The Palm Pre unveiling stands in my memory as one of the most refreshing moments in modern history. Palm had done it—they had created a great phone Nokia would’ve killed for. But today, that’s just not enough.

As Palm teeters on the brink of either ruin or acquisition, let’s take stock of what they did right:

• They abandoned an entrenched but aging platform for something new an innovative, and they didn’t half-ass it: Palm OS was dead, WebOS was here.

• WebOS was actually good. If you discounted the lack of apps at launch, it was arguably more capable than anything else on the market.

• The Pre was totally buyable. It’s one of the few smartphones I’d consider buying, and would also recommend to the rest of my family. And the hardware didn’t suck.

• They got huge buzz, and they earned it.

Sure, their app ecosystem was slow to develop, and their TV ads were underwhelming at their best, and creepy at their worst. But that’s not what really matters, right? Palm accomplished something with the Pre, and we could all see that.

This was the line from Jason’s Pre review that he caught the most flak for, but seriously, fuck that, it was spot on:

I’m bored of the iPhone. The core functionality and design have remained the same for the last two years, and since 3.0 is just more of the same, and-barring some kind of June surprise-that’s another year of the same old icons and swiping and pinching. It’s time for something different.

The Pre’s spell was such that it made everything else feel old. Palm made something different—and it was something we would have paid obscene amounts of money for just a year prior. More than anything, Palm succeeded wildly at reinventing its products, its company and its image, by its own standards and by ours.

The problem is, it’s not 2006 anymore. Those standards don’t apply.

There was a time when it was enough for a company like Palm to release a fantastic phone, and for years, that’s exactly what they focused on. But today, to fight in the smartphone wars is to fight against multi-platform giants. And the rules of engagement have changed: It’s no longer phone vs. phone, or mobile OS vs mobile OS. Today there are apps, and even if a phone maker nails that ecosystem, they have to integrate it into the company’s other stuff: desktops, tablets, the living room, the workplace, the bathroom, the car—not to mention all the music, movies, TV and other media consumption any given human expects to be able to tap into on a new device.

The era of the standalone smartphone company is over. To say it plainly: If you want to make the best smartphone these days, it’s just not enough to make the best handset, or even the best OS. So pour one out for the indie phone makers! I, for one, am sorry to see them go.

UPDATE: Jon Rubinstein has issued a company-wide memo to soothe worried employees. It’s suitably last-stand-y:

To accelerate sales, we initiated Project JumpStart nearly three weeks ago. Since then, nearly two hundred Palm Brand Ambassadors, supplemented by Palm employees from Sunnyvale, have been training Verizon sales reps across the U.S. on our products. Early results from the stores have already shown improvement on product knowledge and sales week over week. You may have also seen a growing number of Palm ads on billboards, bus shelters, buses, and subway stations-all getting the word out about Palm.

As I said before, the root of Palm’s problems are essentially unaddressable, so it’s no shock that he doesn’t lay out a clear, detailed vision for a second (third?) Palm turnaround. But the sight of their CEO so obviously aiming a garden hose at a forest fire can’t be much comfort to Palmers, or investors.

Sprint customers: If you’re worried that you bought a first gen Palm Pre only to watch helplessly as Palm released a better Pre on Verizon, stop. The Palm Pre Plus is essentially the same phone as the Palm Pre.

Sure, there are minor hardware differences—most notably the doubling of the RAM and the storage space—but it essentially feels like the same phone.

What’s changed in the hardware

The three most visible changes you’ll notice are the removed front button, the matted inductive-charging-capable backplate and the slightly improved keyboard.

Palm realized with the Palm Pixi that a front button was unnecessary, since it broke up the smooth finish of the face, and replaced it with a touch-sensitive button instead. It’s what the Pre should have been like in the first place. The new touch button works fine, and within a few minutes you’ll barely even miss the hardware key like you would never miss a sixth toe you never had.

The keyboard has been upgraded as well, made much less mushy with more tactile feedback when you hit a key—another lesson Palm learned from the Pixi. You’ll type faster and more accurately with these keys compared to the original Pre, even though they don’t raise up any higher off the body and their layout remains unchanged.

The Touchstone-compatible inductive backing comes standard on the Pre Plus. Palm effectively lowered the cost of their inductive charger by $20—it’s $70 on Sprint, which comes with the back, and $50 on Verizon, which doesn’t—and makes the accessory all the easier to justify buying. Even if you don’t go the wireless charging route, the matted, inductive finish makes the phone a lot classier and less prone to fingerprint smudging.

Everything else is the same

That same cheese-cutting bottom edge of the phone is still there, and the overall mold of the device is exactly what we saw with the first Pre. There’s no change in camera, processor, graphical capability or screen. And, luckily for Pre owners, the software is identical, too.

Basically, if you didn’t like the original Pre, you won’t like the Pre Plus any more than before. But if you did like the Pre and didn’t want to jump to Sprint, Palm’s graciously brought it to you.

How does it compare to the original in performance?

Both phones took almost exactly two minutes to boot up, side by side. Flicking around, browsing websites, listening to music and answering emails—in any of these routine tasks, you’d never tell the two phones apart through blind testing. However, there is a slight difference when you start getting to heavy multitasking.

The increased RAM starts to be utilized when you open a LOT of apps—I’m talking about ten or more, something you normally wouldn’t do unless you were really bored, really forgetful or really lazy about closing your apps. Once you have all these things open at once, you’ll notice that the old Pre takes somewhere between 5 to 10 seconds longer to start up new applications than the Pre Plus. While this improvement may be handy for some, the fact that the discrepancy is only 5 to 10 seconds is a testament to how well the multitasking memory allocation worked in the original Pre. Once all these apps are open, there isn’t much difference, but switching around is a bit faster.

Mobile Hotspot

While the Sprint Pre lacks tethering, Verizon’s Palm Plus includes an excellent Mobile Hotspot app that’s quite simple to use. It’s essentially the same as other tethering apps out there: Fire up the app, set a hotspot password and switch on the tethering. Any Wi-Fi device (laptops, phones) will see the broadcasted network and be able to connect to it as you would any other hotspot.

And Verizon, although not the “fastest” 3G network, still gave pretty damn good speeds when I was testing this feature—and it’s reliable to boot. The only downside is the pricing, which we’ll cover later, but having a portable MiFi that’s also your phone can be a lifesaver if you need to connect from the field.

So that’s why Palm called this Plus

There isn’t enough to call this an entirely new series of Palm phones, or even a Palm Pre 2. The Pre Plus improved on the Pre in a few important regards, don’t get me wrong, but it’s essentially the same phone we’ve seen for the last six months. You won’t notice the increased memory unless you’re a habitual window-opener, nor will you appreciate the keyboard unless you really had a problem with the previous one.

So yes, it’s called the Palm Pre Plus for a reason. And it lets Verizon customers get in on the web OS action while staying on their preferred network—which is a good thing, and actually a decent move for Palm. Rather than try to suck more money off the same group of potential customers (Sprint users) with a phone that will be a bit better but not all that different, Palm went ahead and repackaged the same phone with slight modifications to a new sea of potential users.

I suspect that this strategy will grant Palm more return on their initial webOS/Palm Pre investment, justifying the production of an entirely new phone that catches up to both the Nexus One and the upcoming iPhone 4. For Palm’s sake, it better.

Pricing

The Palm Pre Plus will be $150 with a two-year contract on Verizon, and the Pixi Plus will be $100. That’s the same price as it is currently on Sprint—even though Sprint had some deals earlier to push their Pre down to the $100 range.

But, Verizon has a special deal where you can buy either a Pre Plus or a Pixi Plus and get one free Pixi Plus after mail-in rebate, if you want to switch your family over to all Palms.

Here’s the bad. The 3G hotspot feature will be an extra $40 on top of your existing voice and data plans, and it won’t be unlimited! Verizon will give you 5GB and charge 5 cents per MB that you go over. It’s pricey, but nice to have in an emergency.

And here are the voice plans that go with. You’ll be able to buy the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus—which we didn’t review, because it’s the same exact hardware with Mobile Hotspot added—January 25.

More RAM and storage means a slightly better experience, but you might not notice it


Keyboard is improved


Hotspot tethering app is somewhat unique, since it’s officially sponsored by the provider


Still a fan of webOS as a smartphone platform, and it’s still in good shape here


Still not as many apps as Android or iPhone yet


It’s basically the same phone as the Palm Pre


Hotspot access is expensive

Background can be found here

If you’re in the market for a WebOS Plus device then they’ll cost you $150 for the Pre and $100 for the Pixi whenever Verizon launches them.

We just did some live video from the Palm lounge where we saw the Pixi and Pre Plus, two improvements to the current WebOS line-up. Notable points? The 3D gaming was quite impressive and the design has been considerably improved in this iteration.

Someone’s gotta help Palm out. After the somewhat lukewarm response to the Pixi and the Pre, it’s rather surprising that Verizon would decide to place a big order. Word is though, that’s exactly what they did.

For the first time ever, every major carrier in the US actually has smartphones worth buying, meaning you don’t have to break up to get a good phone. Here’s the best phones on each one, along with the best deals.

If you hate the gallery format, click here.

All pricing shown is with a new 2-year contract, and some deals may be temporary.

AT&T

iPhone 3GS
The iPhone 3GS is the best overall smartphone you can buy. It’s really that simple. Best user interface, best internet, best apps, best media support—the list goes on. Okay, not the best network, but nothing’s perfect. $199

BlackBerry Bold 9700
I miss the original BlackBerry Bold’s king-sized keyboard, but the Bold 9700 squeezes the best of the BlackBerry for CEOs into an impressively tight form factor—faux leather back included—making it very possibly the best BlackBerry you can buy. $10

Bonus: Nokia e71x
It’s free, and an actually good smartphone—my favorite Nokia phone on the planet. Free

Verizon

Droid
It’s a terminator. A huge, disgustingly high-res screen, Batman-worthy industrial design, and the full power of Android 2.0 make it the best phone on Verizon—and the fact that it’s running on arguably the best network in the US make it the second best smartphone you can buy, period. $150

BlackBerry Tour
Sure, it’s notorious for trackball problems and it’s missing Wi-Fi, but this is the BlackBerry of choice for email warriors if they’re not on AT&T or T-Mobile—and it sure as hell beats anything running Windows Mobile. $50

Bonus: Droid Eris
If you’re desperate to save $100 over the Droid, the Droid Eris will run Android 2.0 soon enough, and is smoother, smaller, and friendlier, if a little blander. $100

Sprint

Palm Pre
The Pre offers one of the best user experiences of any smartphone with Palm’s webOS, and it’s probably the best phone on Sprint, hardware build issues and comparatively dinky App Catalog aside. $80

HTC Hero
The best Android phone not running Android 2.0, HTC’s Sense UI makes the sometimes confusing Android interface more digestible and has a few nifty tricks of its own, like integrated social networking. $100

Bonus: There is none. The Pixi’s close ($25), but the fact that you can get the Pre for nearly as cheap undercuts a lot of the value, as much as we like the design and form factor.

T-Mobile

Motorola Cliq
Motorola’s other Android phone is gussied up with Blur, a custom interface that’s bright and friendly, with widgets for keeping track of everything happening on your social network. It’s our favorite Android phone on T-Mobile. $100

Unlocked iPhone
No, I’m not kidding. A jailbroken and unlocked iPhone, even without 3G powers, is the second best smartphone you can use on T-Mobile.

Bonus: BlackBerry Bold 9700
The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is the first BlackBerry with 3G on T-Mobile, which is reason enough, really, but it’s good the reasons listed above, too. $130