Palm Pre

By Richard Trapunski

It's been awhile since we've been this giddy about a cell phone. Okay, perhaps that's not true. Every time a new smart phone is launched, technology pundits (us included) are quick to hail it as society's most important innovation. But, while another phone will probably render it obsolete in just a few years, the brand new Palm Pre has just hit the shelves in Canada, and, at least for now, it feels like a big deal.

The Pre officially launched in the United States back in June, and since then it has been impressing critics far and wide. Palm, which almost died just three short years ago, desperately needs the phone to be successful or risks being obliterated by Apple and Research in Motion (makers of the iPhone and Blackberry, respectively). Palm knows this more than anyone, and browsing through the Palm Pre's features, you'll see that a lot of thought obviously went into its design.

Naturally, Palm has been quick to laud the Pre's uniqueness and singularity, but essentially what they've done is taken the design of the iPhone (its most heated competitor) and improved it. The Pre has both a touch screen and a vertical slide-out QWERTY keyboard, combining the best of both worlds (i.e. the best of the iPhone and the Blackberry). It also has a 3.2 megapixel digital camera with LED flash. Its new Linux-based WebOS platform has a look and feel similar to Apple's Safari, but the internet plays a bigger role in the Pre. The phone is built with multi-tasking in mind (a big plus for this ADD generation), and keeps multiple applications open side by side as "cards" that can literally be flicked offscreen after you're don with them.

The Pre is so titled because it's meant to anticipate your needs before they're voiced. While it may not exactly be psychic, it certainly is user-friendly. Pre's big innovation is its use of "Palm Synergy." The phone stores contacts from Facebook, Email, AOL Instant Messenger and other sources, and stores them all together in one place so you can access multi-platform information about a single person all at once. It also renders conversations in an Instant Message-like interface all in one place. Texting and IM exchanges will all be displayed as if it's a continuous conversation.

It also has the most intuitive search functionality of any phone on the market. Type in a search term and it will search across contacts and applications (since it's open source, apps can be developed by third-parties), and then will offer to search Google, Google Maps, Wikipedia, and Twitter.

As is always the case these days, buying a Palm Pre requires signing your life away on an exclusive contract. The Palm Pre is available in Canada for $199.95 and a three-year contract with Bell. In the United States, it's now priced at $149.99 on Sprint.- R.T.