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ZoneOut: The Palm Pre-view

By Sutlej Soin - 24 Jul 2009

Preview - The Palm Pre-view

Palm Pre-tastic!

Unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) earlier this year, the Palm Pre instantly became a fan favorite and in turn one of the most talked about phones of the year and till this day, it still is. The Palm Pre is Palm's big comeback into the mobile circuits after losing out to Windows Mobile. But now, it's back with a vengeance! And after playing with the device, it's safe to say, the Pre shall take no prisoners!

Don't ask us how but we at HardwareZone.com managed to procure a Palm Pre set and we just couldn't keep our hands off it. However, what we have in our hands is the CDMA version of the Palm Pre as the GSM version will only be out in Europe from October onwards. A special mention goes to our Senior Tech Writer, Luke Tan, who managed modify the unit so that we could take a proper sneak peek at the operating system and some of the novel features. Since we can't just keep good stuff to ourselves, here we are to share it with you, to our readers in a special video overview:-

What makes the Palm Pre such an exciting invention is its supposed ease of use. For one, it flaunts a nifty slide-out keyboard that lets users peck away at the keys easily, which the new Apple iPhone 3GS still can't boast.

The shape of the Pre when extended fits nicely into our hands. We also realized that the Pre is very smudge friendly after toying around with it.

Sliding the Pre upwards reveals a full QWERTY keyboard and we found it to be a little cramped for our liking. Still, we prefer the presence of a physical keyboard any day of the week as opposed to the virtual one seen on many touchscreen phones these days.

On top of the Pre sits a 3.5mm earphone jack and the power/hold button. All positioned nicely for easy access.

At the back of the Pre is the 3-megapixel camera with LED flash, which beats the iPhone 3GS in this department.

We put the 3GS and the Pre alongside for you to make the judgment call - which in your opinion looks better? Make your opinions heard in our forums.

Even more impressive is Palm's new operating system dubbed the webOS. As shown in our video above, it supports multi-touch gestures and even multitasking through a system of 'cards' with each corresponding to a panel or application. Multitasking is yet another inability of the Apple iPhone 3GS or its updated OS version 3.0.

But Palm doesn't just stop there and has pulled out all stops to create a really intelligent and forward thinking operating system with the webOS. In it, a feature called Synergy mines all common information exchange channels and combines them in a single view for easy and straightforward presentation without users having to move back and forth various channels. There's of course much more to this interesting phone, such as the Touchstone technology for wireless charging and more. If our quick video tour left you wanting more information, we'll leave you with this official video clip to find out more about why it's revolutionary:-

Just to remind our readers again, the Palm Pre in our hands is a CDMA version and the GSM version won't be out till late in the year for Europe. What's worse, Palm has made no indication of whether the Pre will be coming to Asia this year. So meanwhile, we'll just have to keep our fingers tightly crossed. Palm, we sure hope you're listening!

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