Palm's 'Pre Day' Just Two Days Away

The biggest smartphone showdown of the summer is just two days away.

The Palm Pre smartphone is being released June 6 (will D-Day now be known as Pre-Day?) amid massive hype, glowing reviews and what some believe will be the biggest threat yet to Apple's iPhone.

The Pre is "is an elegant, joyous, multitouch smartphone; it's the iPhone remixed," according to The New York Times.

The Palm Pre includes e-mail, Wi-Fi and GPS, unified messaging and calendar with Palm Synergy, which integrates Outlook, Google and Facebook calendars into one view. Palm's Web site also previews applications such as Fandango (to browse movie listing and buy tickets) and Pandora (personalized radio). It's also expected to play nice with Apple's iTunes and Twitter on its Palm webOS platform.

The Pre starts at $199.99 and is available on Sprint.

A review on Reuters said the long-awaited Pre has nice new touches, but that Palm has more work to do for it to be a serious competitor to the iPhone. "The device seemed to live up to some expectations but fall short on others," according to Reuters.

Palm faces stiff competition from more than just the iPhone. Research In Motion, Google and even Microsoft are putting more weight behind smartphones. Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner, told USA Today that the Palm brand has waned over the years, since its Treo device debuted back in 2002.

Palm is going all out for its marketing campaign for the Pre. The company is planning an online premiere on Facebook and debuted a TV commercial at a VIP event in Hollywood last night that was hosted by "Seinfeld" alum Jason Alexander.

The ad was directed by Tarsem, who created such music videos as REM's "Losing My Religion" and other commercials for Nike and Coca-Cola. It includes more than 1,000 martial arts performers orchestrated by Sun Yupeng, who previously choreographed the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics, according to Jon Zilber on Palm's official blog.

Palm needs the Pre to be a success after its smartphone revenue fell 72 percent in the third fiscal quarter ended Feb. 27, compared with the year-ago quarter.

"We're proceeding through a challenging transitional period; however, our current results shouldn't overshadow the tremendous progress we've made against our strategic goals. We're poised to usher in a new era at Palm," said Ed Colligan, Palm president and CEO, in a statement in March.