Palm has taken an oath to re-enter the competition on the smartphone market by throwing into battle a powerful combo: a mobile operating system, and the first phone to go with it. During the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas this week, Palm revealed its web-centric platform, together with the Palm Pre phone, scheduled to become available in the first half of 2009.

 

The phone maker described its OS as a platform specifically designed to respond to people’s needs of having their contacts, calendars and information with them at all times, no matter where they go. Furthermore, this once again eases the need to carry a laptop, instead of just a pocket-sized device capable of satisfying a wide variety of needs.

 

Palm Pre comes with a user-friendly design, and incorporates the center of all attention when it comes to phones that people use for more than just conversation: a physical keyboard, which doesn’t take any of the phone’s 3.1-inch 24-bit color, 320 x 480 HVGA display, but it slides only when the user needs it.

 

The device also comes with a Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 8GB of internal user storage, proximity sensor, a 3-megapixel camera, but also a MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed. Pre only weighs 135 grams, and accessories can be added.

 

The operating system was designed to track information in relevant ways for the user, and connect it for better productivity. It is capable of linking contacts that are common in several sources (such as, Outlook, Facebook and Google for example), it combines calendars in a single view, if offers web-connected apps, it is capable of running multiple applications at one time, and has a multi-touch interface.

 

The Palm OS and Pre package will be offered in the United States exclusively by Sprint. According to Palm, a world-ready UMTS version will also become available in other countries as well, but after the North American launch.