I’ve been getting a lot of heat about my decision to switch from an iPhone to a “dead” platform in Palm’s WebOS and the Pre Plus on Verizon.  I looked at it as a leap of faith.  I’m fully aware Palm has its back to the ropes, and that the prevailing wisdom is that while WebOS is a nice product, Palm didn’t execute properly and is therefore dead in the water.  Regardless of all the prognostication, I was so intrigued by WebOS I felt compelled to at least give Palm a chance.  24 hours into the switch, I’m so far glad I did.  This isn’t cognitive dissonance talking…there are some concrete benefits I’m downright giddy about.  Here are some of my observations from one day of WebOS use:

1.  Multiple App “Cards” - Now that browser tabs are ubiquitous, it seems inconceivable for most people to live without them.  Yet somehow we consider an equally constricting environment as “the best” in the iPhone.  With the Pre I can launch an app and quickly switch back to something else while I wait for it to load…or to simply let it just hang out.  Wow.  What a complete shift from the imprisoning iPhone system of one-app-at-a-time.  I quickly got used to the ability to launch an app, leave it running, and launch another.  Leaving apps running gives me the ability to get notifications from them, but also to switch around at will.  For example, we went to the museum today with some friends and I left the Camera app up but not active.  When I wanted to take a shot, I unlocked the phone and just switched to the open Camera app.  As Steve Jobs would say…Boom!  Picture taken.  On my iPhone that process would have taken at least three times as long.  This type of interaction is so smooth and obvious that when I went back to using my iPhone for a bit I found myself primed to switch to another running app…but then remembered that this was an iPhone was dealing with!

2.  The notification tray - Leaving apps up lets them give me notifications and alerts in the WebOS notification tray…which is always present.  If I leave Tweed running (a really nice Twitter client on WebOS), I can get unobtrusive notifications when I have new tweets (in my home feed, mentions, or direct messages…or any combination of all three).  On my iPhone I had to either let a Twitter client send me popup notifications (assuming there are iPhone Twitter apps that will do this), or I could let Twitter send me an SMS when a Tweet was sent.  Either way was considerably more obtrusive since iPhone notifications completely obscure a large portion of the screen.  (Don’t get me started on the inability to hang up a call until you close one or more SMS popups on the iPhone.)

3.  Unified Inbox - One nice thing about GMail and Mail.app on OSX is the ability to view all of your incoming email messages within a single inbox.  The iPhone, however, forces you to check each inbox individually.  What’s worse, navigating between inboxes requires no less than four clicks…and that’s not including the disruption of having to quit your current app to launch the Mail app to begin with.  The Pre, however, gives you an “All Inboxes” list, just like GMail and Mail.app.  Ahhhhh.

4.  The physical keyboard - Yes, the Pre’s keyboard is tiny.  It’s no Blackberry.  But I’m already faster and more accurate on it than my iPhone, and I don’t have to worry about the message “We’ll meet you at the corner of Waverly and University.” being sent as “We’ll Meer you at the circle of Eagerly and University.”

5.  Touchstone charger - I’ve had an iPod since Apple incorporated a Firewire jack for charging and syncing.  Ever since they switched to the dock connector, I’ve hated virtually every iPod dock I’ve owned.  Not a single one was usable without looking at it or feeling around for the right position.  I have an iPhone dock next to my bed for the times when I read in the dark and want to charge it overnight and I have never been able to just reach over and place it in the dock without considerable finagling.  The contactless Touchstone charger, by contrast, is a freakin’ DREAM.  It’s so elegant…the phone just snaps into place on the surface via magnets.  (It’s like Apple’s MagSafe power cord on macbooks, but better.)  And Palm even let’s you keep the display up while it’s charging so you have a clock and notifications.  My iPhone was never really able to do that without an app that kept the phone from sleeping. (Which was dangerous if you WEREN’T charging!)  It’s even smart enough to go ahead and pick up a ringing call when you gently lift it off the charger.  You can also charge it in portrait OR landscape orientation so you can read/watch videos while charging.  Smooooooth.

OK, so all isn’t perfect in la-la land.  The app store, while not paltry, is clearly filled with crappy applications.  There’s no Instapaper clone, which is gonna hurt.  And I’ve run into a couple of “Can’t do that right now” errors when I try to view app details…which required a second or third attempt to go through.  There are some definite app gems, though.  (I very much like the Twitter client Tweed, and I actually like the Foursquare app better than the iPhone one.)  Still, I find myself wishing for more…

1.  Small screen - the Pre’s screen is quite vibrant, and is the same resolution as the iPhone 3G.  Yet it’s smaller by a couple of tenths of an inch.  This is not insignificant. The result is harder-to-read text.  It’s not illegible, but it’s definitely noticeable.  You can compensate in some apps by increasing the font size, but this has the effect of reducing the available resolution, which isn’t good.  Additionally, the notification tray can take a chunk of space from the bottom, reducing usable space even more.

2.  No compass - the Pre Plus uses virtually the same hardware as a 16gb iPhone 3GS, with one exception.  It has no compass.  This certainly isn’t a dealbreaker, but some of the cooler/cutting edge a applications use the compass for “Augmented Reality”…which is not an option on the Palm Pre.  Additionally, I would LOVE to have an app like Android’s Google Sky Map.  This application uses the GPS, accelerometer, and compass to determine your location and the phone’s orientation to display an annotated map of the sky as you hold it over your head.  To me, it’s close to magic…but I’ll have to forego having such a luxury until at least my next phone.

So that’s it so far.  I could also give honorable mention to WebOS’s music player (which is way better than Android’s but not quite the iPod) and the ability to selectively toggle bluetooth and wifi from the title bar (both are buried in the separate “Settings” app on the iPhone).  I’m anticipating getting to know the phone better so I can accurately speak about battery life, other hardware issues (micro-usb?), and syncing calendars and contacts.