The start of a new smartphone and the birth of a new community.  Pre Community is dedicated not only to the latest news, rumors and information about Palm’s new device, but to building a forum of fans, developers and users who want to share their knowledge and expertise about the Pre.

We kicked off the week with exclusive coverage from the Palm Pre launch at CES 2009, having liveblogged the whole event.  We then sat down with Palm and Sprint execs for a Q&A session, filling in some of the blanks from the handset’s public debut.  Much of the Pre’s magic is thanks to Palm’s new mobile platform, webOS, and we looked at what exactly makes it special here.  Palm have already released a private beta of the SDK, but they’ve promised a general release later on.  If you can code a reasonable webpage, Palm say you should be able to code for the Pre.

Exact launch dates are unknown, and while Sprint are confirmed as the initial exclusive carrier in the US, we’ve also heard rumors that Best Buy Mobile are the exclusive US retail partner, while Vodafone are likely to be the carrier of choice in the UK.

If you want to get instantly up to speed on hardware and software – at least, what’s public knowledge right now – then you could do worse than check out this roundup article.  Oh, and since so many people are asking – yes, the Pre does have copy & paste.

The people behind Pre Community are the same as behind SlashGear, iPhone Buzz, Phone Magazine, Android Community and more.  Once you’ve signed up to the forums, come check us out!