Pre: Needs Redesign?

I think this picture from Engadget says it all. It's from their post from a Sprint store that started selling both Palm and Sprint's savior, Pre.

I'm going to reserve judgment until I get a chance to visit a Sprint store and hold one in my hand but if nearly every review out there indicates problem with the hardware, basically the cheap feel of the case, and wholesale complaint about the keyboard, I'm going to go on the limb here and say that an iPhone or traditional Palm PDA form factor is in the works. I've read a couple of posts about a WebOS Centro as well.

As you know, Palm is now loaded with a bunch of former Apple executives and engineers. Maybe the Pre's design is what the iPhone could have been and Jobs simply dismissed it. Now, the Pre's design is a push of of those ideas that Apple rejected.

Now, only the WWDC. Maybe we'll see something about the iPhone. Maybe we won't. I still very happy with the iPhone and all that it can do. It's still much better than anything out there though the Pre's iPhone features have made it a very close competitor. We'll see if Apple (or Jobs) put some more distance between the iPhone platform and its competitors.

On the whole though, Palm's Pre design may need work especially when Blackberry folks are trashing the keyboard and more people are beginning to come around to the excellent virtual keyboard on the iPhone. In trying to make the Pre small and easy to fit into the user's pocket, Palm might have created a design error. We'll know in the coming days whether this is nearly as big an issue for users as it was for reviewers.