Everything you need to know about the Palm Pre (so far)

“Know your history” – My 5th grade history teacher.

When you are mingling on the rooftop at the raging Palm Pre launch party, you’ll need to know your Palm geek speak; that is where we come in. Assembled here for you are the great moments in Palm’s recent past that will be more than enough to get you through the night and well into your blissful honeymoon with what has become one of the most eagerly anticipated devices since that other phone.

The Old Palm

Palm is credited by many for kicking off the smartphone era. By cramming a phone into their Palm OS device, the Handspring Treo was well ahead of its time, the device combined email, calendar, web in a converged device. What was not to love?

Not much. Developers flocked and application upon application were written for the Palm OS. Soon, Palm had a family of phones on multiple networks. Everyone agreed Palm had the best QWERTY keypad phone going. A few missed deadlines of upgrades to the OS later, some Windows Mobile versions added in and Palm became the lumbering giant that just couldn’t get out of its own way. The phones stopped looking innovated and soon looked dated.

CES 2009: Palm finds an audience

The Palm Pre announcement was big. You could feel everyone in attendance pulling for the company to “wow” us – and that is just what they did. All the conversations at the show revolved around the Pre and how it is going to change things. I am still giddy and it’s been four months.

The Pre is all about the software. The hardware is OK, certainly not jaw dropping pretty like the iPhone, but it is OK. What the Pre has is software that is sleek, sexy, and will give Apple a run. Palm smartly partnered with a bunch of big names for apps. Folks like Facebook, TeleNav, Pandora, Google and Amazon…big names you know and apps you’ll probably care about.

Palm did make some statements with hardware: a removable battery? Touchstone for wireless recharging? Awesome stuff that makes you not just a boring iPhone clone. Nope, the phone was spec’d to impress (minus an SD slot) and we all figured the promised delivery “in the first half of 2009″ would come soon enough.

But then came the hard winter

Many of us got impatient about waiting. Palm announced an invite only call for press that was essentially a rerun of the CES fun. We got bored. We wanted pricing, dates, and free samples. So far, we’ve gotten none.

A few more details have come out, just not the big answers we are hoping for. Things like Sprint’s pricing plans for service; we are unsure if Sprint has an exclusive past six months; Europe will have a UMTS version of the phone rather shortly; Best Buy may or may not be a retailer;

The elephant in the room

Pretty quick, Apple took notice. The “iPhone Patent” behemoth was issued giving Apple rights to everything including the Falkland Islands, if you read the fine print. Seems Apple wanted to do some saber rattling and we’ve yet to see what they try to make stick.

Then, Apple announced 3.0 software that took away some of Palm’s advances of the first two versions of iPhone’s software. Not all, but some. Had Palm’s window of opportunity gotten smaller? Currently Apple is advertising the heck out of applications for everything from farting to seafaring navigation. It would seem Apple wants to say, “Look away from the Palm freak, look to the established app leader.”

Then Palm announces older apps from the Palm OS will be able to run on the new webOS. Hot stuff, Palm is filling its app store with old faves to give it the running start we believe it will need. Clever move.

Will this save Sprint?

Presumably, Sprint has some skin in this game too. Verizon and AT&T seem to be running away with customers from good ole Sprint. Nextel’s grip on the market is slipping and Sprint needs a win. Likely, they’ll get a bump from early adapters with the Pre. But for many of us, Sprint could be the deal breaker.

Many of us are still rooting for Palm and the Pre. Regardless of success, competition is a good thing.