As many of you know, I’ve had nothing but grief with AT&T and my poor iPhone, which is soon to be a well-loved iPhone Touch. In fact, my AT&T contract is up on Thursday. I was all set to go dancing into the Sprint store and pick up a new Pre, hoping that it would work well within the first 30 days, with no hardware or carrier surprises.

But my experience with the excellent service of the Verizon Mi-Fi on my cruise gave me pause. So two weeks ago, I took a day and visited my local Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon carriers, looking for a phone that fit all my criteria. Now, I’m not easy to please. I may not like AT&T, but for the most part, I like my iPhone, so I want something that can compare. My requirements include

• Wi-Fi
• GPS
• Native Internet browser
• 3G+
• Touchscreen
• Physical keyboard (I just don’t cope with the virtual one very well)
• Ability to sync with my Mac or at least with Gmail/Google Calendar
• Nice to haves include Google Voice capability and/or visual voicemail and voice-activated dialing, tethering, Application download/App Store

The staff at the local Verizon store couldn’t even tell me which of their phones had WiFi, and when I found the HTC Touch Pro, they told me I didn’t need WiFi when I had their excellent 3G service. To take it further, my sales rep couldn’t understand why I’d need out of network texting, because she was convinced that Twitter was only accessible from the Web.

I left Verizon and T-Mobile disappointed. I have to admit, the only phone I thought would work would be the Pre.

Now comes the personal connection. A friend of mine works for a PR firm representing Verizon. When she found out about my Verizon experience, she set about to rectify it. Now Verizon is involved – they are convinced that one of their phones will meet enough of my requirements that I’ll switch to their service, and not Sprint. So much so that Verizon is sending me five phones over the next month – all fully activated and ready to go. I get to play with the Samsung Omnia, HTC Touch Diamond, and EnV Touch, all of which will arrive this week. In the next couple of weeks, I’ll also get to play with the HTC Ozone and HTC Touch Pro. Apparently they think I’ll like the Samsung, as it is the closest to an iPhone. (Full disclosure: All phones will be returned to Verizon. I’m not keeping anything.)

So my props to Verizon, for letting me review these phones for bub.blicio.us and for trying to convince me I want their service. My challenge is now to Sprint: let me compare your Pre and maybe the latest Treo, going head to head with Verizon’s best smartphones.

__

Cheers!

Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

Today you get a post expressing my absolute anger and frustration at AT&T Wireless.

It’s no secret I’m no fan of their service, considering I can’t use my phone in my house or really on my street. Suburban Cincinnati is obviously a No-Service-Area for them. But my upcoming trip to Alaska has me really frustrated. According to the coverage map, I’ll have no service in the cities we’ll be visiting, although my husband’s Sprint phone will be fine. (Verizon also covers our locations.)

I will be gone for two of the next 6 weeks in a place with no AT&T service. My contract ends in only 6 weeks. My early termination fee? $175. I’ll tell you what – it’s almost worth it.

But here’s the real kicker. I contracted with AT&T 4 years ago when I got my Blackberry. The service was Cingular and was excellent, actually. I never had a problem. When I got the Gen 1 iPhone in 2007, I stayed as Cingular morphed into AT&T. And my service degraded exponentially.

If I’d purchased a phone from AT&T last May, I would then be offered a pro-rated Early Termination Fee, which at this point would be around $20 or so. But since I’ve been a long-time customer, I’m punished. No pro-rating for me, which makes absolutely no sense in my head. According to the Customer Service rep, I didn’t ask for that contract. What? Can I have it now? No.

I’ve talked to 3 different Customer Service reps today, all of whom were very used to angry customers and none of whom really cared nor offered to try to change anything. Shouldn’t an angry customer be worth helping? Even if I’m considering leaving, don’t they want the good customer service karma from making things easy? If it was easy, I’d tell the world about the great service I received from AT&T and maybe come back earlier when I had iPhone envy. Instead, I’m telling the world how horrible they are.

Of course, I have always felt that providers should offer to pay at least half of the ETF when you’re switching. For instance, I really want to take a Palm Pre with me to Alaska, but I can’t afford all the new fees from Sprint, plus the phone, plus $175 to AT&T. Sprint should run a special that covers half of the ETF when you switch. That would actually help drive business, I would think, especially since Sprint needs the business. I’ve never understood why carriers don’t offer some sort of ETF package to encourage switching.

Of course, I don’t understand why AT&T is punishing me for being a long-time customer either. Any way you look at it, I end up a bit screwed.

__

Help Michelle Land Her Dream Job: http://bit.ly/reallygoodejob
Vote for Michelle and then tell all your friends!

More information at http://www.rainbowgoode.com

Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology

The Pre has landed. Well, not for me – I do not have my hands on one of these things and it’s killing me. I can’t wait to give up my iPhone. But even though I don’t have it, a bunch of other folks do. The reviews are pretty good over all, but there’s a caveat. As awesome as the Pre is today, how will it stand up to the new and improved iPhone that I assume will be released in July?

• Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal
• David Pogue at the New York Times
• Edward Baig at USA Today
• Joshua Topolsky‘s excellent and in-depth Engadget review
• Ginny Mies Macworld/PCworld

People seem to like it, with the iPhone caveat of course. The biggest downsides seem to be Sprint as a carrier (although Sprint is better than AT&T in my area) and the lack of apps available at launch / clunky App Store. The App issues will hopefully change and other carriers will most likely be carrying the Pre by early 2010.

__

Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Sites: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

by Michelle Lentz

It’s official! Palm has announced that the Pre will make its debut on June 6th, just a couple of days before the big Apple WWDC keynote.

The Palm Pre will be sold in Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, select Wal-Mart stores and online at Sprint.com with a $199.99 price tag. That price requires a a two-year service agreement and is after a $100 mail-in rebate (So I suppose you’re shelling out $300).

You have your choice of Sprint’s Everything Data plan or the Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plan. The wireless Touchstone charging station for the Pre (not required – it comes with a wired charger) will also be available on June 6. The Touchstone kit will be sold for $69.99 or you can buy the individual pieces for $49.99 (charger) and $19.99 (back cover for the Pre).

Now I just have to cross my fingers that the Pre lives up to my very high expectations. Rumor has it that they aren’t going to have a whole lot of Pres on hand, thereby creating demand after a sell-out. Well, my AT&T contract is up in August. I hope the kinks are worked out of the OS and the phone is in stock by then because I really want (need?) a Palm Pre.

Oh yeah. And I hope it works with my Mac.

__

Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Sites: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

by Michelle Lentz

There’s a fair amount of buzz about the Palm Pre launch and when it might actually occur. You see, the closer we get to June, the closer we get to the iPhone 3.0 announcement, which will turn all the blogs into all-iPhone-all-the-time. Based on previous years, it will again be all-iPhone-all-the-time in July when the new iPhone launches. (I’m sort of glad I’ll be on vacation in July.)

By continually avoiding release date talk, other than “first half of 2009,” Palm seriously risks losing a lot of marketing time to the latest iPhone launch. Apparently, a lot of folks expected the Pre to launch last week. The next guesstimated date is May 17. Mid-may would at least give Palm a couple weeks of attention before all eyes shift to Apple.

Both Palm and Sprint need the Pre to help revive their flagging businesses. According to AdAge, Sprint & Palm have enough problems without creating new ones:

Survey results released by ChangeWave last week suggest that the Pre will have to deal with Sprint’s image problem as a second-tier carrier with poor customer service. In a survey of 4,292 cellphone owners, 17% said Sprint is the top reason they will not consider the Pre. Incidentally, the same percentage said they won’t buy an iPhone because of AT&T. But Sprint is no AT&T. It’s struggling to keep its 49 million customers, while its bigger rival is growing its 77 million subscriber base.

I fall into that latter category by the way, I’m itching to get my hands on a Palm Pre and leave my horrid AT&T service (and equally bad customer service) behind. AT&T is apparently a little worried too – and they’re just good sales people. An internal AT&T document has leaked that provides talking points on how the iPhone is better than the Palm Pre. I would beg to differ with a couple of the points, but at least AT&T has talking points. I have my fingers crossed that, upon release, Sprint sales folks can tell me how the Pre is better than my iPhone and how to effectively sync the Pre with my Mac.

A recent post by 24/7 Wall Street lists Palm as one of the 12 brands most likely to disappear in the next year, partially because of its partnership with Sprint.

Recent research shows that almost no one who owns an Apple (AAPL) iPhone or RIM (RIMM) Blackberry will switch to the new smartphone, so Palm will have to essentially expand the market to get share for its new device during a recession.  The “Pre” will also be sold exclusively though Sprint (S), the No.3 cellular carrier in the US which has been losing subscribers consistently for more than two years. The launch of the “Pre” is a disaster in the making.  … The bottom line is that Palm has no chance of getting an even modest part of the smartphone market in a severe economic downturn since it competes with two of the premier technology companies in the world—Apple and RIM. Palm won’t be in business in a year.

Palm is expected to drive the advertising and has hired Modernista for the campaign. (Modernista did the “Skittles thing” before Skittles did.) But I wouldn’t put Sprint out for advertising either. One of my favorite commercials at the moment, one that I’ll stop the DVR and watch, is the new Sprint commercial with the 3-D Twitter birds, some humor, and the shot of the Pre at the end.

What do you think Palm and Sprint’s chances are?

__

Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Sites: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

by Michelle Lentz

The tech/gadget world has been all a-twitter (literally) about the new Palm Pre. Like everyone else, I had pretty much written off Palm as far as Smartphones go. I even routinely make fun of my husband’s clunky Treo (regardless of the fact he has better reception than my iPhone). This was silly of me. After all, Palm was one of the early companies out there. Apple’s Newton failed rather spectacularly, but along came the Palm Pilot and things changed. I had two or three different Palms over the years, as recently as five years ago.

I gave up the Palm for a Blackberry when I realized that a Palm, a phone, and an iPod in my purse was one gadget too many. That was followed by the iPhone, which miraculously reduced me to one gadget. Yet I often pine for the keyboard on my Blackberry. I’m one of the few, it seems, to have never quite taken to the virtual keyboard on the iPhone. My contract is up this year and I was seriously considering investigating other services and other phones. The Android was tops on my list, followed by the Storm, but now I think the Pre may be pushing all those others aside.

Palm debuted the Pre (prounounced “pree” – there’s a line over the e that WordPress doesn’t like) at CES this week. Since then, several different gadget bloggers have had the opportunity to get up close and personal with the phone. Interestingly, Palm won’t let any of the bloggers actually touch the phone, but they’ve tried. No price has been set on this innovative new smartphone and the release date is sometime in the first half of this year. So they’ve got some time to work out bugs and settle on competitive pricing.

The new phone runs Linux, has an accelerometer like the iPhone, touch screen capability and a pull out keyboard. Apparently the toolbar is a really cool feature, and the speaker is fairly loud. The applications are all fairly solid, from what I’ve read, and your contacts have information pulled in from their social network profiles. That’s small, but impressive. My favorite? System wide cut and paste.

I’m curious to know how well it will sync with a Mac and just as important, and often forgotten, is it a decent phone?

My favorite video so far is the one from our friends at Boing Boing Gadgets, so I’ve embedded it here.

__
Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology
Friendfeed: michellel
Blogs: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net