[5:55 pm UPDATE: We've posted a new video that highlights some of our first impressions of the Palm Pre. See our latest post, The Palm Pre: A First Look. Or, you can view the video of our First Look at the Palm Pre directly on ConsumerReports.org. We've also included here a 9-minute long video of Palm officially demonstrating the Palm Pre at CES, which was shot last January by our colleagues at Which, a British consumer magazine and Web site similar to Consumer Reports. —Ed.]

Having used the Palm Pre now for most of two days, my positive impressions from a first demo of the new Sprint smart phone are mostly being reinforced. I'll have more about the phone later today. Meantime, here are two pluses from my weekend notes, along with a couple of quibbles.

It's a great multitasker. The unique interface, which uses a playing-card-like icon for each application, is an excellent way to juggle lots of programs. It's almost impossible to get lost. When you're done with any card, you just flick it off the page. There's no back button; instead you slide your finger along the gesture area at the bottom of the display to move the card back. It's easy to do, if not as fast as the back button on many phones.

The display is bright and responsive. Like the display on the iPhone, you pinch, tap, or swipe to zoom in or to move to the next page. Images or documents automatically reorient when you tilt the phone. I did find the display to be a hair less responsive that that of the iPhone’s, which sometimes made placing the cursor within text be more challenging than on the Apple phone.

Now two quibbles:

Tiny keys. I find the keys on the keyboard to be a tad small and close together, challenging my slightly chubby fingers to hit the right ones. And I didn’t detect any predictive text to help.

The ringer is quiet. I found it to be noticeably lower in volume than other phones. I couldn't hear it all in a loud Japanese restaurant—though admittedly the 10 screaming pre-teen girls (including my twin daughters) in my party were tough competition for any phone. —Mike Gikas.