If the typically-pessimistic analyst quoted in the New York Times is right, 300,000 Pres have been sold so far, and I own one of them. Not bad sales for the first month of a nascent platform. What does this mean for the platform? It’s too early to tell, but I’m leaning towards a positive interpretation.
[via NY Times]
{ 1 comment }
I don’t know if it was the fact that I had many cards open, my repeated opening and closing of the keyboard as I was fidgeting, or something else, but something made my Palm Pre crash for the first time today. It wasn’t pretty… all I saw was a backlit black screen.
I turned off the device using the power button and turned it back on, and was relieved to see the familiar Palm logo. Not so fast… the dreaded backlit black screen again. I repeated the process of turning the Pre off again, and once more saw the black screen. I did this a few more times, each time more frantically. I finally took a deep breath, almost resigned to the dubious honor of being one of the first owners of a Pre brick, when I recalled that the Pre, unlike the iPhone, has a removable battery.
I popped off the back, removed the battery, and put it back in. After snapping the back back on, I once again tried turning on the device. After waiting for what seemed like an excruciatingly long time, I was greeted once again with the warm webOS home screen. Whew, crisis averted.
{ 2 comments }
Fire up the Updates app to start downloading it. Note that this is a security update and it closes the loophole that allowed the installation of homebrew apps by opening a link sent through email. It weighs in at 12MB and only took a minute or two to download.
{ 0 comments }
It looks like the cat is out of the bag, because every major Pre site is linking to it. We were able to get our hands on the emulator image that ships with the SDK, and took some screenshots of what it looks like running on Virtualbox on a Mac.
A future post will include details on how to get the emulator running on Mac/Linux (the version that leaked only runs on Windows out of the box). The firmware running on the emulator has a custom carrier called “Virtura”.
{ 1 comment }
Over the last few days, the Pre’s always-on AIM connection has helped me connect with people I otherwise would’ve missed due to timezone differences, limited availability, and being away from my computer. Coming from the iPhone, which still does not have reliable IM even with push notifications, this is a real killer application.
{ 0 comments }
After getting my Palm Profile up to date yesterday, I finally got a chance to test the remote wipe functionality on the Pre.
I logged in and hit the innocuous looking Erase Device button.
After hitting the Erase Device button, I was prompted to confirm the request and type in a captcha (perhaps to prevent automated erasing in case their system is hacked? or more likely, to make sure people can’t accidentally trigger it even if they wildly click).
After typing in the captcha, I was prompted one last time to confirm the unlock. I obliged and hit the button at 11:15 AM, and started timing the deletion.
It has now been over 12 hrs since I hit that final “Yes” button confirming the remote wipe of the phone, and it still has not been wiped. I’ve been sending and receiving text messages all day, so it’s definitely not a service issue. I guess I’ll give it the full 24 hrs before passing judgment, but things don’t look good right now.
{ 1 comment }
As I mentioned in a previous post, I had to change my phone number very early into my Sprint service. Today, I was looking at Palm’s “Manage My Device” page, wanting to check out the remote-wipe functionality. Because this “Erase Device” feature works over text message, it is important for Palm to have the correct phone number on file. I found no way to update it through the online interface, so instead I did the unthinkable and reset my device using the on-device “Full Erase” function. Upon completion of the process, the phone reboot and I was prompted again to input my Palm Profile credentials. It automatically downloaded the applications I had installed as well as my custom settings that had been backed up into my profile. Voilà, problem solved. The web interface now shows my new phone number, and I’ll be able to test the remote wipe functionality tomorrow.
{ 0 comments }
One of the things that I’ve had the most trouble with is syncing contacts on the Pre. There is no capability to sync contacts with the device when connecting it to my Macbook Pro, which I use as my day-to-day machine, even though this would be trivial given the fact that iTunes already has the ability to copy contacts to a legacy iPod, which the Pre is emulating. I am aware of “The Missing Sync” software, but this should really work out of the box and should not require third party software. The only other option is to use Gmail or Exchange contact syncing, have my Address Book sync with those accounts, and then have those contacts pushed to my device.
The problem is made worse by the fact that adding “cloud” contact sources on the Pre is tied in with adding email accounts, so I cannot add my Exchange account as a contact source without also getting the email from that account. I don’t wish to use Facebook to store my phonebook (if that is even possible), and Gmail’s habit of adding anybody that I ever email to my contacts list makes it impossible to seriously use it a source for my phonebook. It seems like Palm was so busy focusing on integrating the “cloud” functionality that they forgot to take care of the basic usability of their product. I am hoping this will be addressed in a future software update, and sooner rather than later, because it is very difficult to use a phone without painless syncing of my contacts from my main repository on my computer. For the time being, the Pre doesn’t “just work” like the iPhone does, which puts it at a big disadvantage in this regard.
{ 0 comments }
Ever since I got my Palm Pre on Sunday, I’ve been on an application installation binge. Now that I’ve gotten used to using the device and have had it a for a few days, I’ve learned which apps are useful for me and which are just a waste of screen real-estate, so I’m ready to uninstall some of them. Unfortunately, it wasn’t easy to figure out how to do uninstallation on my own (it is not integrated with icon reordering as on the iPhone), so I had to crack open the manual.
To uninstall an application on the Palm Pre, hold the orange button and tap the application icon.
You will be prompted to delete, then you will be prompted to delete again (Palm may want to look into this), and having jabbed at the red button twice, you’ll be rid of the unwanted application.
{ 3 comments }
As I already mentioned, I am a new Sprint customer and therefore activated a new line and a new number. While I’m trying out the Pre, I’m still keeping my old line with an iPhone on AT&T, so I had to get a new number. Bad call.
It turns out that this number used to belong to someone that owed money to GE Money, and what with the financial crisis and what not, the person had gotten behind paying. Now, for some reason, GE Money got the idea that calling me 3-5 times a day, every day, would help them get their money back from this individual. The problem was that it was an automated call and I could never speak with someone to let them know it was a wrong number.
So what to do? Well, I talked to Sprint. They went ahead and changed my number, which took a little less than 5 minutes and happened almost completely without my intervention. The only thing I had to do was power-cycle my Pre, and I was back in action. Problem solved, right?
Wrong. Now it turns out that I am no longer automatically eligible for the $100 mail-in rebate on the Pre, and must call the rebate center and explain the situation to them, and hope for the best. Rebate situation: fail. New number: win. Net outcome: meh.
{ 1 comment }
