Palm holds it’s breath with the imminent launch of the next great smartphone (if you believe the hype that is), the Motorola Droid.
As the the world waits to see if it really will ruin Palm as some predict, there are reasons to rejoice for Palm Pre owners.
The Droid will be missing a key feature, multi-touch. This allows you to zoom in and out with two fingers on webpages and the like. Although when the Droid is launched in Europe re-branded as the Milestone the multi-touch will be on the handset, for US customers it will not. The fact that Apple claim to have patented the technology of multi-touch means that Motorola have be frightened off, not Palm though.
There was also news that Verizon will charge an extra $15.00 per month to allow the Droid to sync with your companies Microsoft Exchange server also sets the Pre ahead of the Droid. The Palm Pre already has the ability to sync with Exchange all inclusive in your price plan.
So take note: Why you should NOT buy a Droid over the Palm Pre
Reason One: No multi-touch.
This clever little feature cannot be under estimated, it is what makes the world wide web readable from your mobile device. Loading any average webpage from your mobile device has always been a struggle of presentability over content. Ever since the early days of WAP (remember that format?) web content hasn’t looked quite right on a mobile phone, then came the smartphones with their browsers and clever software. However take the pinch and zoom out of the Pre, and loading the website of New York Times or BBC would present you with tiny text difficult to read.
I can presume that the Droid will have some other type of zoom facility, but it will never be as intuitive and easy to use as the multi-touch zoom, or pinch un-zoom. The other interesting thing is why has news of this little omission only emerged now?
Reason Two: No free syncing with Microsoft Exchange.
The strong point of the Palm Pre is syncing , be it google contacts, Palm profile or Exchange servers the Pre can sync it all. The best thing about it all is that it works out of the box and comes with your standard price plan (this is even true in the UK) .
So when Verizon decide to start charging for the privilege of syncing to an Exchange server things don’t add up. They could argue that companies won’t mind paying for their Executives to have the ability to get their work emails. This maybe true, but why should they when Palm / Sprint or Palm / O2 let you do all this for free?
There is also the fact that not not everyone who wants to sync to Exchange will have a work phone paid for by the company employing them.
