With today’s release of the Palm Pre, the mobile world holds its breath to see if the predicted iPhone assault goes to plan for Palm. Software-wise the two phones are pretty equally matched (if you take the iPhone applications out of the equation) aesthetically, the competitors are on two different playing fields.

With this is mind the Ubar carried out a survey across a broad range of mobile phone users, to find out which style of phone was most popular. The touchscreen came in at the top of the table with 36% of the votes, good news for the iPhone then! However, at 31% a mere 5% less was the slider option and bam just like that the Pre steps into the number one spot, boasting touchscreen and slider facilities.

Let’s not get ahead of our self, after all this is only one hardware factor. So, having found out that touchscreen and slider phones demand the most attention the Ubar took a closer look at favoured keypad styles. It was a close call, with just 2% separating the top two. At number one was the standard QWERTY, by that they meant the hardware keypad. The virtual or touch QWERTY was granted second place, which was miles ahead of the numeric pads. It looks like the Palm might have a fighting chance against the iPhone offering both a hardware and virtual QWERTY. If we cast our minds back to the colour findings from the Ubar, then it would appear the Palm Pre has got the whole package, on the hardware-side of things at least.

Of course, it would be ridiculous to base the Palm Pre’s popularity on these figures alone, but if the software can prove its worth in the market then Palm could be onto a winner.