For two struggling companies (Sprint and Palm), the Palm Pre with its WebOS is a very strong product offering that even the big boys at AT&T, Verizon, Apple and Blackberry should keep an eye on. From the moment I got it, I was impressed. The box is one of the coolest I've seen, with an interesting shape, and unique dividers that seem to be very cost effective, but still manage to keep the phone protected.

The phone does take a long time to start up (about 2 minutes), but it's woth the wait. The interface is clean. It has a dock with five icons (four applications that you can change, and the launcher, which brings up all applications). The rest of the screen (when no cards are open) shows the wallpaper at all times, which is a nice change from the iPhone, which only shows the wallpaper before you swipe to unlock. Most apps load very quickly, even if several cards are running. I love being able to switch effortlessly between cards, effectively multi-tasking for the first time on a phone.

The top bar elegantly displays the carrier, bars, battery, EV-DO (3G) availability and other active radios and devices. It blends in and looks like it's off the screen. Complimenting the elegance of the top bar, is the great way that WebOS displays notifications. Instead of being interrupted with a new notification, they appear at the bottom of the screen, and then become a small icon inconspicously displayed in the bottom right of the screen, again appearing to be part of the phone instead of part of the screen. A tap on on of the small icons will bring up the notification that can either be flicked away to ignore it, or can be tapped to view. It works great, and has really helped me to stay on top of things.

Contacts are also a great strength of the Pre. With a couple taps, I was able to link my Google account and my Facebook account in addition to the contacts ported from my old phone onto the Pre. There were a few issues with duplicate contacts, but it is pretty easy to link them. One beef that I have is that AIM buddies show up in contacts, and there is no way to delete them without removing your AIM account.

Even though Facebook integrates contacts very well, there is not a dedicated Facebook app, and the x.facebook.com, which has been optimized for viewing on the Pre, is bare bones, not even allowing for uploading photos (though this is possible from within the Photos App). With how much Palm and Sprint touted the Pre as a Facebook-friendly phone, it really isn't. I check the App Catalog (Palm's App store) everyday for Facebook, but it hasn't come out yet.

All in all, this is a soid device. The slide out keyboard feels great, though it took a little while to get used to. WebOS is THE OS for mobile devices right now, and I can't wait to see where they go with it.