On the issue of battery life. I would expect this cumbersome workaround to be dealt with very quickly.

”When I first got the Pre, I was dismayed by its battery life. I got less than 24 hours of light use out of it, and it would lose nearly a third of its charge if left inactive overnight. It turns out there's a bug that drains the battery if your Google instant-messaging account is connected to your AOL Instant Messenger account. Palm says it will fix that. When I logged Google out of AIM, I got much longer life.
I extended battery life even further by setting the Pre to receive my personal e-mail instantly rather than checking every 15 minutes. That's counterintuitive — usually getting the e-mail automatically "pushed" to a device consumes more power.
I ended up with nearly two days of battery life, which I think is acceptable for a hardworking smartphone.” Peter Svensson- review.

I am not certain the battery use is as big an issue as it is presented. The touchstone allows you to keep it charged with no connectivity and we still do not know what is killing the battery. Maybe they have WiFi, Bluetooth and the GPS all enabled at the same time. It may only take a couple quick tweaks to make this issue go away.

Personally, I am not ready to declare the iPhone a victor until the Pre has actually entered the ring.

I'll never give up my Blackberry. Good to know the gadget folks still miss the whole point.. I haven't seen an Iphone manage multiple exchange or tons of email addresses with even 1/2 the ease I can on my BB. I'm staying put.

E-mail is the BB's only strength. It falls flat in every other area.

Eh. All depends. I consider things like the iPod the most useless item ever.. well, hell, I consider all touch screen phones worthless ;)

Amen, Servo. I am made of carbon atoms and do not interact well with smudge-prone devices -- they're fine for navigation, but typing requires keys. I owned the long-gone Palm i330 and liked the stylus-based touch interface, especially for star charts, but there's no way I'd even text much on that thing. A keypad is a must-have for me, and with the one on the Pearl such an everlasting disappointment I'm looking to upgrade ASAP (by which I mean in about a week; I don't wait on line and I don't enjoy crowded stores).

Since I'd gotten a decent look at the handset back in January my main remaining concerns were about performance, specifically call quality and battery life. Based on what I'm hearing I am presumably going to have to suck it up and buy a second charger, but otherwise the reviewers whose opinions I most trust are saying things that impress me. (And the fact that some notorious Apple fanboi types are also saying positive things is unnerving the hell out of me, but it's all good.)

GD, I actually found I rather like Pandora on the BlackBerry, and oddly enough Macleans has a nifty little article-delivery app, but otherwise? Only for corporate mail, which we don't have here. And never in life have I dealt with a more irritating Web-browsing experience.

From my read of the WSJ review, I wouldn't buy the Pre now. So I'd say that's definitely a win for the iPhone.

Same with PhoneScoop: "The hardware comes off as feeling a little bit on the cheap side." "The Pre offers a lot, but has some glaring omissions."

My biggest worry comes from Wired: "The Pre pays a price for all that labor. A morning's worth of heavy use may leave the Pre powerless by afternoon. I've been testing the Pre for less than a week, and typically, the battery meter hits the red zone before sunset."

Who wants to swap batteries these days? It's not 1999 anymore.

Still, Web OS looks great and I'm excited to see how it evolves.

Yeah battery life is low but on phonescoop it said that messenger apps default to on that drains life, and email checks every 15 minutes which drains life, there seems like there is alot of things to do to improve battery life. They didn't have the network turned on either on phonescoop which would drain t even faster. I think compared to other phones though the battery life will be lower than usual but not by that much. Since the charger is a mini usb cable i have that around me almost wherever i am, and at work i have one sitting by me and my phone all the time so no biggie there.

The AP reviewer noticed something interesting about battery life; if you set the device to check email constantly, rather than polling every 15 minutes, it lasts longer. Counterintuitive but cool. He also spotted a bug that has some effect on the matter -- if your Gchat account is connected to your AIM account, the battery drain is quite rapid. He says he reported the glitch to Palm and they mean to fix it (firmware, presumably, so it'll be quick).