Palm has been in the doldrums of the smartphone world, as they've watched the iPhone and BlackBerry eat into its base of customers, but the Pre may be the mark of a comeback.

The Palm Pre has created plenty of buzz since it was announced back in January, and though U.S. customers have had a few months to play with it already, Canadians will be able to get their hands on it starting today.

So why is the Pre so noteworthy? Well, a lot of it starts with the design of the phone but the gist of it is in the way you can interact with the phone's features.

The Pre has the dual benefit of having both a 3.1" touchscreen and a full QWERTY keyboard that slides out from the bottom. It's a nimble phone that is a complete departure from the bulky and boxy form factors of Palm phones like the Treos and Centros from days gone by. It's simply a phone that feels nice in your hand, and the rubberized backing certainly helps you grip it. The middle button under the screen somewhat resembles the trackball BlackBerrys have, but it actually functions a lot more like the iPhone's home button. Push it and you can get right back to your home screen, no matter what you're doing. To the left of the button is an unseen sensor that acts like a back button. Slide your finger from right to left and you will go back one page - slick and elegant at the same time.

But the key draw is in how the Pre handles its core functions. One of the biggest, without question, is the ability to run multiple applications at the same time. For example, if you have Facebook open on a Web browser, but you then want to open YouTube, (which is a standalone app on the Pre) you can simply go over to open it and it will place itself next to the Facebook page in an elegant layout menu that you can navigate by simply swiping your finger across. And it just grows and grows once you open up other apps like, Google Maps, your contacts, email and whatever else you might need at any given time. When you want to get rid of an app, simply swipe it up away from the screen, and it's gone. The iPhone and BlackBerry can't do this, as they both require you to leave an app and go back to the desktop before launching another app. You can, however, play music in the background with those devices, while opening another app, but that's not the same thing as what the Pre does.

Then there's Palm Synergy, which is the term Palm uses to describe how the Pre collects all the data for your contacts and calendars and aggregates them into a user-friendly interface. So, think of how you could sync over all your work contacts, your Yahoo! or Gmail contacts and calendar events, and even your Facebook contacts. The beauty of this is that all of this information is elegantly placed where it belongs with each contact. And best of all, no matter how you stay in touch with a contact, be it a text message, phone call or even an instant message, the correspondence is laid out in a threaded conversational format. Given the kind of clutter that can happen with the various ways in which you can keep in touch with your contacts, this aggregated method works wonders for keeping things neat.

There is also a cool universal search feature that rocks, too. Slide out the keyboard and start typing what you want, and as you key in each letter, everything from apps and contacts start appearing to match your search. If it's something that doesn't match, then the Pre gives you four options - Google, Google Maps, Wikipedia and Twitter - to continue your search further. The cool thing about this is that you don't have to launch an app separately, since everything is automatically done for you. The downside to all this is that the Pre doesn't provide results from your email from your search query. The iPhone's Spotlight search can garner results from apps, contacts, emails, documents and even songs, albums or artists. Still, Palm is on the right track, but will need to add more to the feature for the Pre's search capabilities to improve even more.

As a music device, the Pre won't win any awards, but it has a solid speaker and the 3.5mm jack means you can use whatever headphones you want. A bonus here is that the Pre can work with iTunes because the software recognizes the phone as an iPod. This means that you can copy over all your music with ease on both a PC or Mac. When plugging in the phone to your computer, tap Media Sync on the phone, and the rest is a basic step-by-step process to set up.

Despite how unique and impressive the Pre is, there are some drawbacks and omissions that hurt it a bit. It doesn't have the processing power of, say, the iPhone 3GS or BlackBerry Bold, so it doesn't open apps as quickly as those two phones do. The Palm App Catalog is only a little more than 12 apps strong, compared to the iPhone's 65,000 apps and the BlackBerry's increasing roster of apps in its App World store. The built-in 3-megapixel camera shoots decent photos, but doesn't do video. The accelerometer, which allows you to shift from portrait to landscape mode, only works with certain apps and not the general interface. And lastly, the battery life on the Pre isn't great, as the juice does run out faster than I would've liked.

Still, there is a lot to like about the Pre and its potential. Though Sprint customers in the U.S. can't tether the Pre to their laptops for Internet access, Bell will offer that as a service. Palm will also undoubtedly improve the phone's performance with periodic software updates. Either way, I have no qualms in saying that the Pre is definitely one of the best phones Bell has ever offered.

The Palm Pre is available for $599.95 without a contract or $199.95 on a three-year contract.