The new-ness is underway, and Palm just debuted its long(est) awaited all-new handset, the Palm Pre. The curvy touchscreen handset has a 3.1-inch 320 x 480 multitouch display, with a silver center button down below and touch sensitivity all down the face — the lower part is for “gestures.” A full QWERTY keyboard slides out from the phone in a portrait orientation, and you can flip the phone on its side for accelerometer-sensed widescreen browsing. The phone is running Palm’s all-new webOS platform, with TI’s new OMAP CPU under the hood — which Palm claims provides laptop-style power, and which juices the phones smooth transitions, scrolling and “deck of cards” app-switching. Other internal specs include EV-DO Rev. A, 802.11b/g WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth with A2DP and 8GB of built-in flash storage. There’s a 3 megapixel camera with LED flash, mass storage-friendly microUSB plug and a good ol’ 3.5mm headphone jack, but most exciting is the wireless charger — a first for a mainstream phone. More shots are after the break, including a fancy FCC diagram depicting a removable battery. The phone is exclusive at launch for Sprint in the first half of 2009, no word on price just yet.

 

Bear in mind that this could be complete rubbish, but unconfirmed reports from “trusted sources” have reportedly stated that Palm’s first Nova-based handset will tout a full QWERTY keyboard that slides down beneath a touchscreen (is your imagination running wild yet?). Moreover (and more importantly), the fresh operating system is being described as “amazing,” and we’re also told that “a ton” of software will be pre-loaded to provide multimedia playback as well as traditional functions such as calendar, email, and contacts. We can’t help but say that we’re pretty jazzed to hear positive vibes flowing just before CES really gets in gear, but we’ll attempt to remain placid until something a touch more concrete is revealed. Read