I’m writing this without ever having actually touched a Palm Pre, but after spending the entire day reading about it, watching videos of it and reading other’s first-hand accounts, I feel fairly confident in saying that I’m excited about it. I’m not excited because I’m going to get one — because I’m not — but I’m excited for all the people who are. And I’m excited because it seems like there is a piece of hardware that could legitimately challenge the iPhone for the first time.

Now before everyone starts screaming “G1″ and “BlackBerry Storm” at me. I’ve used both of those phones — I actually have a G1 sitting right next to me. Anyone who thinks either of those phones is an “iPhone killer” is kidding themselves. Both are leaps and bounds better than most other phones out there, but neither is close to the iPhone when it comes to usability and just plain sexiness. The Palm Pre looks like it could be.

So why does the Pre looks like it will bring the goods? Well first and foremost, it has multi-touch. Doing things like pinch to zoom makes so much more sense than pushing a zoom in or zoom out button like you have to do on phones like the G1. Developers on the iPhone have already proven they can do cool stuff (namely in games) with multi-touch.

Secondly, the Pre has a nice UI. Both the Storm and the G1 fail here in my opinion — and while some will say that UI doesn’t matter, it does matter. Who wants to look at a device multiple times a day that looks like shit? (Hello, Windows Mobile.) No one. The iPhone has a beautiful UI, and the Palm Pre looks like it may even do a few things better (and I’m sure quite a few things worse).

Third, it has a nicer camera than the iPhone and a flash. And yes, it has copy and paste (which I don’t care about nearly as much as some people do).

What I don’t consider to be a factor on the plus side, at least for me, is that it has a physical keyboard. I understand that some people cannot live without a physical keyboard and will bitch up a storm until they get one — as I like to say, it’s kind of like an adult pacifier — but it’s not the future. Apple is right in not caving into those customers who are demanding it. In a few years, none of these smartphones will have physical keyboards. Instead they will have touchscreen-based keyboards with haptic feedback. And people will get used to it, because the physical keyboard is a big waste of space.

But the Pre looks like it does a nice job integrating it as a slide down in vertical mode. Certainly, it looks better than the G1’s shitty keyboard.

Again, I doubt I’m going to get a Pre, but I kind of want one — and that’s something I’ve haven’t felt since the first iPhone launched in 2007. I think it’s good if the iPhone has a competitor on the market, it will push it (and all phones) to continually get better. That’s a win for us, the consumers.

Will it save Palm? Who knows. But they put on one hell of a show today that has the Internet in a tizzy. That’s a great start to rebuilding something that was lost several years ago. Remember, Apple had to do that once too.