Palm Pre lands at Amazon

by EndUser at 3:26 PM PDT, August 1, 2009

For those who aren't Apple fans (or who haven't been assimilated into its Borg-ian society for fanboys/fangirls), the biggest smartphone launch of the summer came in early June with the release of the Palm Pre, which includes both a touchscreen and slide-downb QWERTY keyboard and features the next generation of Palm operating system--the webOS. And starting today, you can order the Palm Pre from Amazon.

Up until two years ago, I was a pretty hardcore Palm user for many years (as well as co-author with my colleague Jeff Carlson on the final edition of the Palm Visual Quickstart Guide), but then my head was turned to the iPhone and there just really isn't any going back for me. That said, the Pre is heads and shoulders above the rest of the I'm-a-touchscreen-too smartphone pack thanks to its gorgeous, multi-tasking webOS user interface. Here's a quick look at the UI highlights, courtesy of PhoneScoop:

Here's CNet's description of the "deck of cards" approach to the WebOS UI:

(T)he Pre's "Deck of Cards" multitasking functionality and notification system are what make it special and they are areas where the Pre beats the iPhone or any smartphone on the market right now. In addition, personal-information management is completely changed (in a good way) with the Synergy feature.
[...]
If you're wondering why the feature is called Deck of Cards, it's because each application is presented in a card window and you can then shuffle through the open cards. You can drag and drop cards (or rearrange the order of apps in the Launcher) by pressing and holding the item until you see a halo around the card and then you're free to move it, but it's not like with the T-Mobile G1, where you can drag and drop icons onto the main home screen. When you're done, you can flick the card upward and that will close out the program.

Speaking of Synergy--the piece of the webOS that brings together your various and sundry email addresses, contact lists and messaging venues--here's Gizmodo's take from its review:

Syncing to Facebook and Google Contacts via Synergy works flawlessly, and merges contacts from both services together so you don't have duplicates of contacts floating around. A manual merge or a manual split can solve any quirks from this function quite easily. Synergy also combines your SMS and IM conversations into one window, so you can seamlessly text someone and then switch over to IM when he reaches his desk. Synergy's basically just an easy way to make sure services like Google have your data (Contacts and Calendar) pulled down into your phone automatically.

For even more comprehensive reviews of the Pre, check out Pre Central, The Boy Genius Report, and Engadget.

Now, if you're and old-school Palm user like myself, you've probably still got loads of old applications that you just can't give up (such as Splash ID or Dope Wars), Motion Apps offers its Classic software that emulates the old Palm OS and can run those older programs.

--Agen G.N. Schmitz