Palm announces Web OS, Palm Pre phone

Yes, we’ve all knew that this will happen, but there were not much details. Today, at its press event, Palm announced its new operating system called WebOS and the first phone to run on it – the Palm Pre. Targeted at the “fat middle” of customers, the new OS is designed to be simple to use but with lots of features. It’s built from the ground up, so don’t expect to see Palm’s style from the last century, but a new and hopefully better experience. Seeing the large colorful icons, it definitely looks as a 2009 product.

Palm’s Jon Rubenstein demonstrates it on the Palm Pre, the first phone to take advantage of it. The round touchscreen device really looks as pregnant and has only one key on the front, but unlike the Apple iPhone slides open vertically to reveal a full QWERTY keypad, for handy text input. It is a CDMA/EV-DO phone with Wi-Fi, GPS, 8GB of memory, stereo Bluetooth, 3.5mm jack, 3.1” 320x480 multi-touch display, and a new TI OMAP processor that is said to be really fast.

Palm Pre will be available in the first half of this year, exclusively through Sprint. However, Palm said that a GSM/UMTS version is also in the works, so let's hope it will be available soon after the Sprint one.

Palm Pre Specifications

We’ll update this article with more details and pictures, but also expect our extended info in the CES 2009 Live Report.