If your with sprint get the Palm Pre
 

I had a 8830 for two years and I loved it, I use my phone mainly for work so email is the most important thing. Next would be GPS and Music and some light web. Now I just returned the Palm Pre and got the Tour and all I have to say is it's really not worth the money. The Pre is a great phone except the battery life sucks really bad and the keyboard sucks too (unless your 12 and your fingers are that little). Also I had a number of issues with the pre like the keyboard stopped working, phone freeze, etc. With all that said the pre still beats the crap out of the blackberry tour. And let me tell you why.

First off if you have a 8830 or a 8330 please do yourself a favor and just stick with it. There is nothing new here just a new theme, barely faster processor, evdo revA. If you upgrade directly from another blackberry it might seem cool and worth the money. But use an iphone, pre, g1 anything and you can see blackberry is really dated. I really don't understand how blackberry is really going to improve this OS.

This are things that will piss you off with the tour.

Battery Door will be loose and it's just annoying feels so cheap.
No Wifi, but honestly browsing the web on a blackberry already so I really don't know what I would need it for
Screen is way smaller than it looks
Sorry but this phone to me is nothing like the bold. Bold feels like how a blackberry should.
Blackberry App store can still crash your phone or cause it to lag.


Anyway sorry for the rant but I just had to say this. Blackberry really needs to catch up and I am afraid it will be another year before anything happens.

Moved to more appropriate forum

I actually left AT&T to go with Sprint because of the Palm Pre. I used it for a week, liked it, but missed all the things the BlackBerry does so well. If your primary communications focus is email/SMS, BlackBerry has no equal. The Pre is a nice multimedia device, great phone, super camera, and just plain fun to use. It's also got some fun iPhone-type features like gestures to expand/shrink a web page. I would expect nothing less though, because Jon Rubinstein came over from Apple specifically for the Pre and WebOS. The potential is huge, like Android, and it's something I want to keep an eye on.

But if you have to use that Pre keyboard to send 40 or 50 messages per day, some of them long-ish emails, you'll go insane. Compared to the Tour's spiffing keypad, the Pre is way off the pace.

Remember, the BlackBerry was designed with business users in mind. While the last couple of years have seen RIM push strong into the consumer sector, the principals behind the basic design remain business users and email. There will continue to be limitations of BlackBerrys, especially in multimedia. It seems like RIM added multimedia features almost as an afterthought, as if to say, "yeah, we have that too." The basic BlackBerry web browser is light-years behind the Palm Pre or iPhone. And the BlackBerry's camera is just starting to improve. But don't even THINK of making a comparison to a Nokia for camera quality!

My tour suffers none of the gripes you've found with yours. The battery door is snug on mine, actually better than my old Bold's. YMMV, but my Tour is tight.
I too would love WiFi, but this is a limitation of the carriers. And the next version of the Tour, due out next year (?) will have WiFi, at least on Sprint. Not much consolation for current Tour owners, but a ray of light for us CDMA users.
Coming from BlackBerrys before, the screen looks exactly like what I expected. Again, the design is purpose-driven, and that purpose is corporate use with an emphasis on email. And it's not a desktop or laptop replacement. BlackBerrys are supposed to be an extension of your desktop. I think RIM got it just right when they put a full keypad and screen together into a device the size of the current models. Expand either the keypad or screen and you have to shrink the other. Starting with the current dimensions as the industry norm, both the screen and keypad of the Tour are as near to ideal as possible.
The App World has never given me a lick of trouble.

I've used the Palm Pre and while it has it's cool features, it's just not a phone I would like to use on a daily basis (much like the iPhone 3GS). I've always used Blackberry phones and for what I use them for on a daily basis, works perfectly for me. But again, that's for me.

With that said, I'm a user who went from the 8830 to the 9630 and I can say it's a world of a difference in many ways. Just about 9 out of 10 random comparasons I can think of between both phones, the Tour is much better.


As for your specific complaints.....

My battery door is solid and isn't loose at all. Not sure why others say their's are.
No Wifi, but then I didn't have it on my 8830. RevA is fast in my area.
Screen is bigger than the 8830. Much clearer & crisp display/resolution.
Why does it have to look like the Bold? Bold is big & bulky, as I have one at work (Tour is my personal phone).
Who cares about BB App store. I download and OTA (or by cable) apps as I want them.

The Tour also includes more RAM, supported for later SD Card, 3.2 MP camera, newer OS....

You sound like a jaded user...

Getting my 9630 in the mail today! I can't wait.