Pcworld has had a Palm Pre handset for about 2 weeks and has now delved deep into the Palm webOS for a look see and have come up with several positive and a few negative aspects of the Palm Pre and webOS.

On the positive side, the Palm Pre and webOS, the Palm Pre looks great, and is relatively tiny when closed with a single centre key on its face. The webOS works like shuffling a deck of cards thus allowing the user to minimise applications and flip through cards to jump between applications and when wanting to view simply touch the centre button.

The webOS browser is consistently speedy and intuitive albeit a few rendering issues while navigation controls are similar to that of the iPhone Safari browser. The Palm Pre uses a device wide search function similar to iPhone OS 3.0 Spotlight.

On the negative side, there are some serious battery issues as battery life doesn’t last long, in a test the Palm Pre only managed 3:40 hours of life. The build quality feels flimsy especially when the keyboard is slid open, and is constructed pf a thin black plastic which feels like it could easily chip.

There is also some give when the keyboard is closed between the main section and the sliding unit which can actually twist slightly and thus does give hopes for lasting too long. The keyboard is simply too small with several keys being covered simultaneously with a thumb. So for the full ins and outs of the review just follow the link.