Oddly the Palm Pre 2 has only been in the market not too long ago, some market doesn’t even have it yet, and well who would bother about the Pre 2 now that HP has announced the Pre 3. HP calls the Pre 3 a “world phone” because of support for HSPA+ and EVDO Rev. A (CDMA), so you won’t see problem like the iPhone 4 having GSM first and CDMA later. HP is doing what Palm can’t do to webOS, a worldwide exposure, as HP has presence in about 170 countries.

The Pre 3 is a 3.6-inch QWERTY slider with 480 x 800 resolution, nothing fancy like Retina Display here. There’s also no dual-core fun, as it’s powered by a very powerful 1.4GHz Qualcomm MSM8x55 single core Snapdragon Soc. Well, the Pre 3 is indeed being market as a workhorse instead of a playful phone so there’s not really any need for a powerful chip with 3D capability and HDMI-out. Memory size is the same as the Pre 2, which is 512MB of memory.

Still, there’s a 5-Megapixel camera with LED flash that’s capable of HD video recording, and a front facing camera for video call. You get to choose between 8GB or 16GB of storage. Connectivity wise, that’s a pretty standard 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR. There’s also accelerometer, proximity and light sensor, and a compass.

No webOS 3.0 here though, as the Pre 3 will be running on webOS 2.2 instead. It’ll be Touchstone compatible, naturally, and will switch to Exhibition mode when docked to show pictures and upcoming appointments. There’s some interesting synergy going on where the TouchPad tablet can take Pre 3′s phone calls, and just touching the two devices together will let you share URLs (aptly titled touch-to-share).

It’ll be available this summer, which puts it straight up to the upcoming iPhone, which sources close to our friends in Hong Kong and Shen Zhen have told us that production of the next iPhone will be ready by June.

And if you’ve not notice, HP didn’t call this smartphone a Palm Pre 3, but just HP Pre 3. Sadly, the absence of the Palm brand name is indeed a casualty of this acquisition and subsequent “scale”. You will be missed, Palm. RIP.

SOURCE via Palm