Good to know.

>But is it an iPhone killer, as some gadget bloggers have been
>asking?

>The Pre will be a hit, but the iPhone isn’t going away. First
>of all, Apple’s lead of 20 million phones will only grow when
>the new iPhone 3.0 software (and, presumably, a third iPhone
>model) come out shortly.

>Third, even the Pre has its annoyances. Opening certain
>programs can be very slow — sometimes eight or nine seconds —
>and there’s no progress bar or hourglass to let you know that
>it’s still working.

>There’s no memory-card slot to expand the eight gigabytes of
>storage, and no Visual Voicemail (where messages are listed
>like e-mail). The ingenious universal search function
>(searches your programs, address book and the Web
>simultaneously) won’t look through your e-mail or calendars.

>Finally, the Pre is not quite as simple as the iPhone. All
>those extra features, by definition, mean that there’s more to
>learn.

>So do the Pre’s perks (beautiful hardware and software,
>compact size, keyboard, swappable battery, flash,
>multitasking, calendar consolidation) outweigh its weak spots
>(battery life, occasional sluggishness, ringer volume)?