It looks great and I wish I could afford one.

But I now have a Palm Pre with Sprint cell service for one month. (My regular cell phone that you reach when you call 916-436-1418 is on the Verizon Wireless network.)

I unboxed it and got it ‘activated.’ Have a Palm Pre with a Touchstone charger. The Touchstone is kinda cool.

So I spent most of today using it to get the feel of the WebOS and features. I tried a couple things and it seemed like there was something wrong. I remembered that there was an OS update recently so I checked that and got the latest installed (1.2.1) I then installed a few free apps (Pandora, Flashlight, gDial and The Weather Channel) and ‘bought’ a free MP3 via Amazon MP3. (I tried Amazon MP3 before the OS upgrade and previously you had to use WiFi to get your download, the 1.2.1 ‘fixed’ that so you can use the Sprint network.)

I set up email accounts and the apps that I downloaded. After using it all day, I feel like it needs a ‘developer evangelist’ or something. It just isn’t complete.

If Google can make decent apps running under the iPhone AND Android, why can’t Palm get them to make them for WebOS?

The web browser has some UI issues to deal with and it tries to hard to mimic an iPhone at the user agent level.

When docked, and turned 90 degrees on the touchstone, it doesn’t react and turn the screen, nor does the screen ever seem to go out when it is charging.

Well, this is supposed to be about my WebOS Dev experience, so  I will try to focus more on that.

I just wanted to give some feedback from general use of the Palm Pre. I am not sure if I would want one over an iPhone or DROID, however, it seems to be a solid, small phone that would appeal to many who want a simple smartphone.

Now I just need to call Scoble and talk with him about what the “Building 43 app” is going to be about as I learn WebOS (as my background is with VB.NET)

Robert Scoble has been busy and has not been able to send me the Palm Pre yet.

I will do more updates when I have it in my paws and get a chance to ‘get inside’ of it.

One note, a VZW employee did tweet that they will have Palm Pre’s on their network early next year, so that is something interesting to look forward to. (I am waiting to hear if the Sprint Palm Pre can be flashed to run on the VZW network after release.)

On a semi-related note, VZW did post their DroidDoes.com site today for their new Motorola build Google Android powered phones supposedly being released on October 30, 2009.