I am waiting for the Treo form factor WebOS phone. But for the moment have cancelled my order for the Nokia N97 and ordered a Touch Pro2.

WebOS looks fun and smart, with a few tricks up it’s sleeve that the iPhone doesn’t have, like multi-tasking. To be honest, though, the only time that I miss this is when I’m running something like Pandora Radio. I’m really envious of the Pre’s ability to let this app run in the background while you can switch between other apps, but that’s not even remotely enough to make me switch.

As I said yesterday, the Pre’s small physical keyboard is a real turn off for me. I couldn’t type well on a Treo, for crying out loud, so the Pre’s keyboard is a non-starter.

Lack of third party apps and games is also a red flag for me. At launch, the collection is feeble, and it doesn’t seem as if there’s a stampede of developers waiting in the wings, either. Yes, I know the iPhone didn’t have third party apps when it launched, either, but it was already a stunning device with an umatched, at that time, web browser, the media prowess of an iPod, and a delightful multi-touch UI. Now it also has a third party app and game catalogue that is unmatched in breadth, depth and quality on any other smartphone, and there is huge momentum behind the platform. That’s hard to give up.

But the biggest stumbling block for me with the Pre is that it seems to fall down as a media centric device. Battery life has been an almost universal complaint among all the reviewers, it offers only half the iPhone’s music playback time and only five hours of video playback compared to the iPhone’s seven. Several reviewers have complained of the Pre dying in late afternoon or early evening after what they describe as “light use”. I use my iPhone a lot, more than I have ever used any other PDA or smartphone, in fact. I would definitely class myself as a heavy user, so hearing that the Pre struggles under “light use” is an ominous sign for me. Yes, I know that you can swap out the Pre’s battery for a spare, but the battery life still seems awfully light. If I ever felt the need for some additional juice for my iPhone, I could just slap on a Morphie Juice Pack Air, double my battery life, and still have a device that was thinner than the Pre.

And, of course, the Pre doesn’t support DRM protected movies, movie rentals, tv shows, or audiobooks purchased through iTunes. There’s no Kindle app (yet?), nor any of the myriad of audio and video accessories available for the iPhone.

Bottom line: while the Pre appears to have many of the UI smarts of the iPhone, plus a few more of its own, I’d be giving up an awful lot just to have Pandora running in the background.

Sorry about the long post, but I’ve thought long and hard about the Pre!

But, long live Palm and their new WebOS. It seems the most exciting adventure they have ever taken into their hands!