theregoesdave

One year and one man later and Palm is back in the game. Jon Rubenstein doesn’t disappoint with his latest project, the Palm Pre that was unveiled today at the Consumer Electronics Show. The Palm Pre has a slick interface and is the first ever portrait slider phone with a full QWERTY keyboard.

Rubenstein, best known as the ‘Father of the iPod’ was hired away from Apple a year ago. Palm’s plea to regain relevance seems to have a serious shot at working out. The mobile OS code-named Nova is now being launched on the Palm Pre and called WebOS.

Palm says that the new line is being aimed at the ‘fat middle’ of the smartphone market. The company intends to offer a device capable of both Enterprise use and personal multimedia playback. If nothing else, Palm has delivered a fairly slick OS that has a chance of competing in today’s market where users want both.

The Pre delivers a pretty comprehensive feature set including a 3.1″ touch screen; Outlook Direct-Push, POP and IMAP email support; audio and video playback; Wi-Fi; Bluetooth and tethering enabled. I’m really interested to check out the usability and see the pricing, but overall the Pre seems to have plenty of potential.

Full specifications:

Network specs

3G EVDO Rev A

Display

3.1-inch touch screen with a vibrant 24-bit color 320×480 resolution HVGA display

Keyboard

Physical QWERTY keyboard

Email

Microsoft Outlook® email with Microsoft® Direct Push Technology
POP3/IMAP (Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, etc).

Messaging

Integrated IM, SMS, and MMS

GPS

Built-in GPS

Digital camera

3 megapixel camera with LED flash and extended depth of field

Sensors

Ambient light, accelerometer, and proximity

Media formats supported

Audio Formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, AMR, QCELP, WAV
Video Formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264
Image Formats: GIF, Animated GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP

Wireless connectivity

Wi-Fi 802.11b/g with WPA, WPA2, 801.1x authentication
Bluetooth® 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support

Memory

8GB of user storage (~7.4GB user available)
USB mass storage support

Phone as laptop modem

Bluetooth tethering

Connector

MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed

Headphone jack

3.5mm stereo

Palm® Touchstone™ charging dock

Compatible

Dimensions

Width: 59.5mm (2.3 inches)
Height: 100.5mm (3.9 inches)
Thickness: 16.95mm (0.67 inches)

Weight

135 grams (4.76 ounces)

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