Palm Pre at CTIA 2009--photos

Tucked away in the far corners of the Las Vegas Convention Center, Sprint and Palm hosted a VIP Lounge where invited attendees could come check out the Palm Pre up close.

A view of the lounge.

The companies had three stations where representatives gave demos of the Palm Pre, but once again, we were not allowed to touch the device on our own.

Palm did show off some new applications running on the Pre, however. One such program was the mobile version of the movie ticket site Fandango. On the Pre, you'll be able to view movie trailers, view show times, and buy tickets through the Fandango application. In addition, when you purchase tickets, an appointment will be added to your Calendar to you remind about the show. While it took a little while to load, the quality of the video trailers was quite good.

FlightView is a flight tracking application that lets you check the view in-air maps, receive status notifications, and also features calendar integration. FlightView will be available through the Palm Pre App store when it launches.

Internet radio service provider Pandora was announced as a Pre partner back when the smartphone debuted at CES 2009, and it's nice to finally see the running application. Among other features, you will receive an inconspicuous alert in the notification bar along the bottom of the screen when a song changes.

Hey, Nascar fans. The Palm Pre will support Nascar Sprint Cup Mobile, where you can get live race audio, keep tabs on your favorite drivers and receive alerts on their latest results, and so on.

In addition to the Nascar mobile application, the Palm Pre will offer Sprint TV. This gives you access to programming from a variety of channels, including CNN, Comedy Central, Sprint Exclusive Entertainment, and ABC Mobile TV as shown here.

We weren't particularly impressed by the video quality of Sprint TV on the Pre. The picture was often blurred and there were a couple of hiccups when starting up the channel. To be fair, we've had similar experiences on other Sprint TV-enabled smartphones and cell phones.

Aside from the applications, we didn't really learn anything new at the event, namely pricing and release date. Palm did, however, make an announcement at the Web 2.0 Expo that it will make its Mojo SDK available to developers to create applications for the Palm Pre and Palm WebOS.

The remaining photos are more beauty shots of the Palm Pre. We found it extremely ridiculous that we couldn't even touch the Pre to put the smartphone in a different position for the photo--a representative had to do that for us.

The compact size (3.9 inches tall by 2.3 inches wide by 0.6 inch deep) and rounded edges should make for a nice fit in the hand.

On front, you have a 3.1-inch multitouch screen. Below the display, there's a gesture area where you can swipe your finger to navigate the phone and there's also a little trackball.

The Touchstone accessory provides an elegant way of charging the Pre. If a phone call comes in while the smartphone's on the Touchstone, the speakerphone will automatically activate if you decide to accept the call.

One reason why some users find the Palm Pre a more attractive option than the iPhone is the inclusion of a physical QWERTY keyboard.

The Pre has a nice curved shape when opened so it makes it more comfortable to hold when typing messages.

The Touchstone charger by itself. Note that the the accessory isn't wireless; it was simply on display this way at the event.