Dave Randolph

So I bought the original iPhone on launch day. Then I bought the 3G version on launch day. I think this makes me qualified to say that I have as much if not more time spent on the iPhone than anyone ouside of Apple headquarters and I must admit I love the iPhone. But like most relationships over time the magic wears off and soon you look for another lover, a younger, slimmer, more limber, more active mate. The Palm Pre is that mate for me. However with any new love there are areas of improvement.

Its been 24 hours and I’ve been using and exploring every option on it. You can look elsewhere for reviews and stats and photos galore but I want to focus on whats missing and what is better on the Pre than the iPhone. The first is the network. No more AT&T for me. AT&T has been nothing short of a nightmare in San Francisco. There are more dead spots and dropped calls than I could ever point out. It got to a point that I refused to take calls while driving and if I was in a high rise I would use skype which then completely defeats the point of having a cell phone. If I could predict the dead sports then I could plan around it but they seem to move. One day no problems in my house and the next I would have complete drop outs. Always showing full bars and then going to none also defeats the purpose of have any bars at all. It might be better if AT&T just had a “working” “not working” icon. I did a drive from San Francisco to Sacramento with the Pre and the iPhone both playing Pandora. The iPhone lost connection 17 times and I had to restart the phone. The Pre had no drop outs and I had music the whole time. If and when AT&T are out of the picture I would consider going back to the iPhone because that is the main reason for switching to the Palm Pre at this time. I however do see a future where the Pre and the iPhone will match each other.

Now that I am done with bitching about AT&T lets get into the features I love. I love having a keyboard even though its smaller than any others. They did put a touch screen keypad for phone operation which works great but I would also like to see an on screen keyboard when the clam shell is closed. The multi-apps run great, even better than the Android phone and switching between apps is easy, fast and frankly fun. The screen layout and button sizes are great except that the touch screen is slightly unresponsive and takes slowing down to register commands sometimes.

The camera works well and the flash is a welcome addition and they even have built in support for uploading photos to some site. However they only support facebook and photobucket at this time. I want flickr!

With the email if you get it to work with your client good luck. The exchange support is there but an unsigned certificate makes it hard to sync with most exchange servers. Rarely does anyone ever get a sign certificate for their servers. They promise a fix but its not there yet. So if your using exchange then wait for a fix. In email there is no bulk erase, so I have to view each message and then delete it.

Which then goes into calendars and once again I was plagued with the same problems of exchange. However if you like google calendar or facebook calendar. (I didn’t even think facebook had one) But the calendar works well and the contacts are the same deal.

The navigation format is great and very different from the iPhone however it does get confusing that there are pages and each page scrolls. So it takes some getting use to. The GPS is fast, accurate and gives great real time directions. While I might not give up my TomTom just yet it is a usable GPS and will help when I don’t have my tomtom around. The clock app is cute and only has 2 themes at this time but what is missing and what I used on a regular basis is a timer and stop watch both seem to be missing from the app and from the app store. The memo apps is a nice replacement to notes in iphone. You get a nice pegboard with all of your notes on it. You can plug it in to USB and use it as a thumb drive but what I really like is that when I plug it in the phone ask me what I want to do, sync,drive mode or just charge. That was a welcome change. The notification area is great. Unlike the iphone that pops up center screen any new messages, mail all pop up at the bottom of the screen out of the way of the app your currently in. You still have a youtube apps and it is far more responsive than the iphone version. Pandora is a toss up for me I looks great on the pre and is fast and responsive and has some nice bells and whistles but I did like the album view and purchase options on the iphone. Webpages load must faster and don’t lock up till loaded like on the iphone and the bookmarks are much nicer and its great to seem large icons in one place that’s not the home screen. Going into airplane mode is amazing, touching the top of the screen brings up a staus page with battery,Bluetooth,wifi and airplane mode on it. Location service is turned on once per app and then your done, no clicking each time you launch like on the iphone. The one app that is missing that I miss the most is there is no solitaire game. Really? Come on! Boost phones even have solitaire and snake too. Doc view and pdf view work great, clean and easy navigation. Yes it does synce music and videos with itunes and the phone even shows up as an ipod which is great but don’t plan to load any music you buy on itunes with DRM. It wont copy over but you can always buy music from amazon from the phone and you wont have to be on wifi to do it.

So the missing apps I want. Now I’ll give them time after all it took Apple 2 years to get ustream and slingbox on it and it still has to be on WiFi. Lets see if sprint can make apple and AT&T suck it!

Solitaire,

Slingbox

Countdown timer

Voice recorder

Better twitter app

Qik

Stickam

Ustream

UPDATE:

Jeff Schoby mentioned Spaz which completely flew under my radar when looking for twitter apps in the store.
Spaz has all the features I was looking for in a twitter app. a good view with my tweets, @’s and DM all listed and it even lets me RT. Unlike tweed which made you look at timeline or @’s or ones i posted or direct message and not at the same time. Spaz feels more like the iPhone versions of twitter apps and tweed feels more like the ones on the Android.
Sadly though solitare is still not in the store.

Required Experience:

· Ability to troubleshoot complex audio video and AMX/Crestron control systems.

· Ability to upload and down load AMX and Crestron code.

· Ability to configure and trouble shoot Clearone/BIAMP and/or equivalent audio DSP systems.

· A Minimum of 5 years experience in the audio video industry.

· Intermediate to advance knowledge of video, audio, networking, electronic systems, and PC skills.

· Associate Degree in Electronics/Computer science, or equivalent job experience.

· Must be able to lift minimum of 50 Lbs.

· Driving requirements for 50% to 90 %.

· Candidate must be a team player, with excellent verbal and written communication skills. One who is honest, dependable, and committed; dedicated, energetic, and willing to take the initiative on projects. Additionally, the candidate must be able to successfully manage multiple projects.

Job: AV Field Service Technician/Engineer