Palm unveils a game-changer

[UPDATE Jan. 13, 2009: The Palm Pre won't be available for retail sale for months. That means it will be quite some time before our technicians can personally review a Pre since everything we test in our labs in Yonkers is purchased from retail. However, our friends at Which? (an independent consumers magazine in the United Kingdom) recorded parts of the official Palm Pre demonstration at CES 2009. The edited video is embedded to the right of this post. You can also watch a larger sized version on the free Videos section of the ConsumerReports.org web site. The video is quite long but offers quite a bit of information. —Ed.]

The Pre has a touch screen with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard that measures 2.35x3.96x0.67 inches when closed. When you slide the keyboard out, the phone curves slightly. The 3.1-in display is multi-touch, like the iPhone. You can navigate, select, zoom in, or back out with a pinch, swipe, or poke of your finger, and Web pages and images are automatically reoriented when you rotate the phone.

Of course, it supports Microsoft Exchange server, as well as virtually every other form of typed communication, including Web-based e-mail, IM, SMS, MMS. Other goodies include a 3-megapixel camera, 3G, WiFi, and stereo Bluetooth connectivity, as well as a full desktop-computer-quality Web browser and GPS navigation with turn-by-turn directions. The phone comes with 8 gigabytes of storage and you can even replace the battery. However, this is the first Palm that lacks a slot for a memory card.

But what's really special about the Pre is webOS, which provides a highly intuitive interface that elegantly aggregates all the relevant elements pertaining to contacts, calendars, and messaging. For example, if you have information on Jane Doe in Outlook, Google, and Facebook, it will put details from those normally unconnected sources under Jane's name. Ditto for calendars and messaging. Even if you start communicating with Jane on IM then switch to e-mail, webOS will show all of your exchanges in one "chat-style" view. This integrated approach is a webOS feature called Palm Synergy.

The Pre is a true child of "cloud computing," its applications constantly connected to their Web-based sources to keep the most up-to-date info at your fingertips. When you type in a search term, the OS searches on both the Pre and the Web until you find what you're looking for. And, if you haven't guessed by now, this is the first Palm device OS that can run multiple applications.

The interface is also unique. Instead of presenting the usual array of application icons that launch independently, the Pre lets you shuffle and rearrange multiple activities as you would a deck of a cards—and it keeps your place on these "cards" as you jump from one activity to another.

Access to music and other entertainment was sketchy at the presentation, but Palm promised there would be a wide range content from Facebook and others. And it confirmed that the Pre will work with SprintTV and other Sprint applications. But let's face it. The phone won't be out for another six months, and a lot can change by then. But thus far, I really like what I see.

—Mike Gikas