I got my hands on the Palm Pre yesterday – a smooth, black smartphone that has been likened to a "polished riverstone".
Don't try and skim it, I was advised.
Three years in the making, the Pre represents Palm's attempt to get back to the top of the smartphone league, after being left behind by Apple's iPhone and the Blackberry.
The company popularised personal digital assistants in the 1990s with product such as the Palm Pilot.
The Pre comes with a lot of the nifty features you've come to expect from a smartphone.
Aside from 8Gb of storage and the 3 megapixel camera, the full qwerty keyboard is worthy of note.
And it has a clever way of charging – you put it on a so-called Touchstone and it charges through magnetic induction.
Palm yesterday confirmed my colleague Richard Wray's story last week that O2 will be its exclusive partner in the UK.
O2, which already has an exclusive deal for the iPhone, hopes the Palm will lure new customers as well as tempting existing ones to upgrade.
There are no details on pricing yet, but the Pre will be on sale in time for Christmas.
O2's parent company, the Spanish group Telefonica, also has deals in Ireland, Spain and Germany.
The Pre has been available in the US since last month through the Sprint network, but no other deals elsewhere in the world have been announced.
