Palm Pre Walkthrough: Revisiting webOS and Palm's 2009 Smartphone

In January 2009, a struggling handheld maker best known for the PalmPilot and the Treo walked onto the CES stage and unveiled something that looked nothing like its old products. The Palm Pre wasn't just a new phone — it was a new operating system, and Palm's last real shot at staying relevant after the iPhone had upended the market. With Sprint's CDMA network long shut down and webOS now living inside LG televisions, it's worth revisiting what the Pre actually was, and what Mobility Today's own archived coverage of it really said.

What Was the Palm Pre?

The Palm Pre launched on Sprint on June 6, 2009, running a brand-new operating system called webOS. It paired a 3.1-inch touchscreen with a slide-out physical QWERTY keyboard, 8GB of fixed storage, and a curved, "river stone" shape, priced at $199.99 after rebate on a new two-year contract. More than the hardware, though, the Pre mattered for its software — a card-based interface and a unified-contacts feature called Synergy, aimed squarely at a problem smartphones were just starting to have.

Palm Before the Pre

Palm's history ran back to the PalmPilot and Palm OS, later extended into the Treo line. By the mid-2000s, Palm OS had gone stale and the Treo looked dated next to the original iPhone, BlackBerry, and an Android platform just beginning to ship on the T-Mobile G1. Palm needed a genuinely new OS, not another Treo refresh — at a company running low on cash and credibility.

Jon Rubinstein and the Bet on webOS

Jon Rubinstein, a former Apple hardware executive who'd helped develop the original iPod, joined Palm's board in 2007 and became executive chairman that October — still his title when he unveiled the Pre at CES in January 2009. He became Palm's CEO, succeeding Ed Colligan, in June 2009, around when the Pre reached stores — worth keeping straight, since he led product direction well before he ran the company.

From CES to Sprint: The Launch Timeline

Palm unveiled the Pre and webOS at CES in early January 2009 to an enthusiastic reaction, but Sprint didn't confirm pricing and a firm date until mid-May: June 6, 2009, at $199.99 after a $100 rebate on a new two-year contract. Five months of buzz gave competitors and skeptics plenty of time to pick the promises apart before the Sprint-exclusive launch, which narrowed the Pre's addressable market from day one.

Original Pre Hardware at a Glance

What Was webOS?

webOS was Palm's ground-up replacement for Palm OS, built so apps could be developed with standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript through a framework Palm called Mojo. That didn't make webOS apps plain webpages, though — Mojo apps ran inside Palm's own device framework, with access to APIs for contacts, location, and notifications a browser tab couldn't reach, an approachable entry point for web developers even though the SDK was still rough in early 2009.

Cards and True Multitasking

webOS represented running apps as stackable "cards" you could flick between or swipe upward to close. That wasn't just visual polish: webOS kept multiple third-party apps running in the background at once, unlike the original iPhone at the time, which restricted most third-party background processes — the single most talked-about thing about webOS among reviewers.

Gesture Area, Center Button, and Keyboard

Below the screen sat a touch-sensitive gesture area with a physical center button. At launch, swiping left or right across it switched cards, swiping up minimized the current app into card view, and a diagonal swipe worked as "back" within apps; the center button toggled between the current full-screen app and card view. The slide-out keyboard continued Palm's Treo heritage — tactile and usable without looking, but frequently criticized in contemporary reviews as cramped and tightly spaced. Notably, the original Pre shipped with no on-screen keyboard at all; typing required sliding the physical keyboard open, and only later did the independent webOS homebrew community build unofficial on-screen keyboard patches.

Screen Size and Multitouch

At 3.1 inches, the Pre's display was smaller than the iPhone and iPhone 3G's 3.5-inch screen despite a similar pixel count — a deliberate size-for-keyboard tradeoff, not an oversight. The capacitive touchscreen supported tapping, swiping, and pinch-to-zoom in Palm's own apps, though support wasn't uniformly deep across third-party apps in webOS's thinly populated early months.

Synergy: One Address Book, Several Accounts

Synergy pulled contacts and calendar entries from Google, Microsoft Exchange, Facebook, and Yahoo into unified views rather than separate per-account lists — genuinely novel in 2009. It wasn't seamless, though: contemporary coverage documented real duplicate-contact problems when the same person existed across linked accounts, requiring manual merging, with limited user control over exactly how syncing behaved.

Notifications, Messaging, and Search

Rather than full-screen alerts, webOS notifications appeared as small bars along the bottom of the screen, stacking neatly — a quieter style reviewers praised that later became common industry-wide. Messaging organized SMS, MMS, and supported IM services by person rather than by app. A universal search let you start typing from the home card to search contacts, apps, and device content, or hand a query to the web — but it wasn't called "Just Type" yet; that branding arrived with webOS 2.0 in October 2010, over a year later.

Launcher, App Catalog, and Browser

A row of Quick Launch icons — Phone, Email, Messaging, the launcher — sat below the gesture area, with the rest of installed software reached through a swipe-up grid. The App Catalog behind it was thin at launch: contemporary coverage put the count at only a couple dozen apps in the Pre's first days, against several hundred already on Apple's App Store, and it took months to reach even a thousand titles. The WebKit-based browser supported pinch-to-zoom, and each open tab became its own card alongside every other running app — an elegant extension of the same metaphor.

Email, Exchange, and Phone Basics

At launch, the Pre supported Gmail, Yahoo Mail, POP3, IMAP, and Exchange ActiveSync for corporate mail, calendar, and contacts, with Synergy merging accounts into unified views while preserving each item's source. Basic calling and call management worked as expected, though Visual Voicemail on Sprint was notably absent — Palm confirmed via public statement that it wasn't part of the June 2009 release.

The Camera, and the Video Recording Question

The rear camera was a 3.2-megapixel unit with LED flash and a fixed-focus, extended-depth-of-field lens rather than true autofocus. Video recording is worth getting precisely right: the original Pre did not ship with it in June 2009. Official video capture arrived with the webOS 1.4 update in February 2010, over half a year later; in the gap, an unofficial homebrew app called Precorder let willing users record video before Palm's own feature existed.

Wi-Fi, GPS, EV-DO Rev. A, and Bluetooth

The Pre included 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, built-in GPS paired with Sprint Navigation and Google Maps, and Bluetooth with A2DP stereo streaming alongside hands-free calling profiles. Cellular data ran on Sprint's CDMA network with EV-DO Rev. A — the mainstream 3G technology of the era, a world away from 5G but a real step up from the EV-DO Rev. 0 that preceded it.

8GB of Storage, No microSD Slot

The Pre shipped with 8GB of fixed internal storage and no memory card slot — a departure from many contemporaries, including some of Palm's own earlier Treos, which allowed card-based expansion. Whatever came in the box was what you had for the device's life.

Leaving HotSync Behind, and the iTunes Standoff

The Pre dropped the Palm Desktop and HotSync cable-syncing workflow that had defined Palm devices since the original PalmPilot, replacing it with Synergy's cloud syncing and a separate USB mass-storage mode — a real cultural shift contemporary June 2009 first-impressions coverage called out directly. Palm also made the Pre identify itself to iTunes as an iPod so it could sync media through Apple's software; Apple disabled that with iTunes 8.2.1 in July 2009, Palm restored it via webOS 1.1 days later, and the cycle repeated with iTunes 9 that September before Apple shut it down for good — a workaround Apple never officially supported.

Touchstone and "Wireless" Charging

Touchstone was Palm's inductive charging accessory, sold as a dock bundled with a required replacement back cover, since the stock cover couldn't transmit the dock's charging field. It's worth being precise about "wireless" here: the dock itself still needed a power cable, and the phone had to sit directly on it. What it removed was plugging a cable into the phone — a real convenience, and notably ahead of the Qi-charging era that wouldn't go mainstream for years, though Palm didn't invent inductive charging itself.

Battery Life and Build Quality

The roughly 1,150mAh battery was user-removable, letting owners carry a charged spare or hard-reset by pulling it — options sealed-battery phones didn't offer. Contemporary battery-life reception was mixed, generally putting the Pre in roughly the same range as the iPhone 3G: adequate for a day of moderate use, with heavier drain reported when multiple cards stayed open. Palm described the curved shape as inspired by a polished river stone, and reviewers liked the pocketable feel — but early units drew real criticism nicknamed the "Oreo effect" in contemporary coverage, where the slider's two halves had enough play to twist against each other. Palm reportedly tightened tolerances on later 2009 units.

Palm Pre vs. iPhone 3G and 3GS

The Pre launched into a tight window: the iPhone 3G was nearly a year old by June 2009, and Apple's 3GS arrived just thirteen days later, on June 19, 2009. Against the 3G, the Pre offered true background multitasking the iPhone's third-party restrictions didn't allow, a physical keyboard, and a smaller body — while trailing badly on app selection, where Apple's several-hundred-app head start dwarfed the Pre's initial few dozen.

Palm Pre vs. BlackBerry, the G1, and the Old Treo

Against BlackBerry, the Pre offered a more modern touch interface and Synergy's account merging, against BlackBerry's larger install base, enterprise email depth, and BBM. Against T-Mobile's Android-powered G1 from the previous fall, the comparison was closer — both paired touch with a physical keyboard and cloud syncing, though the G1's keyboard slid out for landscape typing rather than the Pre's portrait slider. Against Palm's own Treo, the Pre was a far bigger leap than a typical refresh: touch-and-card software and cloud syncing replacing a stylus-driven, HotSync-tethered one.

The Mobility Today Walkthrough, Revisited

It's worth being straightforward about what Mobility Today's original "Walkthrough: Palm Pre" article, recovered from Wayback Machine archives, actually contained — because it isn't the hands-on hardware tour its title might suggest today. Posted January 8, 2009, by contributor David Ciccone under the subheading "Could Palm webOS take over Windows Mobile?", the piece was a short paragraph echoing Palm's own launch messaging about Synergy and notifications, followed by an embedded YouTube video and a line inviting readers to discuss the device in the site's forum. The archive shows no original Mobility Today video walkthrough, staff-shot screenshots, hardware tour, live interface demo, keyboard impressions, or firsthand Sprint network observations — the embedded video was promotional content tied to the CES unveiling, not footage Mobility Today produced, and this article won't invent a demonstration sequence the archived page doesn't show. What the page does preserve well is sixteen reader comments posted over the following weeks, several from people who'd handled the Pre at CES, arguing over whether webOS could unseat Windows Mobile — a genuine snapshot of how divided reaction was right after the announcement.

What Reviewers Praised and Criticized

Once review units reached the press around launch, a fairly consistent picture emerged. Praised: the webOS interface and card multitasking, the unobtrusive notification style, Synergy's concept despite its rough edges, the browser, and the compact size. Criticized: the small, cramped keyboard, unremarkable battery life, early Oreo-effect build quality, a tiny App Catalog next to Apple's, and slowdowns when too many cards stayed open. Individual reviews varied, but those themes recurred consistently.

After the Pre, and webOS's Later Years

Later devices shouldn't be confused with the original Pre. The Palm Pre Plus launched on Verizon in early 2010 with more storage and RAM on the same platform; the Palm Pre 2 arrived late 2010 with webOS 2.0, introducing "Just Type" and Exhibition Mode, neither present on the 2009 original; the Palm Pre 3 followed under HP, which announced its Palm acquisition on April 28, 2010 and completed the roughly $1.2 billion deal on July 1, 2010. HP briefly expanded webOS into tablets with the 2011 HP TouchPad, then discontinued most webOS hardware within weeks. HP sold webOS to LG in February 2013, and it's run LG's smart TVs since 2014 — a very different life than the one Palm built it for.

Influence on Later Phones, and Whether It's Usable Now

webOS demonstrated ideas that later became common industry-wide — card-like app switchers, gesture navigation, quieter notifications, unified cloud account syncing — though there's no solid evidence Apple or Google directly copied Palm's implementations, and this article isn't claiming that. As for using an original Pre today: Sprint's CDMA network is gone, webOS's certificates and online services are discontinued, the App Catalog no longer operates, the browser can't render much of the modern web, and its security protocols are long outdated. Enthusiast communities have preserved plenty of webOS software and documentation, but none of it restores real cellular functionality — treat a working Pre as a historical artifact, not a daily phone.

Collecting and Buying Tips

Evaluating a used Pre: check the slider for looseness or Oreo-effect twist, confirm every keyboard key registers, inspect the screen for scratches, and test the gesture area's responsiveness. Check battery contacts and the USB port for corrosion, and note whether the back cover is stock or a Touchstone-compatible replacement. Original Sprint branding, packaging, and accessories affect collectible value. Most importantly: never charge or handle a battery that's swollen, cracked, or leaking — recycle it properly instead.

FAQ

What was the Palm Pre?

A smartphone Palm launched on Sprint on June 6, 2009, running webOS, with a 3.1-inch touchscreen, a slide-out keyboard, and Synergy's unified contacts.

When did the Palm Pre launch?

Unveiled at CES in January 2009; on sale on Sprint from June 6, 2009 for $199.99 after rebate on a new two-year contract.

What OS did it use, and what was webOS?

Palm webOS 1.0 — a new touch-first OS built around card-based multitasking, with apps built in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript through Palm's Mojo framework rather than as plain webpages.

What were webOS cards, and was multitasking real?

Stacked, swipeable thumbnails of each running app. Multitasking was real: multiple third-party apps could run in the background at once, unlike the original iPhone's restrictions at the time.

What was the gesture area?

A touch strip below the screen for swipe gestures, with a physical center button toggling between the current app and card view.

Did it have a physical or on-screen keyboard?

Physical only — a slide-out portrait QWERTY continuing Palm's Treo heritage. There was no on-screen keyboard at launch; unofficial patches came later from the homebrew community.

What was Synergy?

Palm's system for merging contacts and calendars from Google, Exchange, Facebook, and Yahoo into unified views — though it also produced documented duplicate-contact issues.

What was Universal Search?

A home-card search covering contacts, apps, and device content, with a web-search option; it wasn't branded "Just Type" until webOS 2.0 in October 2010.

Did it have Wi-Fi, GPS, and storage expansion?

Wi-Fi and built-in GPS with Sprint Navigation and Google Maps, yes. Storage was fixed at 8GB with no microSD slot.

What was Touchstone, and was it truly wireless?

Palm's inductive charging dock, bundled with a required replacement back cover. Not wireless in the free-space sense — the dock still needed a power cable and the phone had to sit on it.

How did it compare to the iPhone?

It offered real multitasking and a physical keyboard the iPhone 3G and 3GS lacked, in a smaller body, but trailed badly on app selection at launch.

Why did the Palm Pre fail commercially?

No single cause — Sprint-only exclusivity, a tiny App Catalog, early build-quality complaints, and Palm's limited resources against much larger competitors all contributed.

What happened to Palm and webOS?

HP acquired Palm in 2010, released the HP TouchPad in 2011, then discontinued most webOS hardware within weeks. HP sold webOS to LG in 2013, which has used it in smart TVs since 2014.

Is the Palm Pre collectible today?

Among vintage-smartphone collectors, yes — condition of the slider, keyboard, screen, and battery, plus original packaging, all affect value; damaged batteries should never be charged.