Palm, the smartphone leader with its Treo, fell on tough times against rivals like Blackberry’s Research In Motion and iPhone’s Apple – but not any more! Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show saw Palm unveiling its latest smartphone - Pre Palm – a glossy, touch-screen phone featuring a hidden, slide-down QWERTY keyboard.

With the new phone, the once-devoted, now-drifted Treo users may just come around. With Palm’s stock already up by 35% a cheering factor for the company, industry analyst Tim Bajarin remarked that the new offering from Palm “keeps Palm in the game.”

Launching in the first half of the year, with exclusive US carrier Sprint, Pre will be the first phone to run Palm’s lately developed Pandora operating system - WebOS. The
4.8-ounce Pre is not just attractive and semi-curved black-bodied phone; it is also more compact than the iPhone. With the vibrant 3.1-inch touch-screen, Pre, makes use of sensors and touch gestures to enlarge photos and Web pages.

In addition, the device has some other features that are lacking in the iPhone, such as a removable battery and support for Bluetooth wireless stereo devices. The Pre, with its Linux core, also facilitates the running of several applications at one time – for instance, users can listen to music in the Pandora Internet radio application alongside Web surfing – thereby integrating practically all aspects of the users’ online, social and information-management life.

With other specs like GPS, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, accelerometer and a 3.2 megapixel camera, the Pre definitely appears to be quite a handful!