The buzz is well deserved. Touted as the biggest mobile announcement at CES, Palm officially announces their new phone today. They were very tight-lipped about development up until now, with very very minor product leak, but we were able to find the scoop early, and were waiting with baited breath for the announcement.

Here are the deets: The announcement started with ex-Apple cum Palm Executive Chairman Jon Rubenstein. How did he come to Palm? In Mexico, of course. Palm CEO Ed Colligan wanted to restore innovation to Palm, and flew down to Mexico to meet Jon and it worked. Jon left the beaches of Mexico for Palm. "I'm a product guy," says Rubenstein. "Palm's DNA is mobile. The company is positioned to create the best mobile devices in the world...instead of having a bunch of mobile devices, take all that infomation, put it in one place, and let them interact using the right platform that's forward looking and powerful enough to handle all the complex information"

Bring on Ed Colligan. He wants to consolidate all our internet places in one: "Our lives live in a lot of different places on the internet." This is true. His thinking is to aggregate all those places into one working mobile device, "Default thinking isn't to hook up to your desktop PC, it's to connect to the cloud." I likes it. So what does this mean? Finally, a new OS for the Palm, called WebOS. It's built with developers in mind using standard web authoring tools: HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Know these? Then you can develop apps for Palm's WebOS. Ok, here's what we are all waiting for. The new phone is called the Palm Pre (pronounced like "free") and it is cute. Smaller than an iphone, it is a little like the HTC Touch. It's a little thicker, due to the slide out QWERTY keyboard.

The Hard Stuff

• Hardware specs:
• 4.5 oz in weight
• EvDO rev a
• Bluetooth stereo
• 802.11 b/g wifi capable
• Ti's latest OMAP 3430 processor
• 8GB storage
• GPS
• 3.1 in. multi-touch screen all the way to center button so you can flick and gesture all the way to the bottom of the screen
• 320x480 resolution
• ambient light sensor
• 3 megapixel camera with LED flash
• speaker
• accelerometer
• micro USB
• card storage slot
• 2.5mm jack
• removable battery

basically, super fast, super sensitive, and super storage-y.

The Soft Stuff

WinOS, the new Palm Operating System works on a Synergistic idea, and the interface is like shuffling around a deck of cards. Flick, drag and gesture from app to app without having to worry about your data. Whatever you flick away, it's autosaved. No import - just log into your accounts and all your contacts are pulled from your services without duplicates. Each contact's pictures are stacked behind each other under a single entry. So if you have LizMoney in your Outlook, Gmail, and Facebook, even AIM, it will pull all that info, stack it up, and consolidate it all under a single LizMoney entry. Synergy will also search for contacts across all address books automatically, and can follow the contact through their email information all the way to their IM handle. So with one tap or click, you can send a message via any of those services. And, it has Exchange OTA Sync. woo! The calendar compresses empty time blocks. Awesome. See only what you need to see. The browsing. Full view of websites, tilt for landscape viewing, multiple windows can be opened and viewed simultaneously. Bonus- notifications pop up beneath your running app, not overlapping what you are doing. Nice little feature.

When, Where, and How can I get me one?

No price point was mentioned, however, they will be available First Quarter of this year, and the hammer: Exclusivity with Sprint. argh.

Something terribly ironic and hilarious that happened earlier in the keynote on live.gdgt.com:

"11:10am - Sorry everybody, Sprint is, yet again, crapping out on us here."

And the reaction to the Sprint exclusivity via phonescoop.com:

"2:56 PM: No one clapped when it was announced that Sprint was going to be the exclusive carrier."

*crickets*

*tumbleweed blows across room*

So, from what it seems, Palm is back in the game as a serious contender for the iphone and the Google Android OS. Hopefully, the exclusivity with Sprint won't be a permanent thing. Thanks to the live bloggers at phonescoop.com, engadget.com, gdgt.com, cnet.com and for Scobleizer for the subversive video feed!