Went to the Sprint store early Saturday for a so-called Premier Customer invite only sale for Palm Pre. Walked out without one after deciding because the cons outweight the pros, primarily personal issues, mostly plan related. After buying an HTC Touch Pro on issue day 1 back in December and being totally unhappy with it over the past 6 months, I'm not so eager to jump on newly released phones. I spent about 20 minutes messing with the Pre.

Since Chairman published these links, there's probably another couple of hundred new ones out there on the web now that we are 3 days into the Pre's release. There are plenty of well written reviews, so I'll keep my pros and cons short.

Pros:

WebOS - The best feature and the major WOW factor. Lots of graphical special effects and enhancements that actually work as opposed to locking up (see HTCTP TouchFlo 3D).

Screen - Great screen, accurate object rendering, excellent gesture sensitivity. Beats the crap out of my HTCTP and as good as an iPhone in both clarity and response.

Keyboard - Finally a decent one-handed keyboard. As a former Treo 600, 650, and 755p user, it's the keyboard I know and love. I don't like the shiny and smooth keys, similar to Treo Centro; much rather have the nice faux brushed aluminum keys of the Treo 755p.

Size - this is a dinky little phone considering all the features it contains. Way smaller and thinner than my HTCTP which is a major plus. It's also very light - possibly too light to the point where you can't tell if it's in your pocket.

Music - iTunes works with the Palm Pre, eliminating my need to use two separate apps to build playlists and upload music to my cellphone and iPod.

And by the way, the phone actually multi-tasks. I was streaming TV while messing with various other apps.

Cons:

Locked into an "Everything" or "Simply Everything" plan - A stupid Sprint qualification in order to purchase a Pre. Anybody with a cheap grandfathered plan, like me, would probably end up paying for a more expensive "Everything" plan. I would have to negotiate a new plan through Sprint Rentention which is always a pain in the ass.

Battery Life: 1150 mAh is the same rating as a Treo Centro battery, despite the Pre's additional power consuming features (WiFi, GPS, streaming media). There are already many complaints about Pre battery life circulating in the cellphone forums, but OS tweaks and extended capacity batteries should be forthcoming.

Flimsy feel: The plastic body feels very thin, making the Pre feel similar to a toy phone. It's also made of smooth, hard plastic, lacking the now typical grippy non-slip coatings found on more expensive PDA phones. I question if the covers would withstand a hard drop, but a silicone skin would remedy this pretty easily.

No Apps - Major show stopper for me. There is a document viewer, but there's no way to edit Excel or Word docs on your phone which I can do with Documents To Go. In fact, there are only 19 apps in the Pre catalog.

Sync Application - Synergy is the out of the box app for contact sync. I didn't run it run, but according to the reviews, it has a major design flaw in that it will not perform a filtered or selective sync. Everyone in your Facebook, Google, and Outlook contact list will end up on your phone. But it can't be any worse than WinMO Active Sync or Vista Sync Center and even better news is a Pocket Mirror app for WebOS is in beta.

Contrary to all the reports, the phone is not slow. If you want to see slow, go play with a Touch Pro.

Personally, I'm going to wait awhile until there are more 3rd party applications and accessories for this phone and see how the buglists are addressed. Since I'm a captive Sprint user, this is probably the only phone I can consider as an upgrade.