Palm Pre: Gushing Early Reviews; Where Are The Apps?

The early reviews are in for the Palm (PALM) Pre , and the news for the bulls is mostly good. In general, the phone is seen as a worthy rival for the Apple (AAPL) iPhone , with additional features like a removable battery a a physical keyboard. Both the Web OS software and the industrial design of the Pre are getting raves. There certainly are some nits, though. Some reviewers were disappointed with the battery life; almost all noted the relatively primitive state of Palm’s answer to the Apple App Store, which features very few applications so far - not surprising since the company has yet to make an SDK widely available. There were even generally positive comments about the Sprint (S) network, which some reviewers noted to be faster than the AT&T network used by domestic Apple iPhone customers. (Although there was also some discussion of whether you might want to wait until Verizon (VZ) ships a version of the phone, which it is in theory expected to do early next ... (link)