The Pre's screen is a 3.1-inch diagonal, smaller than the iPhone's 3.5-inch display, but the two share the same resolution: 320 by 480 pixels. The screens have different feels, too: the iPhone's is made of glass while the Palm's feels more like hard plastic--in addition, if you catch the Pre's screen in the right light, you can see a grid of "dots" which I presume is related to the touch sensors. Both screens are touch-capable and, more to the point, both are capable of multitouch, a feature previously unique to the iPhone.switch--

On the top right corner of the Pre, you'll find the power button and, next to it, a switch that toggles between ring and silent mode. In the center of the Pre's top side is a standard 3.5mm stereo headphone jack. The left-hand side of the Pre has the volume up and down buttons; the right-hand side sports a small door behind which hides the Pre's microUSB port, used for both data and power. Unfortunately, the door is attached with a thin plastic tether that just begs to be torn off by accident.

The front of the Pre is largely featureless, aside from the earphone at the top (which looks suspiciously like a button at first glance--several people to whom I showed the Pre tried to press it) and the translucent Center button right below the screen. The pinhole-sized microphone is also there, just to the left and below of the button. The back of the device has a 3-megapixel camera with LED flash and the Pre's speaker.

Of course, the Pre is more than meets the eye, though it doesn't do anything as drastic as transform from a plane into a giant robot. But slide the screen upwards and the Pre's QWERTY keyboard is revealed. While this isn't perfectly obvious at first (some people tried to "open" the Pre as you might a book), it's natural enough once you've figured it out.

In general, the Pre feels pretty good in the hand in this retracted mode, though its use is limited, since any text entry requires you to slide out the keyboard. At that point, however, the chintzy build quality and poor hardware design really starts to show.

Not that there aren't other signs of that. For one thing, the power button, which you need to use to wake the device from sleep (pressing the Center button won't do it) is on the back half of the unit. As a result, when you slide the screen upwards, the power button is now obscured by the front half of the phone, so you have to reach around the unit to press it. At that point it's also flush with the back of the display slider, which makes it somewhat awkward to press. In fact, it's often easier to slide the unit closed, hit the power button, and then slide it open again.