When we visited the Sprint Store in Cheyenne to return the phones, we were told that they'd have to put down the primary reason we were returning the phone. I told the manager "We have 64 reasons; which would you like? He said "Just tell us the most important one".   Since my wife gets up by her phone alarm every day at 5 am, I suggested he use that, then. He said, "That's not an important reason. What's the REAL reason?"

Oh really? Not important. Maybe not for you, but for her to get to work, it's pretty important. As I then told him: "Then, fine: here are the 64 reasons: Choose one. You tell me any feature you consider imporant and we'll tell you what we don't like about that feature."

He didn't like that either, and said he wasn't going to look at my list. "Just tell me a reason". So I began reading the list and explaining each point in some greater details. I'm no shrinking violet and had no objection going nose to nose with his request and going on at length, reading my list and explaining it well in earshot of his other customers (some of whom had been considering purchasing a Pre).   But at any rate: I let him have it his way and he could choose his own favorite reason while I read.   I don't what he finally used for his chosen "most important" reason.   But I do know that we both found his arrogant and pontificating attitude unimpressive and unnecessarily confrontational.     The Pre as currently configured by Sprint has some problems which didn't work for us.   We were invoking our free "30 day trial period", and after only 7 days, mind you.

So, as I said: we provided the Sprint store with our list of 64 reasons (now 66) why we were returning them, which we've since been askedabout several times.   So I thought I'd go ahead and post this.

Contacts - 8 items
1. Contacts set up unnecessarily way too automagic: Theoretically perhaps good concept, but badly executed.
2. Contacts (even if we didn't choose them to) are all auto-imported from GMail! (so everyone we've ever mailed -- including one-time replieis in our Gmail boxes-- transferred as a contact into the phone!!!!)
3. The Sprint Store didn't yet have a porting machine to move our "real" contacts out of our old phones
4. Who's gonna retype 300 names from old phone book? Ridiculous. (update: Sprint provided an update patch, so transfer by stores is now possible as of 6/15)
5. Contacts can't be easily manipulatd or edited by Palm Desktop like older Palms. So although all of the contacts in both my old Blackberry and Samsung were in my Palm Desktop, it wouldn't sync to that older version of the Palm Desktop with my Pre (or allow the new desktop to pull in anything from the old)
6. Without a separately purchased contact editing application, can only edit contacts on the phone itself
7. No transferring or moving around of contacts by Bluetooth... not even a single VCard transfer!
8. Contacts can't transfer to or show up on our car's intergration with mobile phone (as old phone did)

Data Storage/Integration - 7 items
1. Although Pre comes up as a USB drive when attached to the computer, files placed onto the drive aren't usable "natively"
2. Images to use for Wallpaper bkg images, for instance, even if placed in the Wallpaper folder aren't visible to or usable by the phone
3. Music files pushed to the USB drive are not recognizable by the phone's music player immediately.
4. You have to use iTunes to move music files into the Palm... but...
5. This iTunes sync with the Pre as what appears to iTunes to be an iPod... is a legal battle waiting to happen. Some of the Pre developers came over from Apple and used some of their proprietary Apple knowledge to allow the Pre to appear to iTunes as an iPod. Apple doesn't like this, and it definitely appears that iTunes' ability to sync with the Pre will soon be another separate issue since the Pre is already a direct competitive item with Apple's iPhone.
6. Without iTunes, there's nothing shipping with the Pre which allows direct music integration (as in, how to get music pulled into the USB drive natively). Solution: you got it, a PURCHASE option to buy music into the phone via Amazon MP3 store.
7. Music player in the phone has some limitations and oddities in itself. (See YouTube or others for more on these)

Bluetooth - 5 items
1. Bluetooth Transfers are not allowed for ANYTHING having to do with Data, Connectivity, etc
2. Bluetooth will not link with a computer
3. No Bluetooth for contacts integration, movement, editing, use, etc
4. No Bluetooth ANYTHING except headset!? huh? on a phone of this generation? That's absurd
5. Of course, don't even think about using BT for DialUp Networking, even tho it's worked on many other phones. (you should have heard the Sprint folks gasp and whisper to each other about my even SUGGESTING it was possible. Nope)

Cut n Paste - 3 items
1. No simple CUT AND PASTE!     Even tho they claim it works with   (O) + C   and   (O) + V   (some touch thing) but nope.
2. And oh, btw: what's this   (O)   thing? must be the only button on the thing, but it doesn't work
3. No cut n paste in web page by ANY method whatsoever! (Now again, that's absurd and unnecessarily neutered!!!)

Alarm Clock - 2 items
1. The Alarm Clock application supposedly in the phone isn't even there in the out-of-the-box version. We had to do a system upgrade (which I learned about on the web, not from the store, Sprint, or any easy documentation), all of which said we just weren't pushing the right buttons. Ugh.
2. Oh, and even after you find it after upgrading the ROM... the alarm doesn't have a Vibration-Only option anyway.

Phone - 3 items
1. Unless you're in the phone app specifically, then there's no way to dial without first popping over to the Phone app.
2. Can't start typing a name and get the phone to start dialing... like dial "M - I - K" to start looking up "Mike". Nope: won't happen
3. No Voice dialing.     What?!     On a phone of this supposed fourth-generation? Can't voice dial?

Messaging - 2 items
1. There's no T9 in SMS for abbreviated texting. Again: why?
2. SMS can't reply to email from which emailed via email-to-SMS. So email sent to a XXX.YYY-ZZZZZ@messaging.sprintpcs.com will be received by the SMS, but you can't respond to it! This has been natively integtrated with Sprint phones for a long time. Why not the Pre?

Camera & Video - 2 items
1. No hardware button to control the camera, (or anything else) so forget ease of use, (tho flash is a nice feature)
2. The camera has no Video recording capabilities. Maybe there later, but not there natively now

Web - 4 items
1. No Java in the Pre.     Huh?     Again: why not?
2. No Flash either     (it's getting a bit repetitive... did this phone get put out too soon, or is all of this just greed for selling apps?)
3. Too tiny web pages, if not specifically mini pages. Can't opt to pan & scan or scroll around on a web page. It's just a tiny page
4. Can't cut-n-paste from a web page to anything. (This is a HUGE problem for me... I integrate my web stuff with all kinds of things)

The Wave App Chooser - 2 items
1. Only 5 "select hot apps" on the menu "wave"?    Why can't that be longer... 5 isn't many apps to choose as "special"
2. Oh, and of those 5 special apps on the Wave... two of those aren't changeable, so you really only get THREE special choices, plus PHONE and CHOOSER

Hardware - 8 items
1. Phone select/usability isn't for large fingers. If you have tiny fingers maybe it works great. But for those of us with large fingers, nope. (Oh, and a finger tip has always worked fine on my native Palm Pilot devices but the Pre seems to have significantly altered the digitizer input grid, to prefer much smaller fingers)
2. Thinking of trying a stylus to limit mis-touches and help the above problem? Forget that. No stylus works on the Pre. It only works with a human-electric-warm touch. (wonder what a cold finger would do? Or one with odd static tendencies?)
3. No hard app buttons for ANYthing except volume. Deliberate choice, no doubt, but quite a limitation, if you think about it. Would it have been so terrible to allow a couple?
4. No easy native password locking
5. No InfraRed port
6. Battery life sucks
7. No media expansion slot (and there's only 256M in the phone, so forget the big stack of music)
8. No reset button

Software - 3 items
1. Not many truly usable apps for those of us used to Palm Pilot's tens of thousands
2. Even though the original plan was to include an app to allow the Pre access to those thousands of other apps, that was "pulled" before release. Want compatibility? No problem. Purchase ($29-- I did) the application called "Classic" and you'll get mostly-compatible options with Palm Pilot apps
3. Some of the apps aren't quite ready for Prime Time. I tried the recommended method of Cut & Paste while working in the Texting, and it locked up the app altogether.

Is the G in Sprint's 4G for 'Greed'? - 8 items
1. The Pre requires one of Sprint's "Everything" plans, but note that the Pre's everything does not include several somethings:
2. "Everything" inlcudes Direct Connect (aka DC, or Walkie-Talkie) but there is no DC on the Pre
3. "Everything" doesn't include data to connecto to a PC in ANY fashion. Forget computer or other device integration altogether
4. Even though you've already paid for supposed "Everything", every time you turn around you bump into something else Sprint wants to charge another $$   $ubscription or purcha$e fee   ... for apps, services, fees, features
5. Sprint charged us a $35 restocking fee per phone to return them
6. The Pre phones cost us $299 ea. Our replacement phones cost us $199 ea. (Less $100 mail-in rebate for both the Palm Pre and the Palm Treo).   Net difference, at any rate: $100 per phone. Rather than credit us for the full $220 difference, the Wyoming Sprint store insisted on charging us an addtional $12 Wyoming Sales Tax (tax on $200 for the Palm Pre's) and so credited only $176 for the two returned phones.
7. So, our one week failed foray into the Palm Pre cost us $47 per phone... = $94
8. Sprint still owes us $24 since the WY store didn't "get it" that Oregon has no sales tax and so should not have been charged.

Dial-Up Networking / Phone as Modem - 5 items
1. Come on, you've got to be kidding: =THERE IS= no No Dial Up Networking!!!?
2. Of course the technology =COULD= do it, but, Nope. Sprint has specifically disabled it
3. No laptop tethering via anything... cable, bluetooth, any way at all?
4. Bluetooth is ONLY for audio output to headsets. What a waste!
5. Bluetooth has been seriously neutered in this version of the Pre.   Will Sprint open it up at all?   Don't hold your breath, we're hearing. It's all about marketing dollars and fear of bandwidth.

Packaging and Documentation - 4 items
1. Next to zero Documentation in the package AT ALL, and forget the "Help" from the phone menus.   Not very useful for most things, since it's very general and must have been written long before the phone was finalized.
2. That also, btw, likely accounts for the bad / misleading documentation on the web from "what the Pre will have" compared to reality of what's in the phone when shipped.
3. No real instruction book comes with the phone. It's got a great and tightly designed box, but useless if nothing's inside for documentation! Definitely more Marketing investment here than Technical Writing.
4. Jen was on the phone for more than an hour trying to find where the supposed Alarm Clock could be found. Even Sprint Customer Service couldn't help us locate the "Alarm" app which Help Screens claimed was there.     Turned out, you see, that it wasn't there at all.   I learned from searching the web that a system upgrade to the more current (than what shipped with the phone) was necessary to enable the Alarm application.

Things we didn't mention in detail but still had issues with
• Appointment calendar setup
• Ringers
• Many apps open and bomb
• Integration with Google Calendar
• GMail interface lacks
• Heat problems with the battery
• Non-standard phone headset jack (well, standard if you're using a PC, but not a phone!)
• text highlighting isn't good
• and a few others...

Oh, and Sprint: You asked about our 'Main Reason' for returning the phone? We'd have probably said Dial-Up Networking/Modem, the Alarm Clock, the T9 SMS.   But looking at the list, I guess I'd have to say it was really a tie between the Hardware Limitations and that perhaps the G in 4G = Greed.

So there you go.   Thanks for asking. It's a cool phone, but some of us are just a little more demanding of what kinds of things we think a 4G phone out to be able to do. Oh, well. Now you know.   :-)