Today, June 6, 2009, I bought the Palm Pre mobile smartphone from Sprint. I work in social media as an analyst and write for a living, so it’s really about time I jumped on the band wagon and got a decent phone (yes, I can blog from it!).

I live in Bellevue, Washington. My local Sprint store sold out of the Palm Pre at 9:05 am. They opened at 8:00am. I was the second to last person to get one of these awesome phones! Yes, I had to stand in line, but not very long; maybe 20 minutes. I didn’t camp out or anything.

I spent another hour in the store playing with it.

The Palm Pre is my first smartphone and I am very excited about it! In fact, it is my first ‘cool’ phone. My previous phone was a Samsung A707 which I bought in 2007 (it came out in 2006). The exciting feature with that phone was that it was ‘flat’ and fit in my pocket and had a color screen (hawt). After having it for about a year, I cracked the front screen by stepping on it (oops). Since then it has been occasionally unreliable (unless the reason for that is AT&T’s network suffering from iPhone over-usage).

Here is a picture of my old phone:

I didn’t get a better phone. Affordable phones required new contracts and cool phones required data plans at $30 added to my already too-high AT&T bill. AT&T has been raping me. I pay over $75 a month on the LOWEST voice plan ($39.99) they have. I don’t use my phone to talk much. I use 0-10 Anytime Minutes a month and have several thousand rollover minutes stored up for no purpose. I do text message, though, so I bought text messaging for an additional $20 a month. This brings my bill to $60 without taxes and other fees (the grand total being $75).

I was sold unlimited text messaging. I didn’t even know they had other options. It is ridiculous because I don’t text that much and any sales person should have seen that when looking at my bills. I even complained about it when I bought my last phone. They could have informed me that there was an option of 200 text messages for $5 a month, which is too little, or 1500 text messages for $15 a month, which is too high, but they didn’t. If AT&T had made an effort to set me up with the best plan for me and make me happy, I might have felt better about the whole thing, but as it was, I felt they were just out to sell me as high as they could.

It doesn’t upset me, but it’s not loyalty-inspiring.

They could have informed me at ANY time how they could SAVE ME money on a different plan. All they have to do is build a robot to look at people who regularly aren’t using all their minutes or text messages and inform those people that better options are available. This would have created brand loyalty for me.

As it is, we have a business relationship. My contract with AT&T is up in three weeks and I feel no reason not to go elsewhere.

So I am moving to Sprint! While I was cruising plans on their website, a representative contacted me via chat. Cool. I talked to a real person (though that person is probably not named ‘Jessica’ despite the IM label). This sales rep helped me figure out that I could cut my regular bill in HALF with a Sprint plan if I did not want a smartphone. With a smartphone, I could still save $30 a month on service over comparable plans offered by AT&T or Verizon. I haven’t heard of any Network Coverage complaints for Sprint in my area, and the word on the street is that customer service from Sprint has soared to fangasm amazing since David Hesse became CEO and presumably fired all the surly, rude customer reps that worked for Sprint a few years ago. I was sold.

So, my dear Sprint, as you have addressed and corrected your problems, and because you have been good to me, you have won yourself at least one new customer who will blog your praises to other potential customers.

Also, you have a HOT phone.

I shall now gush out a review of the Palm Pre.

The Palm Pre – Sprint’s Hawt New Phone

I decided I wanted a Palm Pre while looking for a boring phone to replace my current boring phone with a better rate plan. I read about the Palm Pre while researching Sprint (against all competitors) and couldn’t believe the phone was coming out at the end of the week I happened to be looking for a new phone. I had wanted a smart phone for awhile. I had considered the iPhone because of the spiffy apps, but I wanted a keyboard. And lo and behold! The Palm Pre has both.

It should be obvious that I’m not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to mobile technology, but as a writer I do my research and I can tell you why so far I think the Palm Pre is awesome.

As a writer, I need a phone I can use to write to the web. BlackBerry has been tempting for years, but I wasn’t motivated to get one because of the price tag. Also, I had to ask myself: ‘is email really all that important to me?’ Then the iPhone came out in all its sexiness. I like the iPhone’s pretty touch screen and the lovely apps, but I still wanted a physical keyboard, and the iPhone was also very expensive.

When I learned about the Palm Pre, I did even more research. People have been buzzing about it for months.

The Palm Pre has been dubbed the ‘iPhone Killer.’ It is Palm’s first market-competitive phone in ten years. It is Sprint’s greatest hope. Here are the top ten things I like about the Palm Pre (in no particular order):

Extra kicks: The Palm Pre comes with a USB charger as well as an outlet adapter. This means I can charge it on my laptop if I really need to (of course that would drain my laptop battery if I am not plugged in) as well as plug into an outlet. The Palm Pre also comes with earphones (albeit, not very comfortable, but good sound quality and I go through earphones like nobody’s business so I enjoy an extra pair!)

Drawbacks to the Palm Pre are minimal. I’ve noticed that sometimes I cancel out of applications without meaning to. The software may be oversensitive to touch, but it is just as likely user error as I am not used to the touch screen. The keyboard is also quite small, which has led some people to wish the Palm Pre also had a virtual keyboard like the iPhone, but I like the Palm Pre’s keyboard. I’ve had it a few hours and I am used to it already. I find physical keyboards to be much faster and easier than virtual keyboards.

Best of all is that the Pre Palm is with Sprint and therefore more affordable! I did a lot of research on Sprint before purchasing, so I can break it down for you. The best thing for me is that Sprint offers packaged service plans where you can reduce Voice minutes and still have unlimited text, media, messaging, and data. You can get unlimited voice, 900 Anytime Minutes, or 450 Anytime Minutes. This plan set-up is ideal for me as I don’t talk on the phone all that much and would be overpaying for Voice with other carriers.

I have the Everything Plan with 450 voice minutes for $69.99. This includes unlimited weekend minutes, unlimited evening minutes that start at 7:00 pm, unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes, and unlimited messaging and data. This allows me to use the phone less for talking and more for texting, web surfing, and writing, which is what I really want to do. Woot! If I did want unlimited talking, the total would be $99.99 for Sprint’s Simply Everything Plan, which is still a lot cheaper than competitor prices.

Some people have reservations about Sprint as a carrier. I researched this too. For coverage, as with ALL carriers, reliability with Sprint can depend on where you live. Network coverage with Sprint is great in Seattle. It is great most places, I hear, especially populated places, but of course YMMV. I am not sure, but it may be less reliable out of the United States (AT&T is said to be the best out of the country because it runs off of a GSM network as opposed to CDMA). Generally, Sprint has great nationwide coverage.

As far as customer service is concerned, Sprint used to have a very poor reputation, but since Dan Hesse became CEO, customer service has changed a lot. The poor customer service rating Sprint received in the past was a motivating factor for me to change to Sprint, not because I want poor customer service, but because I know they are concerned about that now and working very hard to address it. This signals to me that I can expect great customer service from Sprint. So far it has been everything I hoped!

For people who do not want to switch to Sprint, the Palm Pre will probably become available to other carriers sometime around Christmas (I heard 6 months). I don’t know the details, though. Still, I think you will be paying more with other carriers (AT&T and Verizon) unless they revise their price plans in order to be competitive.

Well that’s all I got! All I can say in conclusion is that I love this phone, and that I am thrilled to be able to write, read, edit, and respond to comments to my blog from my Palm Pre mobile from wherever I am at!