Palm expatriate holds a Pre...

I abandoned Palm because Palm abandoned me. My amazing T3 sits in its cradle in front of me, unused in I've forgotten how many months, because it couldn't keep up with the times despite my attempts to push it to the limit.

I've never been hesitant to criticize Palm along the way, as I watched them make mistake after mistake, shunning and insulting the consumers who bought their products and helped get them to the peak they were at so long ago. But it wasn't because I hated Palm... it was because I hated what they were doing to their former glory. I hated that I knew they could do better, be better, but weren't due to their own idiotic decisions.

I never jumped ship to something else. I just sort of gave up on having the perfect electronic organizer. I have kept my basic cell phone, still just used for calls (and the occasional calculator).

This past weekend I finally got my first chance to hold and play with a Palm Pre.

As a result, I feel excited about Palm a bit again. Is the Pre the right device for me? Not quite yet. But suddenly, the potential for greatness is back, and undoubtedly the Pre is an amazing re-entrance into the field.

What I liked:
- Amazingly small. I never realized how small it was until I saw it for real. Too many \"smartphones\" are too big to be phones, in my opinion. The Pre's size is a better PDA/phone compromize than the iPhone, for me at least.
- The UI is beautiful. \"Sexy\" is back, and its name is Palm.
- The UI is intuitive. Other than how to close an app (I couldn't figure it out, and all the Sprint reps were too busy for me to feel like waiting to ask), I found my way around just fine.
- Multitasking is sweet.
- The slider mechanism works better than I thought it would, especially one-handed
- Touchscreen was very responsive.
- Removable battery (suck it, Apple).

What I didn't like:
- a bit of hesitation in the UI. You get the feeling the hardware spec inside the Pre isn't quite up to snuff for what the Palm webOS is asking of it. However, this isn't a dealbreaker... it was still plenty usable, and the delays are probably less than what I put up with on my older Palms. I might just be spoiled from too long playing with friends' iPhones.
- The slider keyboard is way too small. But only so much you can do when the phone itself is that small. A better compromise would've been to have it slide out sideways (landscape). Even better: ditch the slider, and go virtual a la iPhone.
- The top row of the keyboard is too close to the bottom of the screen when slid out. I can't really get my thumb in there.
- Spring. Not happening. Awful company, awful coverage. Need a GSM version for AT&T (awful company, great coverage, and yay for GSM). Plus I get a discount from AT&T, so it makes it sting slightly less.

I am excited to see where the webOS goes in development evolution, and what newer hardware Palm puts it on. For now though, I have to continue to wait. But I'm paying closer attention now.