Palm announces Palm Pre at CES

I've been waiting for the magic bullet phone, and this is looking like it could be it.

I've been (and still am) a long-time Palm user - most lately the 700p, then the 755p all with Verizon, and though the OS is clunky and old, it works well for what I like in a phone.

But this new one looks like it'll satisfy exactly what I'm looking for.

I've considered the iPhone, but I dismiss it because of its shady AppStore policies.

I've considered the Blackberry Storm, but its on-screen keyboard doesn't really allow enough space for a reasonable SSH session with vim.

I'd also like to at least try the G1 for a week, but T-Mobile's network is weak at best.

I tried a Samsung HTC phone with Windows Mobile with a slide-out horizontal keyboard early 2008 and found it practically unusable.

This phone looks like it's going to satisfy every major requirement I have, especially if it comes to Verizon. It's absolutely imperative that my phone be SSHable, and Vimmable, and doable out "in the sticks" when I'm on vacation.

And the slide-down keyboard looks amazing. You shouldn't have to use two hands to type on a phone's keyboard.

As a long-time Treo 700p user that switched to an iPhone at the beginning of 2008... I'm seriously impressed.

Palm seems to have actually looked at the iPhone interface, taken what it does right to heart and attempted to improve upon Apple's rough edges. The fact that it's not just another "mini desktop OS" ala Android or Windows Mobile, but is actually built for mobile usage from the ground up is fantastic, and few other players in the mobile market seem to have understood this.

That being said - I have no idea how you compete against the iPhone. Palm used to have brand-recognition and goodwill, but I don't know how much of that is left after grinding out chunky Treos and above-average Windows Mobile smartphones for years. My gut feeling is at best, it's going to be a distant second or third under the iPhone - but it seems equally likely it will have middling sales and do nothing to rescue Palm as a company.

Time will tell, I suppose.

I'm a bit biased, but I think the platform is the thing that will have the most impact. JavaScript/HTML/CSS makes porting web apps ridiculously easy, and most of the apps I use these days are web apps.

Wireless charging seems to be a pretty innovative feature of this phone.

Just Wow.

I don't even care that much if it will run traditional PalmOS software...

It seems that Palm wants to charge a lot more than the iPhone price point. It had better be better than the iPhone to justify a higher price.

So is this the new palm software based on the BeOS?