Palm Pre coming to UK soon

The Palm Pre, the eagerly anticipated smartphone that many have tipped to challenge the iPhone's dominance, is coming to the UK soon.

Palm's UK website is now inviting surfers to sign up for email updates that will inform them when the handset is to be made available in the UK.

However, there is no specific information about the date or the price.

"We will email you with the latest updates and notify you when Pre becomes available," a message on the Palm website reads.

The Pre has a 3.1in touchscreen and a slide-out Qwerty keyboard. It runs on Palm's brand new operating system, WebOS and has Wi-Fi and GPS built in.

The smartphone market looks set to become even more crowded this year, with Sony Ericsson announcing its Idou handset, with a 12.1-megapixel camera, at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) event last week.

The HTC Magic, the second mobile to run Google's Android operating system, will be available in the spring or summer through Vodafone.

Nokia's N97, a touchscreen device with a slide-out keyboard and a 5-megapixel camera, could hit the market at around the same time.