3 days a week and on those days I would use e-mail, mainly to check mails but sometimes to reply as well.

To follow the outline reccomended above.....

*What features are important to you in a phone?
Must Haves :

• Phone...!!!!
• E-Mail
• QWERTY Keyboard
• A Semi-Decent Battery life. (The PRE is shocking)

Like to haves :

• A decent Camera.
• Sync with MS Outlook Calander

Not at all interested in :

• MP3 Player
• Facebook / Twitter / Bebo

*Form factor - i.e. touchscreen, slider, flip phone, etc.

• Don't really mind as long as it has a qwerty keyboard.
• One thing I really don't like with the Palm Pre is that it has no buttons for the everyday functions. Everything is touch screen. If it was touch screen, I would like to at least have easy access buttons to answer a call etc.

*Internet - is 3G/mobile internet important, or WiFi/EDGE

• 3G/Mobile - Yes
• WiFi - No

*Operator - have you an operator preference

• O2 - Already in a business contract with them.

*Pre-pay/Bill-pay/SIM-Free - have you a preference for either Price range

• As I said. Already in a business contract

Thanks in advance

go with a blackberry i have a good few here, from the bold 9000 , to the 9520 storm II, to the curve...


the best one i found is the bold 9000, great for typing emails, good solid phone, the best phone i ever had for holding mobile signal. sound is very good from the speakers. mini usb port, handy for charging from pc, as you always have a mini usb cable hanging around.


the storm II well, its manky, i liked it at first, its like typing on a wet sponge! very hard to type accurately on it, and texting is fiddly too. they are cheaper for a reason!


go with a bold 9000, and get a good belt holster from crackberry.com..

expansys are selling the bold 9000 for €399 sim free now!

mobius42

Since you loved the Blackberry you had, it would seem obvious to get one to replace your Pre.

The best one O2 have is the 9700; it's pretty much a newer version of the Bold. It's got arguably the best hardware keyboard of any phone on the market and BBs are great for email. Battery life should be pretty standard.
It can sync with Outlook calendar by plugging it into your PC; I don't think it has over the air sync.

As a matter of interest, what was it about the Pre that made you hate it so much?

Breezer

+1 for the Nokia E71. I can't vouch for Blackberries as I've never used them.

BnB

mobius42 wrote: »

Since you loved the Blackberry you had, it would seem obvious to get one to replace your Pre.

The best one O2 have is the 9700; it's pretty much a newer version of the Bold. It's got arguably the best hardware keyboard of any phone on the market and BBs are great for email. Battery life should be pretty standard.
It can sync with Outlook calendar by plugging it into your PC; I don't think it has over the air sync.

As a matter of interest, what was it about the Pre that made you hate it so much?

Thanks to all for the responses... I must pop down and have a look at the Nokia 71. I think the 9700 might be a bit pricy. What ever I buy now, if it works out ok, I'll probably be buying 4 more for the rest of the company and 5 of those would blow the budget.

What is the 8520 Curve like ?

Mobius, to answer your question..

See this thread for a post I made after having the Pre for 2 weeks (under my prelostpasswordname Bna)

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055728416&highlight=palm

Since that, it hasn't really got any better.

The biggest thing that has reared it's head since that is the Battery life. For example. It is 3 oc clock now. I plugged out my phone at about 6:30 this morning. Now, 9 hours later it is warning me that I have 20% battery remaining. And I haven't even used it too much today. I have had days when I have been on the phone a lot in the morning when it has died before 3 o clock.

The Operating System is very very very slow. In theory, the useability of it isn't too bad, but it is just so freggin slow, it kills it.

It might sound like a small thing, but you need two hands to answer it...!!!!! Or one hand and a bit of concentration (Either way, it makes answering while doing something else at the same time difficult)

You can't sync with your PC. You have to SYNC through GMail or Facebook or something like that. What the hell is that about.

For some reason, You cannot talk with the phone under your ear. When you do, the person on the other end can't hear you.

I regularly take it out of my pocket to find that for some reason, the SIM has been disabled and I need to enter my PIN. When I do I would ofter find a few messages from Calls I have missed while the SIM was turned off.

To be fair, to give it it's plus points...
For a phone that I thought looked fairly brittle, it has proved to be fairly tough.

The Camera is very good.

Need For Speed Undercover which was recently released for free on it is class...!!!!

coolmoose

I have a Palm Treo Pro, runs Windows Mobile 6.1 -

• Phone
• Email
• 3G
• Camera
• GPS
• Bluetooth
• Syncs with Outlook
• Mobile MS Office
• EDGE
• WiFi
• Dedicated buttons for call/hang up/calendar/messaging/start menu/volume and silence
• QWERTY keyboard
• Touchscreen
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• Decent battery life - 2 days standby normally

Had Treos since the Treo 600 years ago and very pleased with this one, would highly recommend. Loads of apps for Win Mo 6 available too!

Patricimo

Hi Coolmouse I have a Palm Treo Pro and am very disappointed with it, mainly because it is very slow in all operations, down to win mobile in my view, previous Treo's I had were all Palm OS and were excellent. I have replaced the Pro with iPhone and it is a millions times better than the Pro (which I have for sale €100) and I have learned to live without the Qwerty keyboard.

00bri

I have a Blackberry Bold 9700 and it's never out of my hand. I use it for work and can on some days receive 100's of emails, as well as on facebook, twitter, using the web browser, using the gps, playing games, etc. I'd usually have a lot of apps open at the same time. The battery never drops below 75% on a day of very heavy usage. For battery life I can definitely recommend it.