It has been over a year since Palm released the Palm Pre. At that time all the tech reviewers were joking that the Palm Pre was the pre-bankruptcy release for Palm. Well, Palm has not gone into bankruptcy. Three of the four major cell phone carriers offer the Palm Pre.

In call seriousness the Palm cell phone is different than the Blackberry, or the many smart phones that use the Android operation system. Palm came out with one of the first handheld personal digital assistant (or PDA), in 1996. Today, their Palm Pre cell phone gives you the ability to colorize your calender, along with other personal time management features.

The Palm Pre has great multitasking capabilities and  a great notifications system. As a smartphone the features or a multi touch display, QWERTY keyboard, HTML web browser, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS.

The Palm Pre is offered by 3 of the 4 major cell phone carriers. I thought it was interesting that Cnet.com by cell phone carrier. All three were reviewed by Bonnie Cha and edited by Kent German. The dates of review and updates were spread out over a year. You can read the individual reviews yourself.

• Cnet Review of the Verizon Palm Pre
• Cnet Review of the AT&T Palm Pre
• Cnet Review of the Sprint Palm Pre

Ms Cha and Cnet don’t like the Pre’s cramp keyboard and short battery life. The lacks of expansion slot, video-recording capabilities, onscreen keyboard, and Flash support and make it quite a no buy. The individual cell phone carrier negatives can be big if you want/need certain features.

The Palm Pre Plus is out now. Wireless Mobile News likes its’ calendar, email, and social networking features. Wireless Mobile News does give a very extensive review of the Palm Pre Verizon

Last year, shortly after the Palm Pre came out there was talk of a recall. However, there was no official recall. This could be just issue that are normal for any new phone coming on the market.

Expect to pay from $0.00 to over $580 depending if you get a contract or not.

Bottom-line: I like the look and feel of the Palm. It does rival the Blackberry as a PDA. The touch screen is nice. For me the only must buy feature I could find was the color feature for the calendar. This allows me to set specific colors for specific types of appointments.

In closing I thought it would be good to provide you with a video overview of the Palm Pre Plus from TechnoBuffalo.

Tags: Android, AT&T, Bonnie Cha, Cnet Review, Kent German, Palm Pre, Palm Pre Plus, PDA, Shopping For, Sprint, Techno Buffalo, Verizon, Wireless Mobile News