Palm Pre and its WebOS, Just another iPhone killer or something for real?

Palm launched Pre, its new smart phone, running a brand new OS termed as WebOS, this thursday at CES. This marks the launch of yet another, not only smartphone but a full platform, others being iphone and android. Palm, as we know with its dwindling fortunes and limping handset lineup, has bet heavily on Pre. Whether or not their strategy will materialize, only time will tell.

Pre with WebOS indeed looks awesome and is being considered at par if not above iphone. The phone itself is a nice and powerful piece of hardware with GPS, 8GB storage, 3MP camera, 3.5mm headphone jack and guess what a slide out keyboard. The display is full touch 3.1 inch with a gesture area below the screen.

The WebOS looks sleek and flaunts a new concept of application launch and management via cards. Each card is somewhat similar to what a desktop window is. These cards can be created, destroyed and arranged at will. This also means that multitasking is inherent unlike iphone. It even runs maps though flash is not supported yet.

What is more appealing is the seamless integration or 'synergy' of various services. e.g. chat card supports a continuous stream of messages irrespective of the protocol or medium i.e. you can view your sms and IMs(from different protocols e.g gtalk, yahoo) all in one window. It also has an elegant way of notifications which doesn't interrupt your current work. The notifications appear silently below the current card giving a visual feedback but no interrupts like alert box etc.

Applications are created using html, css and javascript. Access to all the phone features is provided via these. This reduces the intellectual burden as one doesn't have to learn anything new. How fast these will actually be is still a question. What is more Palm also has an application store similar to what iPhone and Android have, dubbed app catalog. All in all the OS and the phone both have good reviews from the first looks.

How it stands in front of Android and iPhone will only become clear when the sdk and the phone is released. Developing using html and css sounds old school, but doesn't have anything to do with the functionality anyways. Important part is how Pre is going to make a mark in an already fragmented market. Sprint users stuck in contracts will obviously be happy but converting users from iphone seems unlikely.

What all this adds up to is that now developers have one more platform to play with, users have one more phone to want to own and one more carrier has a special phone to woo customers. More important is the sudden focus that has come to the user. What this means is that users have more choices and many of which are awesome. All of a sudden this talk of integrating user experience and consolidating his web presence has started and whatever be the end result the user stands to gain anyways.

Palm Pre Video Walkthrough 1 from Gizmodo on Vimeo.