Palm Pre 2.0!!

Palm has announced version 2.0 of what I still think was the best phone in the world... nine months ago.

And it will be completely revolutionary!

And by completely revolutionary, I mean it is completely identical to the palm pre which is sitting next to me on the couch right now. Yeah...

I mean really, pretty much identical. It has a 5.0mp camera instead of 3.0. And 16gb instead of 8gb, but the Pre+ on Verizon already had that... It also comes with the obligatory upgrade from 600mhz to 1ghz, and 256mb RAM to 512 - but every other phone that went through that (the Droid comes to mind) showed very little real world speed improvement. So... this is basically the same phone...

What is new however, is webOS 2.0 - which is a good thing. Because webOS is still, and in my opinion with no ambiguity at all, the best mobile operating system in the world. Honestly, its just so much better than Android or the iPhone it is silly - but it does not have the same quality of apps, the major downfall. The other downfall being that there is no on-screen keyboard in landscape mode... yeah....

So what does webOS 2.0 do?

1) Allows you just start typing, and not only search for anything (which it already does), it lets you start writing a text or an email also. Which is pretty cool.

2) Cards is updated (the only true multitasking phone OS) so that similar tasks are stacked, kind of like windows 7. Not sure what I will think of this - but useful for email probably.

3) 'Exhibition' turns the phone into a sort of desk-phone-clock-widget-photoframe thing, like a chumby

4) better flash support

5) and still... no keyboard in landscape mode it seems... wtf

Anyway, what all this means is that the hardware guys over at Palm have pretty much spent the last year inventing novel torture devices for the marketing team which decided that an exclusive with Sprint and a creepy pale lady would be the way to launch the most revolutionary phone since the original iPhone.

I mean, honestly, its what I would have been doing also.

I just hope that by the time my contract expires (next Sept), Palm has decided to launch a 4+ inch screen Pre 3, with a 1.5ghz snapdragon dual-core, 8mp camera, 1gig RAM, 16+GB hard drive, and 4G.

Get a move on Palm, I want my damn phone.