(CES 2009) Don’t Call It An iPalm iPre iPlease

If there’s a company or phone I’m rooting to replace my iPhone, it’s Palm. I remember a decade ago when I had a Palm III and thought that my badass self was the closest thing to Michael Douglas a la Wall Street.

Fast forward to 2009 and I’ve still got a smartphone in my pocket (not holster), but instead of a 3com logo there’s an Apple. Well, with Palm’s CES mayhem-pausing announcement of the Palm Pre, it looks like there might be an overtime in this smartphone shootout after all. The Palm Pre is designed with a “think ahead” focus, making all the calendars, contacts, notifications, and messages work intuitively to your reactions and responses.

It comes equipped with all that you’d expect: Outlook, Google email, Wi-Fi, GPS, mapping, photos, search, and Facebook (yay?).

What you don’t see are a couple of the Palm Pre’s defining features: an actual slide-out keyboard, wireless induction charging basestation, and Palm Synergy - a feature that will bring all your various organizational tools into an easy-to-understand single view of your day.

The Palm Pre is unavailable at present, but you can register for announcements here.

More photos after the jump.