I recenly decided it was time to get a new phone. My BlackBerry Curve was showing its age, and I wanted a larger screen for viewing photos, and more speed. iPhone was not an option as everyone I know complains about the AT&T service, so I went out on a limb and bought the Palm Pre. Hardware feels a little flimsy, but WebOS sure is cool. Gorgeous screen, and apparently decent multitasking, so why not give it a go for the 30 day trial period, right? Used it on Cape Cod and upstate NY with no issues in terms of call quality or data throughput. Still, it didn’t seem particularly more useful than my BB.

Then I was walking around in NYC today putting the final details together for a shoot when the two models suddenly dropped out! (their agency has an annual shoot of their entire roster of girls and it had been moved to our shoot day.) F*ck. Now I was nowhere near my computer and suddenly had tons of work to get done. So I commenced to emailing and texting the art director, another photographer, three modeling agencies, insurance company for certificate of liability to be faxed, etc., etc. And sending links to my web sites, copying and pasting bits and pieces from various correspondences, PDFs, and on and on. All this while walking around lower manhattan. At some point I realized that I was getting all this done so quickly and easily, and had not panicked and rushed home to the comfort of my desktop. I was most amazed that I had not even felt the need to do so.

While the Pre’s keyboard is indeed small, the ability to flip between open apps really makes a huge difference, and gives you more of a desktop computer experience and less of a “I am limping along on my cell phone” experience. The BlackBerry has this capacity to some extent but it feels less fluid – more disjointed I guess.

While I am not yet 100% committed to the Pre, it does strike me as a very useful communication tool for the photographer who is out on assignment and may need to email, text, call, send documents and photos all at once without exiting and restarting each of these apps as s/he goes. I really expected to be making excuses this day, saying things like “I’ll send that to you when I get home” or “I’ll look at that when I am at my desk…) But I didnt’ have to. After 3 weeks of use, I am giving the Pre a thumbs up. It really made a heavy work load very managable when push came to shove while I was “on the road.”

(I’ve never been compelled to write about a phone before, but in this case I guess it’s appropriate. I actually wrote this entire article on the Pre)