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Today I took my first proper look at the Palm Pré. Here are my initial thoughts from a few minutes of play

1. Beautiful UI with a very nice screen (if a little small).
2. Keyboard is too small. The keys are awkward to press.
3. The ball/button thing makes no sense. You want to scroll it like the G1/N1/Blackberry but it doesn’t seem to be for navigation.
4. Accessing the menu isn’t obvious. You press the ball thingy, then get shown the last menu screen, which for me was the settings page. It took me a minute to find the rest of it (side swipe).
5. The camera looks good (on the screen).
6. Its not obvious how to enter a URL in the browser. There is a menu button in the top left corner, which I thought would get me the address bar (like WinMo) but instead you scroll to the top, and scroll more to get a less-than-obvious box that changes into an address bar.
7. The App Catalog needs some polish
8. Its great you can go to check for updates on the handset, and unlike Android, it actually checks with the server, rather than just “knowing” cos it hasn’t been pushed out yet.
9. The multitasking is quite well implemented (no idea on performance though).

If Palm do a Nexus One size non-keyboard version, it could be a good handset.  I might write a bit more on the blog later about this. It makes me question the ecosystem design I would prefer in a smartphone. While I love the iPhone, I would like to see something like the Android or Pre, where you have a home screen, that you can dump a few apps on or a widget or two for quick info, and integrated into a task-switching setup.

Apple need a big rev. Not sure if 4.0 will be it though.