After having been in the USA for well over 7 months I finally got a cellphone. For a few months I've been thinking hard on whether I wanted the iPhone or the brand new Palm Pre. After I made my decision to go for the Pre I figured let's write a blog on why I made that decision.

I spent ample time trying to decide between the iPhone and the Palm Pre, both very nice and capable phones. Let there be no doubt about that.

It's something new

While the iPhone is a very nice and capable device I must admit I've become a bit 'iPhone tired'. Sure, it has 35000 apps (of which 99,9% I'd probably never use) and it's a good phone overall. I've owned an iPod Touch however and I never managed to get REALLY excited about any of it. Strange if you think of it because I'm quite the Apple fan.

The Palm Pre got me excited at the first video I saw of it. I loved the fact that there was finally something new and cool that's no an iPhone. After the reviews started coming in varying from mostly positive to very enthousiastic my interest increased even more.

Easy app development

While I can't do it YET (I don't have the MOJO SDK for the Pre) I'm dying to get into WebOS application development. In sharp contrast to the iPhone I can actually use my skills to build applications. HTML, CSS and Javascript are what powers WebOS applications. I'm not a C programmer and I probably never will be. I am however quite capable at the latter which is why building Palm apps is in my immediate reach. If you read this, Palm, please send me a copy of the SDK already!

no AT&T

I actually ALMOST got an iPhone. I was really truly undecided for a while between the Pre and a new iPhone 3GS. I got as far as actually going into an AT&T store and ask about a family plan and two iPhones. I hated the store, the wait in the store and the lying employees. When they were finally ready to hook me up I got told they wanted a $500 deposit from me. Apparently people who have only lived in the US for 7 months cannot be trusted. Nevermind the fact that I had absolutely no trouble getting a car loan for over $15k but a phone turned out to be a bridge too far. At least it did for AT&T. I told them to stick it where the sun don't shine.

Then there's the costs. AT&T still seems to think it's totally fine to charge $20 per month extra on top of their already pricey plan for TEXT MESSAGING. I kid you not, TEXT MESSAGING. This means that over the course of your 2 year contract you'll pay a whopping $480 to AT&T to get what I have included in my plan on Sprint. That's almost a brand new contract-free iPhone people!

A keyboard

While Apple claims the keyboard is dead I beg to differ. When owning a Touch, data entry has always been the thing that often made me want to smash the device to pieces. I'm sure all of you Apple fanboys are great at it but I can't for the world input data into an iPhone / iPod Touch the way I can on a regular mobile phone keyboard. I suppose my fingers are too big or maybe I have an undiagnosed case of Parkinson. I don't know. The fact that I can't type on an iPhone at greater than snail-speed is an issue. The Palm Pre has a keyboard. It's small but... it does the job. I can type. W00t!

iPhone Fanboys

This may be a somewhat less 'absolute' reason but still: Apple Fanboys drive me insane. Yes, the iPhone is a great device but come on, really. Apple introduced an initially rather limited device and is now slowly adding features the rest of the world has been enjoying on their phones for for many years. OMG we can now copy & paste! OMG soon we'll have MMS (gotta wait for AT&T to get their act together on that though), YAY! video! Seriously guys, Steve has got you all by the balls. The iPhone is the one and only device I've ever seen that managed to get it's fans outrageously excited about common features that used to be missing. It's like getting all hyped up over Starbucks coffee introducing that their coffee will now be served HOT.

Notifications

The notification GUI on the Pre ROCKS. Period. No intrusive popups. Nothing is gonna interfere with what you're doing on the phone right now. Instead an elegant bottom section of the screen is used to notify you of new emails, texts, MMS messages and other things. It's freakin' brilliant.

Some interesting features

While many iPhone owners don't seem to care about the complete lack of multitasking, I kinda do. It's kinda convenient to stay on IM when you want to look up where you're gonna eat tonight isn't it? It's quite nice when you see a link in your Twitter app and you can actually visit it without shutting down the Twitter app. And there's many more examples where multitasking comes in handier than one may think. I'm not talking about running tons of background processes draining your battery. I'm talking workflow here. Apple can throw in all the marketing talk they want but the lack of multitasking kinda sucks, no matter how you look at it. Funny thing is, I'm sure it will get introduced at some point and the fanboys will probably once again treat it as if a revolution has just occurred. Not so much really.

Then there's the GPS feature. An iPhone is totally USELESS for driving, unless you want to slam your car into a tree while looking at the map on your iPhone. The Pre comes with Sprint Navigator which is pretty much a full blown car GPS system including spoken directions. Like it should!

Rounding up

Once again, don't get me wrong here. I'm not anti-Apple and I'm not a fanboy. In fact I love Apple products and I think the iPhone is a fine phone. I'm not a Palm fanboy either because by no means I think this phone is perfect. I plan to write my own review about it in a week or two after some heavy use. I suppose it really depends on what one wants from a phone (and a provider) which phone is the best pick. For me it turned out to be the Pre. I think the device has tremendous potential and I hope I can get my hands dirty on some Pre app development soon!

Feel free to comment on which phone you have chosen and why! No fanboyism please though!