After having some time to read others opinions of the Pre, play with it myself and get familiar with the hardware I put together a 10 minute video highlighting the positives and negatives of the phone. In the end, the positives far outweigh the negatives:

In addition to looking incredible and feeling incredible the Palm Pre has two perks that many smartphones don’t – a 3.5mm headset jack and a camera that has an LED flash. These two small inclusions extend the use of your phone much further than you might initially imagine. I maintain that the hardware keyboard is still much better than being stuck with a touch only keyboard input and the 320×480 pixel screen is crystal clear.

Some of the shortcomings – cramped keyboard, plasticy feel, no extended memory – were a matter of tradeoff. You can’t have everything, sometimes you must decide between two things and what you choose depends on your priorities. Palm made it clear that their priorities were to produce a handset that felt perfect in your hand and that is EXACTLY what they created. Mission 100% successful.

If your OWN priorities in the same situation would be different, fret not – the Palm Pre is one of what will become many WebOS phones. They’ll obviously target different types of users with different types of phones, features and solutions and perhaps a combination more suitable for you will touch down at a carrier near you sometimes soon. But regardless of where you stand on the Palm Pre, there is no denying that it has instantly catapulted itself into position as one of the top 3 phones on the market with the other two of course being the T-Mobile G1 and iPhone 3G.

And you know why those are the Top 3 phones? Because they’ve got the top 3 operating systems – Android, iPhone OS and Paml WebOS. Nearly left in the dust for dead 6 months ago, Palm has once again become part of the pack.