The iPhone is not a smartphone

I do so hope that the first and formost purpose of a phone is to make a phone call.

Las Vegas– There's no avoiding it. For Palm, the creators of the PDA, and, you could argue, the smartphone, today is do or die. If every great fighter makes a comeback, the question is this: Is Palm still a fighter (or was it ever)? At a much buzzed-about press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Palm finally responded to the iPhone, with a multitouch smartphone of its own. The Palm Pre is, of course, a lot like the iPhone, with a 3.1-in. multitouch display, similar hard-buttons—power up top, a single central navigation button—and lots of swiping and tapping controls. The biggest differences are a slide-out full-qwerty keyboard, and a micro USB port for power and data transfer, as well as an LED flash for the internal camera. The removable back cover, allowing for battery-swapping, drew a massive cheer from the crowd. In fact, there was plenty of cheering, hooting, even some whistling—kind of like an Apple event. These were the rebel yells of the post-iPhone insurgency.

Here's what drew more screams. The multitouch surface bleeds down past the screen, surrounding the navigation button. That allows for "gesture controls," so flicking left navigates back, and flicking up slides out the application launcher. A flick and hold brings up the four classic Palm applications—mail, calendar, etc.—in a kind of dislocated dock (complete with magnification for which icon your finger is closest to).

The weirdest cheer of the conference came during a demo of web browsing, when the Pre opened up the box office page for Blue Man Group, and zoomed in with an iPhone-like reverse pinch. Again, this is the insurgency—even competing with Cupertino is worth applause. The most well-deserved response was for the cleaner operating system. Palm Web OS solves some of the iPhone's most glaring problems. When you rotate the Pre, every application switches to landscape mode. You can have multiple apps open at once, and clicking the nav button zooms out, allowing you to toggle between open programs with as swipe. In some ways, this OS looks a lot like Mac OS, with its various Expose mouse or trackpad-flicking navigation shortcuts, but on a mobile device. There are plenty of great, intuitive shortcuts, such as typing a word from the main screen, which automatically starts a Google search. There might be more of a learning curve with this OS, but for now, without having any hands-on time, and knowing just how early it is to cast judgment on any product, the Pre has all the potential to be the first true iPhone competitor. The OS seems much more useful than the iPhone's. And it comes with a bit of gee-whiz: an inductive power charger. Meaning you place the Pre onto the charger, and it charges, no cords necessary. To Cupertino, that should be alarming. You can debate OS and design preference all day, but this is the first major product to feature inductive charging. The insurgency has finally shown up, and it's already winning the innovation arms race. Apple's existing market share, and the Pre's unavoidable similarities to the iPhone, could scuttle Palm's offensive. But for anyone who loves a good fight, this is great news.