Over the past few years, Palm has been great at creating hype to surround their events. They have been very successful in getting everyone in a tizzy before product announcements. Prior to this past CES, where they sat on the sidelines, Palm has done a fantastic job in creating buzz around their events. In many ways, I’ve considered Palm events to be Apple-like, save for the black turtleneck. When Palm announced the Pre in 2009, the run-up to the release was exciting and Palm delivered. Flash forward to 2011 and the hype machine is well underway. Now under HP, Palm is once again in a familiar place, on the big stage they’ve created. They skipped CES and now the lights will shine even brighter on the stage on February 9th. The invite says, “Think Big, Think Small, Think Beyond”. The past few weeks have brought no shortage of leaks surrounding Topaz, one of multiple webOS tablets expected to make their public debut on February 9th. Not much has been said or leaked regarding the most important piece of any mobile platform and that’s a long overdue update to webOS phones. Dan Ramirez at webOSRoundup put it best when he said, “smartphones are the epicenter of mobile computing”. The time for HP|Palm to deliver a hero phone is now and it’s vital to the success of any tablet or product that will be part of the larger webOS ecosystem said to be in the works.

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