Computer Spot

Be prepared, Apple and T-Mobile, for Palm is trying to gatecrash the smartphone market segment party, so firmly dominated firstly by iPhone and then T-Mobile G1 in the year 2008.

Its weapons? The touchscreen Pre and a brand-new platform with has the name WebOS.

Allow us to postpone the rest of the article by stating that we seriously think there has been some serious mix-up in the naming of the new OS of smartphones nowadays.

I mean, shouldn’t Google’s OS be named WebOS while Palm’s be named Android? That would be cool, wouldn’t it?

Back to our story, Pre. It has a large 3.1-inch 480×320 touch screen complete with multitouch and accelerometer support.

The gadget weighs 4.8 ounces, has a slide-out curved keypad. As the name of the platform suggests, it also integrates the now compulsory Wi-Fi and 3G features.

Other features are pretty standard, the likes of Bluetooth, 8GB internal storage space, a 3.5mm headset jack, a removable battery and a 3MP camera are also available.

No doubt there is nothing absolutely revolutionary with the Pre’s hardwares. However, the platform it is running on, the WebOS, is worth much attention.

Based on the presentation at CES, the WebOS is a serious threat to both Android and Apple’s strictly proprietary iPhone OS.

The WebOS interface does not look too different from either OS mentioned. There are rows of icons at the bottom of the screen corresponding to applications of your choice.

Switching from an active application to another is quick and effortless, the same which cannot be said for iPhone.

Its other really cool feature is its “Synergy” concept, allowing all applications to synchronise info from the web.

WebOS is able to handle all your contacts and their information, be it IM handles, phone numbers and email addresses from various Web 2.0 services such as Gmail, Facebook and Exchange.

You can also read another news at yahoo tech