Pre Community had the opportunity to sit down with execs from Palm and Sprint today, following the official launch of the Pre, to find out more about their new smartphone. The Pre marks a significant change for Palm, not only in terms of physical design but also in their new, webOS platform. Although there were many areas still either to be confirmed or that Palm declined to comment upon, read on for more details than previously given.

Palm confirmed that, while the SDK will not be entirely open to modification, it would be broad in its flexibility. A Palm OS emulator, for instance, would be both possible and permitted, though the company themselves have no plans to create one. webOS will also support over-the-air (OTA) firmware updates, rather than requiring a full plugged-in ROM reflash as on previous Palm devices, and tasks such as pairing Bluetooth devices and switching between them have also been streamlined.

The data connection is constantly open in the background, serving the open apps; according to Palm the amounts of traffic involved are small, but we’d still expect Sprint to be pushing an all-you-can-eat data plan with the Pre. The handset will support push messaging with Exchange, though not with any other app or service, and messages and other details are cached so that they can still be accessed even without a network connection.

webOS’ “card” system for handling open apps is one of the more intuitive task managers, freezing all but the audio app so that multiple programs can be running at the same time. The audio player is a different matter, though, and can be left running while the Pre surfs the web or is used to browse images. In a worst-case memory scenario the Pre will close background apps, but Palm claim it’s a rare event.

Palm wouldn’t comment on YouTube or Flash support for the Pre, although neither is present on the handset in its current alpha state (it does have a Facebook client, however). Neither would they confirm the supplier of the capacitive touch panel, though a sensible guess would be Synaptics. Although Palm agreed that they could’ve accommodated a larger display, they purposefully chose to include the gesture bar so as to preserve their historic one-handed operation.

Since one of the biggest challenges with releasing a new smartphone, especially one as complicated as the Pre, Sprint are planning education sessions for buyers. Users will be able to select different areas of interest – such as Google Calendar integration – and find out how to make the most of their new handset. According to Sprint, too, the total cost of ownership will be significantly smaller than that of rival devices: they suggested in excess of $1,000 less than the iPhone 3G.

While Apple’s device will be seen by many as the Pre’s natural competitor, our initial hands-on experience suggests that it’s in fact the most different smartphone from that we’ve seen. Yes, both handsets have a capacitive touchscreen, but the GUI and webOS not only bear no visual relation to the iPhone but the method of interaction feels new and distinct.

It’s early days – early alpha, in fact – but already the Palm Pre is looking to be particularly distinctive and, in a welcome change for the company, promising handset. webOS and the always-connected paradigm it represents looks like it could be one of the best implementations of cloud computing for mobile devices. This is certainly one smartphone we’ll be eagerly anticipating.