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.