Palm Pre Battery Review For You Off-Grid Folks

Howdy y'all from my Off-Grid utopia in the very center of Texas. I am typing this on my laptop powered totally (right now) by solar power which is stored in batteries which happen to be the topic of this new review.

Ok, if you haven't yet read my Off-Grid Pre Review, please do so here:

Off-Grid Living with the Palm Pre

As background for my current review, you should read the review of the latest Palm Pre commercial by some nitwit at PCWorld:

Assigning Blame for That Weird Palm Pre Commercial - PC World

So here is the way this deal works... Some IPhone autobot gets the memo from Apple headquarters:

TALKING POINTS!

1. The Pre doesn't have very many apps! That sucks! IPhone has millions of apps no one will ever know about or use, and you probably only will ever regularly use a couple of dozen, but STAY ON MESSAGE! Millions of useless apps is better than less than that!

2. Bad build quality! If you torque your Pre from side to side like some ham-fisted butcher trying to twist off a shank bone, it begins to feel loose and "oreo-y". Also, it has sharp corners that can be used by careless drunks to shave or give Columbian neckties! Bad. Bad. Bad. build (Note, do not mention that Pre has a removable battery, or that it doesn't melt and/or turn pink if you accidentally becomes SUMMER, or that Pre owners get a whole month to return and exchange phones with legitimate problems)

3. Battery life sucks! Stick to this one even if it is no longer true and if it hasn't been true since 1.0.2. Just keep repeating it. And whatever you do, do not point Pre owners to any readily available advice about extending battery life. Also, don't let them know that you can buy a replacement battery with extended life (Replace a battery? Who would want to be able to do that? What a silly idea).

So next, said autobot writes a review of a commercial that basically goes like this:

1. I didn't like the commercial.
2. Did I mention the talking points?

Ok, so here is my review of the Palm Pre battery life as I have experienced it in my Off-Grid life here in hot Central Texas...

On the morning of the day I read the stupid PCWorld Palm Pre commercial review, I woke up at around 7 a.m. in West Texas at my parents house. A neighbor who had just moved here from Canada and I drove the four hours in order that he could get his mini-van through customs. Don't ask me. I just went to help. Anyway, it turns out that Customs was closed on Friday, so we ended up staying and not leaving until Tuesday. I left the Pre on the touchstone overnight on Monday night so when I got up at 7 a.m. the phone was 100% charged.

I utilize all of the battery saving tips that are ubiquitous on the Internet and on sites like PreCentral (which is why I scoff and laugh at people still claiming to get 4 or 5 hours of battery life on their phone). I turn on the Wi-Fi if there is a strong Wi-Fi signal (like in my cabin), and I turn it off when there is not (like usually when I am driving around). I keep the GPS turned off unless I am using it. I multi-task a lot, but I close unused or unnecessary cards when I am not planning on using them any time soon. I keep my "cards" open down to about 3 or 4. I adjusted my phone settings so the email is checked only every 30 minutes and I have the screen go off fairly quickly. In addition to that. Immediately upon finishing a task, if I am not going to be using the phone, I hit "off" with my thumb to make sure the screen goes off.

I used the phone quite a bit in the morning because my wife, children, and a few of the folks in our community were texting me. I was also using the Pre to check weather for the drive home, and reading the news. Every so often I would check email. Texts were coming in almost constantly. We hit the road heading home at about 9 a.m., and we stopped in Slaton 45 minutes later for a coffee, where I checked email, texts, weather, etc. on the Pre while my buddy got the coffee. I used the GPS location two or three times in the next two hours, along with checking mail and sending/receiving texts. We stopped in Abilene to go to Sam's Club and to eat lunch. My wife and children were texting me grocery lists, etc. and I used the Pre to read the news, check email, etc. while we were at the restaurant. There was standard usage until we got near home, then I was texting quite a bit to see if there was anything else anyone needed at the store before we made it home. When I got home I had a lot of work to do, so the Pre stayed in my pocket (a few texts here and there) until around 7 p.m. At this point I had about 34% battery life left after 12 hours. I got online with the Pre and was reading Tweets on Twitter when I came across a Tweet about the stupid commercial review from PCWorld.

So get this, 12 hours after I took the Pre off of the Touchstone, I was surfing Twitter, I minimized and multi-tasked by opening up a web page to read the nitwit's commercial review. The commercial review had a link to the video of the commercial, so I minimized that web card and opened up the video link and watched the commercial. All this time I am getting texts from neighbors who are going to come over to say hi and sit on the porch later in the evening. With those four cards open, I switch over and tell the Pre to check my email.

Now... with all that actual multi-tasking going on (real multi-tasking, not fake multi-tasking) 12 hours after I charged the phone and after a full day of heavy usage, what do you think crossed my mind when Mr. Nitwit Apple Hack Spokesman says "The commercial doesn't stop half-way through, for example, which would symbolically illustrated another life, the Palm Pre's battery life, which Wired.com described as 'puny'". TALKING POINTS!!!

I don't have the new extended life battery, and frankly I don't need one. I really don't know what these people are talking about, but I can tell you this... Apple is pushing a lot of people very, very hard to keep spewing the Talking Points memo verbatim. You know, after my very honest and unsolicited review of the Pre as an Off-Grid tool, I was accused of everything from Hypocrisy to being a paid shill for Palm. Still, to this day I haven't even received a T-Shirt for all my hard work. I wonder what Apple is paying these clowns who are writing these stupid reviews for PCWorld and other periodicals, because I think I am getting the short end of the stick here. I did get a bunch of people following me on Twitter (mbunker) but I would rather they send me a new Palm Pre for my wife, since she just smashed her Samsung Highnote in the back door of our van. (***UPDATE... Palm is sending us a Palm Treo Pro. THANKS PALM for saving the day!!!***) Get that Palm? Somebody Tweet them, and also tell them this...

MORE APPS NOW so the APP fiends can go nuts and shut up the IPhone nitwits.

Thank you for your time,

Michael Bunker

P.S. Right now it is 1:15 on Wednesday. Had a fully charged Pre at 8 a.m., heavy usage, and I'm sitting at 84% after over 6 hours. What are these people talking about?