Should you put a Pre in your pocket?

I have a confession to make: About two years ago I made a big mistake and bought a phone designed for mere mortals when what I really wanted was an Apple iPhone. Don't get me wrong -- my Sony Ericsson W580i has served me well -- but I'm ready to move up to a super-phone.

The problem is that with the arrival of Palm's Pre and a new generation of iPhones on the way, it's now a much more complicated world of smartphone buying. I've now had a chance to test the new Pre, comparing it to a friend's iPhone 3G running the iPhone OS 2.0 and examining the spec sheet of the upcoming iPhone 3G S, trying to figure out what to get.

Size matters
For me, size matters, and at 3.9 by 2.3 by 0.7 inches and 4.8 ounces, the Pre is a little smaller but thicker than the iPhone. I prefer the Pre's rounded organic shape to the rectangular iPhone, and the Pre feels more comfortable in my hand. On the downside, its case is a bit too slippery for my clumsy fingers.

The Pre's 3.1-inch display is smaller than that of the iPhone, but it's still a step up from my previous phone and just big enough for comfortable Web cruising, reading e-mails and viewing videos. The good news is that the display is mounted flush with the case's surface, making tapping and sliding my finger on the screen easy to accomplish.

Without a doubt, it's also the brightest, richest phone display I've seen. But like so many other phones (including the iPhone), the screen picks up stray smudges easier than a first grader's face at a birthday party.

I really want a phone with a touch screen, and the Pre's capacitive technology is accurate and reliable for tapping, pressing and moving things around. I particularly like the two-finger gestures: Spread your fingers apart to zoom out or bring them together to zoom in, for instance. As with the iPhone, there's also a built-in accelerometer that automatically switches from a landscape to portrait view when it senses that the device has been turned on its side; it takes a couple of seconds, but it works like magic.

Keying in
My personal and business lives revolve around e-mail, and the Pre's slide-out mechanical keyboard makes typing easier on the go than the iPhone's onscreen keyboard. It's not quite as comfortable as a BlackBerry, but the 34 keys are arranged in the familiar QWERTY format. At 4.75mm wide, the keys make my fingers feel fat and stubby (and probably will have the same effect on you).

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