Palm Pre at CES

This was a first time experience for me, when I got overwhelmed by the amount of media coverage that was devoted to Palm Pre and its new platform. I have covered other phone companies before when they had launched a slew of models. But Palm was different. Palm has a huge loyal following over the internet. I have heard that Apple has a similar if not bigger fan following on the internet. But when the iphone loyalists started posting sarcastic posts to the effect that Apple deserters have come up with an iphone killer, I knew that Palm had rattled their cage.

On the first day of the CES, Palm unveiled a new mobile platform called webOS and a phone that is based on the new platform called Pre.

Palm claims that webOS has been built from the scratch and keeps the user constantly connected to the internet.

Palm Pre, oval shaped with a slide out QWERTY keyboard, 3.1 inch touch screen with 24 bit 320x480 color display. Now the icing on the cake: it has a 3 mp camera with LED flash and a 3.5 mm headset jack!

It has also got 8 GB of internal memory, a proximity sensor that automatically disables the touch screen and turns off the display whenever you put the phone up to your ear, a light sensor which dims the display if the ambient light is dark (to reduce power usage) and a ringer switch that silences the device with one touch.

Weighing at 135 g, the Pre’s connectivity includes support for Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g), integrated GPS, Bluetooth 2.1; along with EVDO Rev. A or UMTS HSDPA high speed internet connectivity. It also has an accelerometer and Outlook. It also supports POP3 and IMAP.

Palm Pre is scheduled to be available first in the United States exclusively from Sprint in the first half of 2009, and will be followed by a world-ready UMTS version for other regions.

Source: Palm Press Release