A Closer Look at the Palm Pre and webOS

The Palm Pre smart phone and the company's much-anticipated new operating system -- called webOS -- are among the most buzzed-about products to come out of CES this year. Despite staging its splashy launch, Palm has been a bit secretive with the device -- reminding us of a certain company in Cupertino. But PC World had the chance to sit down with the company and delve into the OS everyone is talking about. And though we had very limited time with the Pre and WebOS, we can tell you what we liked -- and what we didn't.

Hardware: First Impressions

The glossy-black Pre has a unique curved slider body: When you slide the 3.1-inch screen up, it curves slightly towards you, a design point intended to resist glare and make the phone feel comfortable in-hand and against face. We only got to hold the phone briefly, but it did feel good in hand and the body felt sturdy enough as we typed on it with the screen extended. The slight angle made it easier to view screen, but we couldn't test the anti-glare claim because our demo room was dimly lit.

The slide-out vertical QWERTY keyboard has glossy, tactile keys that are easy enough to type with. The keyboard looks much like that on the Palm Centro; here, the keys are black, with reddish-hued lettering, and separate colors to designate the embedded keypad. The Palm has no touch keyboard, but a third party developer could come out with an app.

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