Text entry: This was a big thing for me. I write a lot of messages on forums. I would really like a phone that lets me enter and edit text accurately, easily, and comfortably. After trying this on both phones, I must conclude that they both suck for text entry, and a laptop is infinitely better. For one thing, neither has an Undo feature that works well: the iPhone's is crippled and the Pre's is non-existant. Text selection is a pain in the ass on both: on the Pre, you have to hold the shift key while dragging, but it's tough to get it to line up exactly with whole words; meanwhile on the iPhone text selection involves dragging tiny sign-post icons mere pixels wide that are impossible to grab with my man-fingers. My Apple Newton from 1996 has better text editing than this crap!! Both keyboards suck; my kingdom for a Palm Pre with the keyboard of a Samsung Alias 2! I would not honestly care how thick the thing was. I wear it on my belt anyway. The Pre's keyboard is so damn small that my hands felt arthritic the next day, like I was 90 years old. Meanwhile the iPhone's wide keyboard mode is more comfortable by far, but then you cannot see more than two lines of text in wide mode, scrolling becomes a chore, and you can't rotate the phone without closing out of the keyboard first. And how about arrow keys and page-up/page-down... double-tap to select a word, triple-tap to select a whole paragraph... etc.??? BASIC STUFF GUYS COME ON!
Winner: NEITHER

Battery Life: After my initial experience that the Pre's battery sucked... I changed some settings around and it now seems to be great. You have to turn off GPS, "Background Data Processing" (which is what allows Google to constantly spy on you), go offline from your IM accounts, and set your e-mails not to constantly check (every hour works fine for me; anyone that needs to check e-mail more than 24 times per day but can't muster a manual check when they need that 25th time needs to get off their meds). The iPhone 3GS seems to have so-so battery life by comparison; I used 5% of the battery while just typing a message for 30 minutes. Perhaps the larger screen requires more power to backlight? In either case I have not had a chance to do a rigorous, scientific test of a statistically significant sample group of each phone, but I think they will probably both do fine in the battery department. The Pre has the option to wirelessly charge (how cool is that?) and has a user-replaceable battery, so I give it the edge.
Winner: Pre

Included apps

Navigation: Sprint Navigation is great! It's a decent turn-by-turn GPS program with its own searchable phone book inside. It makes finding post offices, movie theaters, etc. very easy. I used it all the time on my last Sprint phone and I find it to be much better implemented on the Pre, of course. It's not as "slick" as Apple's Maps with the compass and all, but I still find the Pre's easier to use and more useful. Being a man I generally do not have trouble determining which direction North is, and if I was going camping, I wouldn't bring my cell phone anyway! Just get a real compass, gosh!
Winner: Pre

Media: Sprint TV is pretty cool, but I think the iTunes Store wins as far as free content goes. I would much rather listen to a podcast from The Economist than whatever Hits of the 80s are streaming on the Pre. Live ABC News on my phone... not bad.. but still, meh, I already watch too much TV, and the major networks basically suck. I already pay too much for Comcast, I'd feel stupid paying AGAIN for the same channels on my phone. Amazon MP3 does not have all the cool free content that iTunes Store has, which you can stream and listen to in real time.
Winner: iPhone

Calculator: iPhone's can do scientific. Nuff said. Neither could do conversions, though, and I thought it was mega-lame not to have that. Even my paper-based Day-Timer has conversions in the back! Gosh!
Winner: iPhone

Calendar: Oh, this one really makes my blood boil. The iPhone's calendar has NO WEEK VIEW...!!!!!!! YOU'RE KIDDING RIGHT APPLE?!?! OMFGBBQADSLQWERTYUIOPMFRWOWURL!!! REALLY?!!?1 0.0; No week view. Sigh. That is the most retarded thing I have ever seen in my entire life. Unbelievably retarded. Insanely stupid. The worst part is, I'm sure it wasn't an oversight; I'm sure someone at Apple thought it would be better that way, and once it was decided thus, then they are too prideful to admit they were wrong. Apple has become the George W. Bush of computer interface design. First it was the iPhoto library hiding all your pictures in its "Library" because they couldn't think of a better way to reference files in their OS than directory paths (how about just making an OS with direct file reference keys so programs don't HAVE to rely on the directory path? Oh yeah, that's right, you DID make an OS like that... it was called Macintosh System 7!). For the iPhone I also had to jump through a bunch of hoops to get my Google Calendars to show up on it, just like I did for iCal on my Mac. Meanwhile the Pre's calendar has a week view, and my Google Calendars showed up with no troubles at all.
Winner: Pre

Tasks/To-Do: I'm not even sure the iPhone has a to-do list.
Winner: Pre

Notes: The iPhone Notes app uses a felt-tip marker font that cannot be changed to another font. Once again, the changing of fonts is a basic feature on all things since 1984. How could you, Apple? HOW COULD YOU?! The Pre can't change fonts either, but at least the notes aren't on ruled paper in a felt-tip marker font.
Winner: Pre

Clock: I'm not even sure why the Pre has this... the time is already displayed in the top of the screen; why do you need a clock? Also, why do you need an alarm clock since the Calendar already does this? The iPhone's clock is much better, with a World Clock, Stopwatch, and Timer built-in -- all useful things that ANY cellphone should have.
Winner: iPhone

Weather: The Pre's AccuWeather gives you much more information than Apple's Weather, which basically is identical to the Dashboard app of the same name. The Pre's has hour-by-hour display as well as doppler radar, humidity display, dew point, and wind speed/direction. I didn't care for the ads though, but still, it's just a better app.
Winner: Pre

Some may say that the included apps aren't worth reviewing because you'll just end up downloading better, third-party ones. Well, frankly, I already pay damn near $100 per month for this thing, it should shine my shoes and make my coffee! I am a believer in, "Do it right or don't do it at all." Apple has typically lived by this philosophy. I think that for 2007, the iPhone's built-in apps were great, but Apple has some more updating to do. I thought OS 3.0 would be more of a full revamp, but frankly, I hope it's because they were spending so much effort on OS X 10.6 that they did not get around to updating the dinky phone apps.