Although Palm is nowadays not frequently sighted as a major force in the mobile tech industry, it has not always been the case. During the 1990's and early 2000's Palm PDA's were frequently sighted as some of the most innovative and forward thinking devices on the market, with many attributing some of the design concepts, included in their original Operating systems as providing a blueprint for many of today's most cutting edge smart phones and portable communications devices.

However after a series of poor business decisions and accusations of a decline in innovation and their forward thinking approach to tech design they had become famed for, the company eventually came close to bankruptcy. However, in January of this year at the consumer electronics trade show in Las Vegas Palm introduced a product which many are saying may well propel them back to the peak of the industry and pose a real threat to other revered products such as Apple's iPhone. A smart phone called the Palm Pre. Click the Link for more pics and info.

The phone itself incorporates many cutting edge technologies and is built on a completely new platform which palm are calling 'WebOS' which has been inspired by a deck of cards, with different applications and functions appearing as scrollable cards on the desktop. The device incorporates similar multi touch screen technology as included in the iPhone as well as a whole host of other new features. Using a new CPU from Texas Instruments called the Omap 3 the Pre is also set to be the most powerful smart phones on the market. We also find a gesture bar situated below the screen for gesture based input as well as a hard slide out keyboard.


Other ideas and functionality Incorporated into the device include 'wireless charging', and all the usual functions and applications you would find on cutting edge smart phones such as Wifi, b/g Bluetooth 2.0 (including A2DP for device tethering), 3G , google maps and an online application store in the pipeline. Palm have also introduced a number of features unavailable on the iPhone such as copy and paste MMS. Not to mention something that Palm calls Synergy, which allows you to pull together contacts and calendars from lots of different sources, but without altering or merging that data. For example Synergy will grab the same contact from Facebook, Gmail, and Outlook, then combine those into a "stack" of info for that person on your phone.

Scheduled for release in the first half of 2009, if the preliminary reports are to be believed Palm's Pre is set to become one of the most anticipated hand sets of all time and may well indicate a return to form for the struggling company. Click the link for indepth info, photo galleries and videos.

Engadget - Palm Pre Indepth