Now it gets weird
Searchability: Here's where things get a bit weird. The iPhone wants you to browse to find things - although the new Spotlight search supplements that method of navigation. The Pre, on the other hand, wants you to search for stuff. (Ars Technica, by the way, has an well-reasoned article on the philosophical underpinnings of these two approaches).
The iPhone's search is a straightforward utility that you access by flicking to the left of the home page. You type in your query and are presented with whatever matches - be it a contact, app, email sender or subject, or calendar event.
The Pre introduces two concepts that affect its searchability: Palm Synergy and Universal Search. The problem with the former is that it's marred with version 1.0 wrinkles, and the problem with the latter is that it isn't - universal, that is.
Palm Synergy attempts to meld all of your contacts from disparate sources - Facebook, Google, Exchange, iCal, and Address Book, for example - and mash them up into a single über-contact list. When Pal Synergy finds duplicates, it attempts to meld them into single entries, combining the data on each into one record.
And it does a pretty good job. However, if you - like I - have well over a thousand contacts, "pretty good" doesn't feed the bulldog. You can delve into the Pre's Contacts app and manually combine Synergy-missed duplicates into single records, but doing so is tedious and time-consuming.
Few apps can be seen on one of the Pre's three Launcher screens (left), compared with many more on one of the iPhone's 11 home screens (right) - so search, don't browse
What's worse is that there's no way to separate contacts imported from one account from contacts imported from another. Your Facebook contacts, for example, sit right next to your Exchange contacts in the aforementioned über-contact list.
You'd think that combining all those contacts into one megalist would create one long, difficult-to-scroll-through list - but it's actually worse than that on the Pre.
Contrast the Pre with the iPhone's contact list, which includes the alphabet running down the right side so that tapping a letter in that list jumps you to contacts beginning with that letter. The Pre's contact list, even though it's composed of everyone in your known universe, has no such shortcut.
The Pre doesn't want you to scroll. It wants you to search. To find a contact, you can scroll if you want, but the Pre would prefer that you begin typing on that benighted keyboard, and it will immediately narrow the list down to contacts that match your entry. The iPhone will do the same, but it also offers the opportunity to use that alphabet UI.
This search-not-browse attitude suffuses the Pre experience - which leads us to Universal Search.
Whenever there's no active app - either none has been launched or all have been minimized - typing on the keyboard begins a Universal Search. Universal Search will then list all the contacts and apps that begin with the typed letters, contacts who work for companies that match the letters, even contacts whose first and last names begin with two typed letters.
For example, typing "in" will bring up the app named Device Info, contacts who work for Intel, plus Ingmar Bergman, Izzy Neustein, and Robert Indiana. What it won't bring up, though, are any email messages with "in" in their subject or sender field, nor calendar events with "in" in their subject lines.
Search-not-browse also points to why there are no Favorites in the Pre's dialer, and why there are only three screens in the Pre's application Launcher, each of which can only display nine app icons and names before you have to scroll to see more. The Pre wants you to find both contacts and apps by searching for them using Universal Search.
The iPhone allows you to search for apps using its Spotlight search function, but it also gives you up to 11 home screens of 16 apps each, none of which needs to be scrolled to allow you to see more.
Universal search may be powerful, and with some refinements it should become even more so, but I prefer the iPhone's "have it both ways" attitude towards finding what I want.
Searchability advantage: iPhone 3GS
Next page: Finally, the apps
COMMENTS
hheheh funny
In less than a year no one will remember what a Pre is!
The iPhone however will be the dominant mobile computing platform for years to come.
What a stupid article.
N97?! ROFL
Another poor man's iPhone...yawn
I think this article just makes me glad I've been using an iphone all the way through from the first one to the 3GS. Basides the multi-tasking, there's nothing the pre offers which would make me drop the iphone, and the person reviewing clearly doesn't use an iPhone daily (or else he doesn't know the OS very well). The pre looks fugly too, they need to make it look prettier.
I find it amusing how people are still going on about Android dominating the industry. It hasn't and it most likely won't. The time for it to dominate is past, public opinion is apathetic and it was a missed opportunity for Google. The HTC rubbish phones it was introduced in were tantamount to a poor man's iPhone, and apart from a couple of nice innovations such as multi-tasking, the Pre falls into that same category. Who will buy a product that looks and feels cheap and confusing outside of the IT industry?
Re apps, the exponential growth in apps, s because of the exponential growth of iPhone ownership. The installed units needs to be there to justify people developing for a platform. Seeing as how Pre piggy backs on the achievements of Apple (iTunes) rather than have its own infrastructure, I can't really see it having a viable app store, at least when compared to iTunes and at best there'll be something comparable to The google one or the blackberry one i.e. a decent facebook app and that's about it.
Blah Blah blah
iPhone this.. iPhone that.... It seems that the iPhone fan boys just get their shorts all in a bunch whenever anyone doesn't just accept the iPhone as the secret of the universe, by default. The simple fact is that anyone who doesn't want AT&T as their vendor or anyone who wants features the iPhone doesn't support, will not get an iPhone. The rest who have more money than sense will buy an iPhone. I recently talked to an AT&T store employee about why she switched from the iPhone to a Blackberry. Quite simply because the iPhones short comings were things she simply couldn't get past. Not everyone will just because fruit flavored fanboys love their fruit flavored kit. Some aren't going to drink the coolaid and have an Apple love fest with you. Get over it. It's just a phone. Not the second coming of Christ.
Capacitive screens and overheating
If you're looking for a smartphone with a resistive screen, you're I supect you're going to be SOL, pretty much all the new ones are going capacitive these days. I think there are some WinMo ones that are still going resistive, but as a concept it seems to be dying.
@Ian 11
Regarding the heat issues, Several of my colleagues have 3Gs's (I'm still stuck on my "ancient" 2G) , and are reporting no heat problems whatsoever. I can't help but think that this is either being blown out of all proportion, or that the've had a bad batch of batteries somewhere. DOes anyone have any hard numbers for how many people are reporting this?
You missed an important category
You missed the "Fire hazard" category.
As there have been reports of iPhone 3GS becoming too hot to hold and getting so hot they actually glow with the heat I think it's safe to say the Pre wins this one, and frankly it's such an important category in general it's enough to swing a win to the Pre overall.
What use is a phone if it risks setting on fire as the iPhone 3GS does?
