HP Pre 3 hands-on!

We’ve just scored some hands-on time with HP’s latest and greatest smartphone and needless to say, we have some quick preliminary thoughts and feedback to share. We’re not going to beat around the bush here… this is the webOS smartphone we’ve been waiting for. When Palm debuted webOS on the Palm Pre, we were blown away. The OS was truly a breath of fresh air in a smartphone industry that was starting to look very flat in terms of appealing options. As much as we loved the OS is as disappointed we were in the hardware, however. The build was bad, the keypad was entirely too small and the display was miles behind the competition. The Pixi hardly helped Palm’s case, of course, and the Pre 2 is a phone we would have just as soon seen HP scrap. The Pre 3 is webOS’s saving grace in the near-term smartphone space. The build and feel are as close to perfect as we can hope for, the 3.6-inch 480 x 800-pixel display is sharp and stunning, and the keyboard is finally — finally — spread out and usable. WebOS also screams on this puppy thanks to Qualcomm’s next-generation 1.4GHz Snapdragon processor, offering a fluid UX that rivals even the slickest of smartphones currently on the market. Definitely check out our HP Pre 3 gallery below and don’t forget to view our hands-on impressions of the HP Veer and HP TouchPad as well!