Palm Pre: The Next iPhone "Killa?"

It's funny how the moniker "iPhone Killer" is bandied about.  While there are more worthy competitors now than just six months ago when the iPhone 3G was released, none of them really compel me to drop the iPhone.

The big mobile phone at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week is the Palm Pre. While Palm is no stranger to touchscreen mobile phones, the Pre is arguably more iPhone-like than any other phone on the market.  It has Wi-Fi (sorry, BlackBerry Storm), a 3.5" headphone jack (sorry, T-Mobile G1) and it has many features over the iPhone including a better camera, multitasking capabilities and stereo Bluetooth.

But, when watching the videos on the Pre I did notice a design flaw.  The Pre has a vertical slide-out keyboard.  It also has an accelerometer for landscape web browsing.  Since the Pre has no virtual keyboard, you cannot type AT ALL in landscape mode. Someone points it out in the video but the Palm person sort of brushes it off:

Although the Pre is no iPhone killer, it certainly is a worthy competitor along with the BlackBerry Storm, the HTC Touch Pro/Fuze, and the Samsung Omnia.  The Palm Pre will also be Sprint's flagship (sorry, Samsung Instinct).