Reviews for the Palm Pre generally agreed that WebOS was excellent, but the hardware needed some work. For one, the Palm Pre's keyboard was incredibly frustrating to use with its tiny, gummy keys and sharp edges. And you were forced to use the keypad, since Palm did not develop a software keyboard. Many reviewers griped about the limited 8GB of storage, which seemed measly compared to the 16GB and 32GB iPhone 3GS models and BlackBerry, Nokia and Windows Mobile phones with expandable memory.

Additionally, the decision to launch exclusively with Sprint most certainly harmed the platform more than it helped it. Initially, it seemed to make sense: Sprint did not have any flagship smartphones on its roster. In other words, it didn't have an iPhone. By having exclusive rights to sell the Pre, Sprint could gain new customers in the way AT&T had with the iPhone. But Sprint's monopoly went on for far too long and prevented Palm from reaching a wider audience. Sprint was the number three carrier and the Pre was simply not a strong enough device to pull in new customers. By the time the Pre came to Verizon (as the Pre Plus, with some slight hardware tweaks), the carrier was already pushing its Droid line of products, like the Motorola Droid. And once Sprint lost its exclusivity, it also realized it had much more pull with Android devices, like the Samsung Moment and particularly the HTC EVO 4G, and completely abandoned marketing efforts around the WebOS phones.

We also didn't see another WebOS phone to follow up the Pre until November 2009 with the launch of the , a lower end device targeted toward smartphone newbies. The Pixi was basically a smaller version of the Pre with a smaller display and even tinier keyboard. Like the Pre, the Pixi launched exclusively on Sprint and eventually made its way to Verizon. Essentially, Palm wasn't doing any hardware innovation; it was merely taking the same Pre hardware and making slight improvements to it. But really, more capacity, a better keyboard and video recording should have been on the first Pre at launch.

Perhaps Palm's biggest failure, however, was in apps. Developers didn't have access to WebOS tools until many months after the phone was announced. And it didn't let developers charge for apps until August--two months after the Pre launched. By the time Palm had worked out its developer program, it was pretty much confirmed that WebOS wasn't going anywhere and developers turned their sights to the Android Market.

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