The responsive touchscreen and an attractive WebOS interface, without doubt, give the much-awaited Palm Pre a certain edge over other smartphones, but some obvious hardware design flaws keep the device a few steps short of perfection!

Apparently, in its pursuit for compactness of the Pre, Palm has probably sacrificed keyboard usability. The design of the new device, to be launched June 6, with the vertical slide-out QWERTY keyboard is akin to that of the Palm Centro. The multi-hued keys are somewhat tiny as well as recessed, thereby making the typing experience less than perfect. The keys also lack the clickable quality that comes on the RIM BlackBerry devices.

Moreover, with the top row a wee bit too close to the slider screen's edge, one needs to "angle" one's fingers for pressing the top keys. In addition, despite the smooth slide-out movement of the keyboard, it still feels a bit fragile - giving the feel that it could possibly come away with too much use.

Another drawback with the Pre is that since it has no touch keyboard, the user remains stuck with the physical keyboard, till a third-party developer creates a requisite app for a touch keyboard.

Along with hardware flaws, another disappointing feature of the otherwise momentous $200-priced Palm Pre is its lack of removable memory - the device comes fixed at
8GB of storage!