Palm Pre Sweeps CNET Best of CES Awards

Everyone knows who CNET is. They were a gadget site before gadget sites became en vogue. Heck, my mom looks at CNET (Hi, Mary) and she thinks QWERTY is a Moroccan chicken dish. The point is, CNET has built up some major credibility the last 15 years, providing technology news and reviews. In the past, they've become very familiar with Palm products, loved them some of Palm's products and others...well, not so much.

Each year, at the Consumer Electronics Show, CNET and the Consumer Electronics Association hand out The Best of CES awards, which “represent the cream of the crop at the most important trade show in the consumer electronics industry,” according to CNET. The CNET editorial team recognizes the best new products at the show with awards in ten categories, an overall Best of Show award, and the People's Voice award that's selected by CNET's online audience.

You may have heard that Palm recently announced a new operating system, Palm webOS, along with the first phone that webOS will run on, the Palm Pre. Well we just returned from Las Vegas, where CES is held and we're ecstatic to report that the editors at CNET have bestowed upon the Palm Pre three Best of CES awards: the Best Cell Phone / Smartphone, the People's Voice award, decided by over 10,000 CNET readers, and, last but not least, the Best in Show Award, given to the best overall product at the show. This is the first time ever that CNET has awarded all three awards to the same product. Check out this video of CNET Senior Editor, Bonnie Cha and Palm Vice President of Smartphone Product Marketing, Stephane Maes, walking through the Palm Pre.

The indomitable David Pogue of The New York Times, was also quite impressed with the Palm Pre, calling it the “Belle of the Ball” and the “Buzz of CES,” while appearing on CNBC. And on Engadget, former SNL veteran and future Conan O’Brien replacement, Jimmy Fallon, was also very impressed with the Pre.

Needless to say, much more to come on the Palm blog regarding the Palm webOS and Palm Pre, so stay tuned.

Alex H.
Edelman for Palm

Comments

[Palm, Inc.]

Ed -- fair enough. As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, we haven't announced any specific plans for if or how legacy apps will be supported on Pre. But one of the strengths of webOS is the ease of development. Depending on your particular needs, that might translate into ways of supporting existing applications or the emergence of even-more-powerful applications that fully leverage the capabilities of the Pre and webOS.

Jon Z at Palm

[Rick Groom]

The Palm Pre is looking to be one of the most powerful smartphones I have seen. Thanks for finally bringing "multitasking" into the mobile world. With all of the capabilities of the new WebOS and OMAP processor the Pre really stands out as a highly capable phone and multimedia device. I, like many others are hoping the final release will build on some of the features that so many other mobile devices fall short on. I really hope to see an SD card slot to be able to take more of our media with us, my HD movies will really fill up the 8GB quickly. One of the other features that very few other mobile devices have is a "video out" feature. The OMAP specifications seem capable of this feature. Oh how I would love to simply plug in the Pre to a TV, especially when traveling. This could even be done through a USB adapter and still continue to receive power through TouchStone. Palm has really created something exciting and revolutionary and I cannot wait for its release. Keep up the great work and best of luck on sales, you defiantly have my $$!