Hands-on with the Palm Pre

I just got back from the hottest ticket at CES: Palm's lavish demo room, where I had some precious one-on-one time with the Pre—the most exciting handset I've seen since, well, the original iPhone. And believe me, it lives up to the buzz.

First impressions: I was surprised by how small the Pre (set for release on Sprint in the first half of '09) felt in my hand—at 3.9 by 2.3 by 0.67 inches, it's a good half-inch shorter than the iPhone, if about two-tenths of an inch thicker. The 4.8-ounce Pre also outweighs the iPhone by a hair or so, but it still managed to feel relatively light in my hand. And while the Pre's 3.1-inch LCD is a little smaller than the iPhone's 3.5-inch display, it looks vivid and razor sharp.

So much for the physical unit—how's the new WebOS interface? From what I saw in my demo today, it looks incredible peppy and responsive; the display reacted instantly to my taps, with a few minor hiccups here and there (the demo units are pre-production models, with the WebOS software still undergoing some tweaks).

One of my favorite features in WebOS—the ability to open a series of applications "cards" and swipe through them, one after another—worked perfectly, with selected cards quickly expanding to fill the screen and ready to go. Also cool: the ability to "throw away" apps you're done using with a quick upward flip. Nicely done.

In terms of the Pre's contact list, I learned that the phone will initially ship with support for Gmail, Facebook, and Exchange; just enter your login info, and all your stored contacts will quickly flow into the phone, with any matching names getting integrated into a single contact (albeit with different profiles for each account). Palm reps say they expect more Web services (such as Yahoo! Mail or MySpace) to arrive on the Pre (mostly through third-party development) after the Pre's eventual release. Also: The Pre will support push e-mail, depending on the service (both Gmail and Exchange will be push, for example).

Another interesting interface note: The Pre does a great job of keeping menu options for all applications in the same place—namely, the upper left-hand corner of the screen. So whether, say, you're in the calendar application, composing an e-mail, or listening to tunes, you can always tap the same drop-down menu—located in the same place—to find whatever you need. It reminds me of the easy-as-pie Sidekick interface, and I love it.

The Pre won't have a specific Web site where you can access all your phone settings and content (Palm reps noted that most users will likely prefer to tweak their calendars, contacts, and other info directly through Google, Facebook, and other services), but the phone does come with an automatic wireless backup feature, good for restoring all your setting in case something bad happens to the handset.

One disappointing piece of news: The Pre does not come with a microSD slot for memory expansion, and I'm told that the WebOS doesn't support expandable memory at all—which means, unfortunately, that you'll be stuck with 8GB of storage. No word on 16GB or larger versions of the Pre (although I'm sure they'll arrive eventually).

OK, so what about price? Rumors have been floating around that the Pre will sell for $399 (with a new contract) on Sprint—ouch. Any truth to that? My Palm reps insisted that no price has been set yet, and would only add that the Pre will be "competitively priced." Well, if that's the case, I'd hope the Pre would sell for, oh, $199 or so, not $399.

Overall? I love what I'm seeing. Palm's really hit it out of the park with the Pre, and the phone is absolutely the talk of the town here in Vegas. Watch out, Apple—the Pre is the real deal, and you might have some catching up to do.

Still got questions about the Pre? Post 'em below and I'll get back to you.