Corporate IT | 01 Jul 2009 :
Despite it being and apple/orange comparison, irreverent tech site TheRegister.co.uk, has an exhaustive comparison the Palm Pre and iPhone 3GS - two highly capable PDAs.
It is worth a read as it goes through the major features as well as the minutiae that might make you love the svelte device in your pocket or, chuck it like the brick that it is through something large, flat and made from reconstituted sand.
Now, the reason I said that it is an apple/orange comparison, if you'll excuse the pun, is that the Pre is a business device, for business people with business needs from a long line of such devices. It also provides a secondary host of media features to ensure that should you be out and about, you can use it for entertainment too. Nowhere in the piece does the reviewer make this explicit.
The iPhone started life, and many would argue continues, as a consumer device that has been grudgingly accepted into the business world by admins tired of telling troublesome self-enablers to buy a real phone for work. This is evidenced by the likes of IBM, SAP and others bringing out application suites for the pretty devices some years after its initial arrival.
When taking this into account, the performance of the Pre against the 3Gs is all the more remarkable.
I am the first to admit that the Pre is unlikely to dethrone the iPhone as the device of a new generation, but for the legions of people who would buy almost any device that bore the important distinction of "not an iPhone", it is a welcome appearance, even in version 1, with a brand new, and likely to be wobbly, OS.