Palm Unveils the Pre Smartphone

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Palm has announced a new model called the Pre. Running on Palm's new operating system called the Palm webOS, the Pre is the first totally new smartphone from Palm in over a year.

For more information on Palm webOS, read this article.

Specs and Design

The Palm Pre will feature a 480x320 pixel capacitive touchscreen, which will support multitouch features. Below the touchscreen will be what Palm calls the Gesture Area, where users enter gestures to, among other things, switch between running applications.

Update: Despite what was said earlier, the Pre does not have a trackball button similar to the one on many BlackBerry models.

There will also also be a vertical sliding QWERTY keyboard which curves inward towards the user when it it extended. The keyboard will remind many of the Treo "smile" keyboard with the similar curve and button shapes.

From a specs end, the Pre will feature:

• 3G connectivity via EV-DO
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 2.0+ EDR and Stereo
• 8 GB of internal memory
• GPS
• Accelerometer, light, and proximity sensors.

Pricing and Availability

The Palm Pre will be released before the middle of this year. In the U.S., it will be exclusively available from Sprint at launch.

There is no word yet on cost, other that it will be "competitively priced".

Images from the Announcement

Here are some images of the announcement of the Pre taken by Brighthand's Ed Hardy.