It didn't take long for the first cracked screen report to surface, with our first confirmed crack being photographed and posted on our forums at 7:52pm on 6/7/09 (that's the day after launch).

It first appeared to be an isolated incident, but it quickly became apparent that this is not a unique problem. A fair number of individuals are reporting screen cracks originating from the center button, and then spider-webbing up the device. Thankfully, Sprint seems to be on the ball with the problem, and most folks are reporting replacement devices being handed out without having to go through the TEP or paying any deductible.

This is certainly not a good sign, with devices barely out of the box already showing some pretty severe durability issues. These are also not devices that are being dropped, and most folks are reporting just pulling the device out of their pocket only to see the massive crack. If you've encountered a cracked screen of your own, or know someone who has, please let us know in the comments! If this turns out to be a widespread problem, it could spell very serious trouble for Palm and Sprint alike.

The Touchstone originally appeared in the Best Buy systems with an “In Stock Date” of May 10th, suggesting that the retailer was already holding stock of the accessory.  It’s been priced at $79.99, which is on the high side for a cellphone charger, even one offering “wireless” recharging.

My Pre forum member “elfnt6″ who works in Best Buy has confirmed that his store is yet to receive any Touchstones.  The evidence seems to be suggesting an early June arrival for the Palm Pre, just ahead of the company’s “first half of 2009″ launch promise.

The Palm Eos will have half the storage of the Pre, at 4GB, and a 2-megapixel fixed-focus camera with flash and video capture functionality.  There’ll also be Bluetooth 2.1+EDR with A2DP support and a micro-USB 2.0 port, though no sign of WiFi.  The battery will be a 1,150mAh pack, user-removable, and good for an estimated 4hrs of 3G talktime.

With support for the 850 and 1900 bands, the Palm Eos will be headed to AT&T rather than Sprint, where it will support MediaNet and Cellular Video.  Price is said to be $349 before any carrier rebate.  There are still questions remaining - and yes, this is just a render, not a live photo - but the Palm Eos certainly looks like it has potential.

Update: The target price is $99, according to TechCrunch, suggesting that the Eos is aimed at the lower end of the market.  Palm are, according to one source, waiting to see how the Pre does before announcing the Eos, or planning to launch a few months after the Pre, according to another.

• Messaging: SMS, MMS (picture and video only), integrated IM client
• Contact sync with AT&T Address Book
• MediaNet
• Cellular Video
• Email: POP3, IMAP4, and EAS support
• A-GPS: SUPL and Control Plane support
• Audio: WAV, MP3, AAC, AAC+ ringtones
• Video Playback: MPEG4, H.264, H.263
• Dimensions: 111 x 55 x 10.6 mm
• Weight: 100g

@palm_inc have they tried flushing it or dropping from six thousand feet?

That must have gotten the gears moving at Palm, because a short 25 minutes later they responded:

Comment from @thynctank prompts this ?: What real-world torture test should we subject the Pre to be sure it can survive your lifestyle?

And that sparked a frenzy of ideas in my head!  Of course there's the standard ideas like water splashing, dropping onto various surfaces, checking call quality in underground/remote setting, benchmarking data loading speeds (maybe web browser speeds too) and of course benchmarking battery life. 

If Palm decided to go this route, they could actually impress people and would at the very least answer some critical questions people have had about the Pre for a while now.

Then we turn to the less conventional stress test ideas. Things that don't necessarily prove anything but do provide pure entertainment.  Ideas like what thynctank suggested.  Maybe throw the Pre into a pool and try calling it, or maybe something as simple as throwing the Pre out the window of a moving car.

The Sonim XP1 did similar tests and came out kicking, bringing their company quite a bit of press.  While I don't see the Pre surviving those kinds of tests, they would probably still get posted on the tech news blogs and generate a lot of attention.

There are 2 possible venues I'd absolutely love to see.  First off, as you can tell from my crudely-made image above, I'm a huge fan of Blendtec's Will It Blend? online video series.  They've blended both the iPhone and iPhone 3G; the Pre should be next. And then there's Ideo Productions' slightly less-known Will It Microwave? online series.  Really, who wouldn't want to see a Pre microwaved.

It's especially interesting that Palm used the term "torture test" and it leads me to believe that Palm also wants to see its Pre jestfully destroyed in various exotic ways.  Not only would such videos go viral quickly, helping keep the Pre in the public spotlight, but it would also help distract many from the lack of a release date. Though I'm sure people would still complain about wasting hardware with the Pre likely to be in high demand with low supply.

So what do you think?  How should Palm stress test the Pre?  Comment below or tell Palm directly on Twitter.

• No microSD slot: This is perhaps the biggest annoyance for me personally. With a music collection hovering around 20 gig, it would be awfully nice to load some of that up on a 16 GB card so as to not eat into the device memory. Alas, it was not to be.
• 8gb of on-board memory: Feeding off the previous bullet, this is another often criticized aspect of the Pre. While 8 GB is certainly plenty for the typical user, those of us who are a smidge media-centric can fill up 8 gig in about 15 minutes. The silver lining here is that a 16 GB version is expected at some point after initial launch.
• Battery: When it was discovered that the Pre had a removable battery, there was much rejoicing. When the cover was removed, and we first saw said battery, there was then much sorrow, for inside, we saw none other than the 1150mAh battery from the Palm Centro. While we still don't know how the Pre does with power management, the sheer size of the battery can all but guarantee nightly charging for heavy users (not that this is a huge deal, just as long as it survives a day).
• webOS: Wait, what? How can the Pre's biggest strength, also be one of its most criticized features? It's a good question, and it has a lot to do with resistance to change, combined with webOS being an unsupported, unproven platform. There are many long time Palm users that both love and depend on the Palm GarnetOS, and know the ins-and-outs like the back of their hand. There are also thousands of third party applications (useful ones at that), that further enhance the productivity of PalmOS. Thankfully, for all involved, the Pre WILL have a PalmOS emulation application, so they're looking out for the long-time user. Hopefully in time, as more webOS applications and devices come to market, this will become a moot issue.
• Sprint: While not specifically device-related, this wouldn't be a proper "complaints" list if we didn't mention the destination carrier. While I personally have had nothing but good experiences with Sprint, there is no denying that they are sporting a poor reputation in today’s market. Thankfully, it’s been well-documented that while Sprint's Customer Service still isn't great, it's improving, and well on its way toward being a proper CS division once again. As far as their signal strength goes, this should be a relative non-issue. Sprint's coverage area is pretty decent, and they have roaming agreements with Verizon and Alltel, so it should be rare that you find yourself with no signal what-so-ever (Unless you're driving through West Virginia, which in my experience is a complete cell signal black hole).

Matthew Miller, of our sister site Nokia Experts and his blog on ZDNet.com, has just written up the first in his series of five "Clash of the Touch Titans" articles that look at the operating system, hardware, carriers, 3rd party applications, and overall functionality of the touch-focused devices either available or coming soon from each of the major mobile operating systems. Matthew will be looking at touchscreen devices pitted against the new iPhone 3.0 on the iPhone 3G since the iPhone is currently the hottest device available.

The devices going up against the iPhone running 3.0 are the Palm Pre, HTC Magic, BlackBerry Storm, Samsung OMNIA HD, and the HTC Touch Diamond2.

I'm thrilled that Matthew has decided to kick off his series with the iPhone 3G with 3.0 OS compared to the Palm Pre running Palm WebOS.

Matthew states:

"This first article will be focused on what we know about each of these upcoming devices/operating systems, but there are still a few aspects of both that have not clearly been defined and neither is available for any hands-on trials."

Matthew's first article is an excellent read! Be sure to head over to ZDNet.com and read what Matthew has to say about these two smartphones. If you're on the fence about which touch-focused device to get, be sure to read Matthew's entire series of articles.

Check out the video, plus live Palm Pre photos after the cut

The video is one of the most complete demonstrations of the Pre that we’ve seen to date, showing app to app transitions without the covert tinkering Palm execs had to do with their pre-production devices at CES last month.  In it, you can see the calendar, contacts, Synergy linking of information from Microsoft Exchange, GMail and various social networks, browser and more.

We know there’s a lot of discussion going on right now about just how much of a game-changer the Palm Pre might be to the mobile industry, and rightly so.  From our experience with the handset this week - and talking to Palm themselves about their intentions for the Pre between now and the smartphone’s release - we’re even more convinced that it’s the leap in software convergence that webOS and Synergy represent that will make the biggest impact.  We’ve seen rivals attempt to integrate on-device information, such as HTC’s latest iteration of TouchFLO 3D does, but nothing that links so seamlessly to cloud-based data stores.

For all the Palm Pre content from Mobile World Congress this week, click here.

Click to watch the video on YouTube.