While following announcements from CES I was pleasantly surprised to hear of the new Palm Pre. I was a fan of Palm PDAs long before there were serious smart phones–as I write this there’s still a Palm ‘Tungsten C’ PDA sitting in it’s charger on my desk.
It appears the Pre and it’s webOS seem functionally capable and technically well thought out. The inductive (no plug) charger is a idea whose time has come and hopefully its function will be copied by other makers. The Pre also seems to address some of the iPhone and recent Blackberry shortcomings with true multi-tasking and by offering both multi-touch and keyboard interfaces.
The Palm Pre is definitely receiving some positive initial press from CES but only time can determine if it will be successful in this tough market. If this phone eventually makes it to Verizon Wireless I’ll certainly consider it.
Even so, I can’t help but feel while the Palm Pre may indeed be technically one of the better smart phone designs it’s perhaps more then a year late to market.