The new Palm Pre won Best of CES 2009 and People's Voice awards, honors conferred by CNET and the Consumer Electronics Association, becoming the first smartphone since 2006 to win the show's highest honor.

CES 2009

CES 2009 is short for the Consumer Electronic Show 2009 which was held in Las Vegas and where Palm launched the Pre smartphone and the new webOS platform that powers it.

CNET explained that "the Palm Pre along with the new Palm Web OS, brings an innovative way to how you interact with your device and how it organizes information. The Deck of Cards feature truly makes multi-tasking on your smartphone a breeze, and the Synergy functionality pulls in all your personal management information (e-mail, contacts, and calendar) from various sources into one place. Sure, other devices and operating systems have made similar attempts, but from what we've seen, the Palm Pre is the first smartphone to truly deliver on this in a seamless way."

"[T]he Pre offers a multi-touch screen that rivals the iPhone and even one-ups Apple's smartphone with a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard. The list of features is long and impressive, including a full HTML Web browser, a full range of wireless options, and multimedia capabilities," added CNET.

In an initial review, CNET senior editor Bonnie Cha found the Pre impressive.

Cha described the Pre's UI as "beautiful and smooth, and just plain cool", and that the phone has "best-of-breed" design.

Cha also wrote that the Pre's web browser is "pretty outstanding", adding that the new phone "offers so much that I could write on it forever".