Yes the cellular PDA battle begins, however, Apple is going to be challenged, as PALM Pre is a terrific first-run product against almost every feature the iPhone stands for... I for one stood in line in south Florida with 30-40 others waiting for the 8AM Sprint Store opening Saturday. While I was waiting, being very interested in this entire topic, I "interviewed" a number of those in line, wondering why they were here... 5 of them had iPhones, and were fed-up with Apple's lack of attention in upgrading the features, ATT's/T-Mobile's terrible slow network, AND all hated the touch-screen keys for email and text messaging... this was a surprise.

Now on to the device itself. I for one, think the PALM Pre created a nifty balance of features, physical size, capacity, multi-tasking, user interface. It took me a few hours of getting used to as the GUI is so unique; and now that I am a TWO day WONDER, I feel very comfortable accessing the huge feature set. As for the some reviewer's remark that 8GB is not as good as 32GB. Give me a break, stop drinking the Kool-Aid. If storage is such a key, spend $20 and get a Jump-drive, and not make a pda choice on this silly fact, distract... Cut, Paste, Copy,,, it took iPhone 2 years to get this feature working... PALM's got in their first iteration, however a very limited number of situations. Palm will need to expand when text can be selected for Copy, as now too many situations do not permit the copy function.. Multi-tasking is another biggie, (Apple's new version still cannot do this important trick) as one can pause-switch to another application, and then switch-back, exactly where you left off...

Battery... the life is comparable, and iPhone still cannot change batteries... for the PRE, I already have a spare battery being shipped to me just for the emergency situation. The TOUCHSTONE charger is amazing, no more fumbling with wires to plug in,,, simply, gently, "Land" the device on the charger's magnetic platform, and charging is automated, no plugging-in to the PRE whatsoever... I got several Touchstones, one for the office, one for the bedroom, and one for the front of the house, to park the phone onto, when it’s not in use. You can get the unit charging in the complete darkness with your eyes closed ! Notice, in the images I installed one of the Touchstones in the Car; however since it must be prwered by 120Vac, I connected the power cord to an inexpensive Power-Inverter to provide the AC power. Its attached to a Cigarette Lighter recpticle, which powers off with the ignition, so as not to run down the Car battery when out of the Auto... works perfectly, and is very convenient to just place the PRE onto it, rather than diddling with the mini-USB plug...

PS: As the story goes, 250 key APPLE engineers were hired by PALM several years ago to create this PDA device... the notion being, lets out-Apple, Apple, by placing into this new device all/most of the "wish-list" items that years of iPhone users have been complaining about... well PALM did it with the PRE... and the challenge begins... competition breeds even better products at even better prices, but now the PRE gets our nod...