Got opportunity to play with Palm Pre for couple minutes in the weekend. Sprint kiosk at Chesterfield Mall has the real Pre (instead of the faked phones at many other places). I was very impressed by the screen, both the (multi) touch and the display. Surfed the web: amazon, ESPN etc. Zooming in and out is very similar to iPhone (using two fingers). Checked out the tiny keyboard, it feels OK. Initially I thought it’s not “qwerty” keyboard, I was wrong: it was just different from the keyboard of my Blackberry 8800, as you can see from this picture at PreCentral: .
(“HelloWorld” app created by WebOS, instruction here)
Besides physical keyboard, another strength Palm Pre over iPhone is Pre can do multitasking. Engadgets has a fairly comprehensive review (both text and video comparing to iPhone) of Pre Plus (available at Verizon Wireless). PreCentral has a nice video review on Pre Plus and Pixi Plus (the little brother of Pre Plus), the video is about 9 mins.
Last but not least, here is a total ownership cost comparison chart of smart phones (iPhone 3Gs, Palm Pre, T-mobile MyTouch, and Motorola Droid) from Billshrink.
Walt Mossberg, my favorite tech reviewer, wrote Palm Pre review last year.
Disclosure: the author has PALM shares as of this writing.