Palm Pre

Palm-the company that can be credited with creating the smartphone market, but the company that has also been somewhat behind the curve for the past few years-has just announced the Pre, a phone that will catapult Palm into the smartphone limelight. And rightfully so.

The Pre physically is a very attractive phone, but as we all know, it's what's inside that counts, and that's where the Pre shines. It boasts a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/GPS, a 3.1-inch touchscreen with a gesture area below, and a 3-megapixel camera with LED flash. But more importantly, Palm created an incredible user interface for the Pre. Some of the features are totally innovative and some feel familiar, but in a good way.

Palm® Synergy™ brings Outlook®, Google, and Facebook® calendars together so that you can see them all at once in a layered view.

Universal search looks through your contacts, applications, Google and Wikipedia as you begin typing. The search results are narrowed down to the possible results as you type. This seems a lot like Spotlight in Mac's OS X, but I still like it.

Palm's Synergy combines all your messaging. So, for example, if you text and IM one person, the texts and IMs between the two of you are brought together into one chat-style view.

The Pre can even charge wirelessly. By placing the Pre on the Touchstone, or dock, the phone charges.

I've gone through only a few of the Pre's many features to show you how wonderful it's UI is. Check out Palm's website to learn more about the Pre. The price hasn't been announced, but expect it to be more than $200.