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Last updated: Thursday, January 8, 2009

Palm came out ready to fight in the war of smartphones, not only with a new mobile platform but a new smartphone. The company on Thursday announced the Palm Pre, a smartphone that will be available exclusively from Sprint and compete with Apple’s iPhone 3G and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Storm. The release of the webOS mobile platform wasn’t a surprise, as speculation about it was rampant. Palm made the announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. In an official blog post, Palm President and CEO Ed Colligan said the new platform will be the basis for more innovation in the next decade. Details of the new Pre are unknown, including how much it will cost and when it will be available, other than in the first half of the year in the U.S. Spotlight on Palm The new Palm Pre will have EVDO, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth stereo, 8GB of storage, and a fast processor. It will have a thin, curvy touchscreen; a three-megapixel camera with flash; a removable battery; and USB 2 connectivity. If the touchscreen fails, there’s a vertical slider QWERTY keyboard. Inside the phone are notification bars that alert the user of text messages and calendar appointments. The phone also uses Palm Synergy to bring Outlook, Google and Facebook together on one calendar. Analysts have said in recent months that Palm needed to come out strong to stay afloat, especially during hard financial times at the company. The company has the daunting task of recapturing consumers’ imagination, according to Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile strategy at Jupitermedia. “I think Palm did what they needed to do –the spotlight was on them,” Gartenberg said. “There was no major news coming out of Apple and Microsoft, and they really had the stage all to themselves.” Getting it Right Now that Palm has…

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Palm Announces webOS and Palm Pre Smartphone

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