In-Depth Videos of Groundbreaking Palm Pre in Action

The other day we brought you our initial reactions to the Palm Pre, and now we’ve spent some quality time with the device, I’m pretty confident that Palm has a hit on its hands. In fact, several people that we’ve spoken to at CES have said they would be willing to switch carriers to pick the Pre up from Sprint when it launches (sometime during the first half of this year).

We had an opportunity to sit down with Palm’s Peter Skillman, VP of design for the company, to do an in-depth video walkthrough of the Palm Pre’s most compelling features, including the deck-of-cards-like UI that lets you re-arrange apps with ease; Synergy technology for contacts, e-mail, and messaging; non-obtrusive notifications; and universal search. When the cameras were off Peter was nice enough to answer a lot of burning questions we had.

Highlights of our chat included:

• Universal search, as of today, does not work with e-mail. We asked whether this functionality could extend to partners other than Google, Wikipedia, Google Maps–like Amazon’s music store–and were told that Palm is working to extend universal search with other partners.
• Amazon will be the music store provider, no Sprint, but Palm was unable to confirm if downloads will be permitted over EV-DO and Wi-Fi. We’re assuming yes. Sprint will offer its TV service for the device.
• Flash support is not promised for the browser. However, give the fact that Palm’s VP of software marketing Pam Deziel used to be at Adobe, many have their hopes up.
• We asked whether Palm will have something similar to HotSync for those who want to be able to sync directly with Outlook via USB, but Palm can’t confirm if this ability will be enabled. If not, it’s always easy to sync Outlook with Google Calendar on your desktop and then just do everything in the cloud.
• It’s not yet clear how users will be able to add others’ calendars and whether you’ll be able to do this directly from the Pre, but we assume you will be able to.

Can’t get enough of the Pre? These videos should tide you over until Sprint officially pulls the trigger.

Palm Pre Interview Part 1

Palm Pre Interview Part 2

Palm Pre Interview Part 3

Palm Pre Interview Part 4

Palm Pre Interview Part 5