Goodbye, Pre. It wasn't you. It was me.

A week or so ago, I wrote about a smartphone affair I was having, cheating on my Verizon Blackberry so I could get my hands on a Sprint-powered Palm Pre. I said at the time that I was taking advantage of the 30-day return period to test run the phone and the service without being tied down to the two-year contract.

Turns out I didn't need 30 days for a test-run. After just a week or so, I knew for sure that the Pre wasn't the smartphone for me.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't hate it and I've heard from plenty of people who do like it. I actually do think it's a nice phone - and the Sprint service was great in the Silicon Valley-San Francisco region. I came across a few pockets with dicey service (including my own neighborhood at times) but it was, for the most part, pretty strong everywhere else - both voice and data. The device has a nice screen and, as a whole, it fits nicely in-hand. My daughter loved the mirror above the camera lens when the keyboard was open.

I wasn't a fan of the keyboard, though. That beveled lip was in my way and the keys were too flat and close together for my liking.  Palm's OS - which is what was really exciting when Palm announced its comeback intentions at CES back in January - was kind of a disappointment, too. The swipe to switch between open apps and windows was nice. But the OS was slow to respond to touch-screen commands, such as opening mail, launching menus and responding to notifications.

Still, my experience didn't sour my feelings toward Palm or Sprint the way my iPhone experience left me feeling about AT&T. Palm has a nice OS - but it needs some work, as well as a few more devices of different shapes and sizes. Sprint's pricing and service were both good so I may even reconsider it later for the family.

Also see: Analysts: Sales of Palm Pre have slowed, could drag down company

I'm thinking my next little rendezvous may be with T-Mobile's MyTouch, the Android phone that Google gave away at its developer's conference earlier this year. Yeah, I have one - and while I tinkered with it during the initial 30-day test period, I'd like to give it a better test-run. What I really like about this option is the pre-paid service, which keeps me out of a contract and free to try it out for 60 days if I'd prefer.

For what it's worth, none of this means that I'm ending my relationship with Verizon or Blackberry. If the T-Mobile/Android thing doesn't work out, I may just hang out without a contract and wait to see what surfaces in 2010. My Verizon Blackberry is still reliable and I have no beefs with it. This is just an end-of-contract mid-life crisis and I just want to know if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

So far, it's not.