Palm Pre coming to the UK soon(ish)

The Gadget Show  Monday 23 February 2009

When it comes to manufacturers trying to stir up a bit of excitement around their upcoming products, slapping a ‘coming soon’ badge on their website doesn’t usually get us buzzing with excitement. However, when this message appeared alongside the Palm Pre this morning we nearly choked on our coffee and had to double-check for fear of it being an early April Fool’s day gag – the latest contender hoping to de-throne the iPhone, the Palm Pre was expected to launch later this year, but it now looks like it could be set to launch in the UK imminently.

Still not convinced the Palm Pre is worth getting a little bit excited about? What if we said this will be the first time you get to see, try out and use WebOS, a spanking new operating system that Palm is rolling out with the Pre. It’s the first touchscreen specific platform they’ve developed and offers a great deal more than its earlier devices, bringing with it a big icon driven touchscreen interface and enough features to help you forget it’s not an iPhone, we hope.

Its 3.1-inch touchscreen delivers full 24-bit colour reproduction, ensuring images should look drop-dead gorgeous. Tucked away around the back is a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard, which looks the business. The phone has a curved and ergonomic feel to it, so typing should be a whole lot comfier than with a virtual keypad. When it comes to the phone itself, it’s looking pretty much what we’ve come to expect.

For the moment, Palm is staying pretty tight-lipped about an official launch date but you can sign up for notification of when it’s ready to ship, but we have a feeling we’ll see official word very soon.