Palm Pre Browser Based on WebKit

The big news out of CES (the Consumer Electronics Show where all the big electronics companies who their wares) was that Palm is, in fact, still in business. Not only are they still in business, but it looks like they actually want to stay in business since they announced a slick looking touchscreen phone. It's called the Palm Pre and it runs Palm's new WebOS.

There are a few things of interest about the Pre to us iPhone users:

1. It appears not to suck, which means that the iPhone might have some good competiotion. Competition will keep Apple on their toes, and theoretically will result in an even better iPhone, so iPhone users win.

2. The Pre's web browser is based on WebKit, which is the HTML-rendering engine that powers all versions of Safari (on the iPhone, Mac, and PC). More people using WebKit means that now companies will have even more reason to make sure their Web sites work with WebKit.

Here's hoping the Pre lives up to the hype. But keep in mind that at this point no one outside of Palm has actually held one of these devices (in all the briefings journals watched Palm employees use a Pre, they weren't allowed to fiddle with the device themselves.). So, as far as we know, they could be totally made out of cardboard.