With Our Powers Combined
Palm had a magnificent idea with what it’s calling Synergy, and honestly, it’s probably missing 10% polish to make it perfect. Synergy is the other feature that Apple needs to add to the iPhone pronto.
The concept of Synergy is ridiculously simple and completely possible given today’s technologies, yet no one, including Apple, has attempted to do it. Point the Pre at your Facebook, Gmail and local address books and it’ll not only sync with all of them, but combine identical entries to avoid making duplicates.
The Pre grabs my contacts/calendars from all of these accounts and stores them in my phone, eliminating duplicates and updates them automatically as changes are made. Please, yes.
My Facebook entry for Michael Andrawes is coupled with my local address book entry for Michael Andrawes so I only have a single Michael Andrawes on my phone, with all of his contact information.
It just works. Yep, I just said that about a product that wasn’t made by Apple.
Facebook and Gmail syncing works wirelessly. Update a Gmail contact on your phone and it updates in your Google account, and vice versa. Even more useful is the fact that your Facebook contacts essentially manage their own contact info. If they change their address or phone number on their profile, it gets updated in your phone - you don’t even have to do anything.
I didn't have to input a single piece of information for Manveer, his Facebook profile gave the Pre everything it needed to know
In fact, Palm doesn’t even want you to sync with your desktop after the first time. It suggests that you choose to sync with either Palm’s own online service or Google, that way you don’t have to worry about having your phone connected to your computer all of the time to sync address book changes. It’s freakin cool and it’s how a web enabled device should work, over the web, not over a USB cable. A self updating phone; next stop, Skynet.
There are, of course, issues with the system. Currently there’s no way to specify which Facebook friends to sync, so if you enable Facebook syncing you get everyone currently on your Facebook friends list. Finally! Punishment for those who simply seek to inflate their friend counts on social networking sites. It’s an easy fix of course, Palm should offer customization options for the import which I’m very confident it will if Palm plans on actually seeing the Pre through.
I also have no idea how long it takes changes to get reflected on the Pre. Facebook syncing appears to take over a day for changes to propagate, while Google syncing seems to work much faster.
The more bothersome issue to me (yeah sure, lots of Facebook contacts in my phone, that’s why they made the fast flick gesture) is that Synergy currently won’t combine AIM names with address book entries.
Using Michael Andrawes as an example again, I now have two entries for Michael Andrawes in my Pre’s address book - one for his AIM contact and one for the rest of his contact information. Great.
I have to go in and manually add his AIM name to his main contact to make that work properly.
Despite its shortcomings, Synergy is sweet and worth every last bit of praise Palm has earned since the Pre was announced. To out-innovate Apple like this deserves a commendation. If Palm can fix the system in 3 months I’ll be more than happy but even today it’s a plus.
Wireless Backups Too?
Oh, oh! Not only does the Pre keep your contacts synced wirelessly and automatically with Google/Facebook/Palm, your phone will automatically back itself up daily. Should your phone die or need replacing, you can restore from one of these online backups. Palm also supports wiping your device remotely just like the new iPhone OS 3.0.
The last thing you can update wirelessly is the phone itself. New OS releases are delivered to the phone, wirelessly. It will also seamlessly download any available updates in the background over the course of multiple days, while your phone is idle, to avoid interrupting your user experience. How very thoughtful.
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OCedHrt - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
My HTC has predictive text input (based on key locality) in case of a miss so I don't think Apple has a patent on it.macs - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
Speaking of fast web browsing.... i use opera mini on my google Ion phone (android). It delivers full browsing experience and it's blazing fast. Opera mini loads anandtech.com over my 3g network in just 9 seconds. You should try!imaheadcase - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
Thats how apple stays in business right there, everyone thinks throwing money at overpriced products IT will get better eventually.. ZING!I don't know why this review is comparing it to a Iphone, Iphone is outclassed by other smartphones as it is, why not compare it to a real phone like a HTC touch or the like? You know, a phone that is popular with regular people and not hollywood hipsters only..
Downvote if you want, but the FACT of the matter is, the Iphone is a niche market, look at the top phones sold by At&T, the basic flip phone is still the best selling phone in the world, the HTC touch even outsells the iphone 10-1. Like I mentioned before, I know one person who has a iphone and he only got it because parents got it to him as a going away to collage gift.
jmaine - Saturday, June 20, 2009 - link
Where are you coming up with these stats from? Please show me one reliable source that says the HTC Touch outsells the iPhone 10-1. Please leave the bs in your dreams.ltcommanderdata - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
One thing I find funny about arguments that the iPhone lacks basic features found in other phones is that despite this Apple has still sold 21 million iPhones as of March 2009, which is quite a success for a company that wasn't in the cell phone business 2 years ago. The question other phone manufacturers should be thinking about is what happens when the iPhone incorporates many of these lacking hard features in addition to the fluffy pizzaz it already has? How much additional demand will there be for a full featured iPhone?Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
The reviews agree, the HTC Touch isn't in the same class of smartphone as the iPhone. Most phones will outsell things like the iPhone; lower prices and lower monthly fees will determine quantities, but the space the iPhone competes in is the high end smartphone market where the stakes/players are a bit different.Take care,
Anand
rudy - Monday, June 22, 2009 - link
I cant find any provider which sells an HTC touch cheaper then an iPhone.Stas - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
Same. I know 2 ppl that had iPhones. 1 was my techy friend, who took it to the shooting range and unloaded his rifle at it after 5 months of use. The other is my wife's friend who only knows how to call and text on it (not sure WHY she got it... oh, yeah, it's COOL).But I can think of at least 8 ppl that have a Blackberry... :)
anandtech02148 - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
Nokia N97, europe's answer to all american hyped up marketing trash. N97 unlocked, using Fring to escape that other american trash, US cellphone pre-nups.Voip, sip account, sweetness. symbian s60 5th is a bit shaky, but then again there isn't a perfect Os for new cellphone model that comes out every 3months, thanks to Taiwan,Korea and China new handset are out every 24hrs. the only win for Apple here is a lot of laid off engineers creating adobe flash games for the iphone, how else would you get 50,000 apps. my hope is Nokia's answer apple in the next 6month with dual cores Arm.
snarfbot - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link
im glad you're happy with your 700 US dollar phone.dumb americans are happy to get a free phone and use the same carrier for a couple of years, probably because almost every network is essentially the same in terms of features/cost.
on a side note, something needs to be done about the word american.
america is a big continent, people commonly refer to those living in the USA as "americans".
it would be more fitting if we were dubbed usa'ians our something so our neighbors dont get insulted by accident.
which brings me to my last point, in response to the actual article!
it is odd indeed how the messaging protocol varies regionally, i think the major reason most people in the US use AIM, is because we were all introduced to the splendor of the internet by aol in the 90's, then when broadband became available people switched over and kept their AIM screen names. Those that used a different isp just used AIM because everyone else was on aol, etc.
Peoples elsewhere probably used icq, until msn/yahoo came along and freed them from oppression.