Palm Pre: The First Multi-touch Palm Smartphone for Sprint

All the buzz right now comes down to the CES announcement of the first multi-touch Palm smartphone for Sprint. While this news blindsided me, I am happy that Sprint is standing beside Palm in the launch of this soon to be “hero phone”.

Meet the Palm Pre for Sprint:
802.11 b/g Wi-Fi
GPS with built-in navigation
EV-DO
Bluetooth
8 GB storage
3.1-inch display
320 x 490 touchscreen
Gesture area center button
Volume control
3-MP camera

“It is my pleasure to show you the new Palm Pre. The design was inspired by nature.”
-Ed Colligan, CEO, Palm

“Pre will be running on the most dependable network in the country. So it’s the best smartphone on the best platform.” Hesse claims that “independent testing shows downloads are fastest on Sprint’s network. Also, Sprint’s coverage area is four times larger than AT&T’s.”
-Dan Hesse CEO, Sprint.

From this post on Betanews, it is rumored that the Palm Pre will be available from Sprint in the first half of 2009. Colligan went ahead mentioning roughly 15 strategic partnerships including Facebook which now has over 150 million users.