Palm Pre on June 6th for $200: It's official!
By Thomas Ricker 
posted May 19th 2009 7:00AM
posted May 19th 2009 7:00AM
Note: Looking more info? Check out our giant Palm Pre hub!
posted May 19th 2009 7:00AM
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When will it be available in Canada?
I just cannot wait till the Pre unlocked version without a contract is out in the market. I am already on the 3rd Generation Treo and am tired of some of its quirkiness like the system hanging in between a call - actually thats abt it.
India will have to wait a while it seems ...
And for the apple lovers, follow the product not the brand. Apple has some excellent performers and sometime products which fail expectations partially if not completely. Lack of simple features like SMS forwarding, copy paste, video etc are irritants and take away from being an excellent product. Palm Treo have been good. yeah they are chunky, outdated software, but the things this baby can do specially the multi tasking, deck of cards things , sexy touchscreen with a querty keyboard, wireless charging etc. give it the multidimensional wow factor. guys follow a product not the brand they make you blind.
my brother who lives on the Dominican Republic wants one.
can the phone be unlock/unblock so I can get him one? (btw, I'm getting one for me too)
Is it just me or have the designers placed the time, battery level and what not, on the frame structure and not the screen?
once you go root on the g1 theres no turning back so im not getting this...
although android + palm pre would be AWESOME!
I think the hard core lovers & haters need to remember something. COMPETITION IS A GOOD THING! Can your zealotry and be glad companies other than your "chosen one" releases something similar, or possibly better than, your idolized product. Case in point - know these amazing processors we have now and largely take for granted? Had AMD not came out with the Athlon and caught Intel with their pants down, do you REALLY think we'd have processors like this today? Sure, it's hard to say with 100% certainty, but I'd wager not. So well done to Palm for bringing this phone out. And well done to all manufactures who are still actively improving their product lines instead of letting them grow stagnant.
So.
Try as I might, can't get all "hot and bothered" over this phone. Can't say why... just seems "meh" to me. Haven't used a Palm since the III & Vx Palm Pilot days. Their phones never did it for me as there always seemed to be something better. And I honestly don't like portrait style keyboards - JMHO. That said, will keep an eye on post-release news & check the phone out in person. Real world use always trumps pre-release yammering.
The iPhone. I went to a local AT&T store some months ago with cash in my pocket. Played with a 3G for a while, and despite the lack of physical keyboard I was ready to buy. After waiting 30 minutes in line (due to an idiot two spots ahead of me and a 'female dog in heat' behind the counter) I was curtly informed that I'd have to wait 2-3 weeks to get the phone. Nah, no thanks. Walked. Glad I did. Would've over paid! ;-) The iPhone is slick, there's no two ways about that. Is it as business centric as a BlackBerry or HTC WinMo device? Doesn't seem like it; but due to lack of personal use beyond messing around with it in the store I honestly can't say. Will say this - they put a slide out landscape keyboard on their phone (like on the TP2) and it would be EXTREMELY hard to ignore. (Oh yes, and a memory expansion slot. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, the iPhone only has built in memory... a serious let down in my book. Did I just read that the Palm Pre suffers from the same issue? If so, sorry, it's right out.)
Personally, unless something major happens, I'm planning on the Touch Pro2. Been limping along my old HTC Wizard / Cingular 8125 for three years now! No, WinMo isn't the greatest mobile OS around... but it does the job. Not to mention email / messaging support seems to be a strong point. Not as slick as the iPhone for playing music, no two ways about Apple having that down pat, but being able to buy several cheap, large capacity SD (mini, micro, whatever) cards to expand my music/video library makes it worth the price.
Sorry for the novel and, as always, JMHO!
Regards,
fastgeek
Well... 2 years it is then.
The Pre is a Sprint exclusive and will not be sold by any other U.S. based carrier. Sorry Verizon people.
BTW, for those who think Joe Six Pack will never hear of this phone, think again. In a recent issue of Autoweek I saw an article on the latest NASCAR race. Sprint is their title sponsor. Know what was on top of the winning car? A big ass sign for the Pre. Got news for you, lots of Joe Six Packs have been exposed to the Pre.
A quick Google search shows a very similar picture -
http://www.precentral.net/palm-sprint-ramping-pre-ads-nascar-indycar-racing
So yeah... this phone isn't exactly free pf massive publicity. ;-)
(And, no, I don't watch NASCAR or IRL... be interesting to see if Palm/Sprint splurge for some logos in F1 though!)
I've been going on and on here at the office about the release of the Pre for a while now and when asked about my current Verizon phone (still under contract until November) I say without hesitation that I will cancel it and pay the early termination fee (which I still think is a joke) just to get the Pre.
The steps... rather, strides that Palm is taking with this device and the pure innovation of it's operating system (WebOS) are definitely noteworthy. I'm very anxious to get my hands on a Pre if anything to see how it stacks up to my own expectations rather than how it stacks up to a competing device/technology.
I've never owned an iPhone personally rather just used them for a couple days in testing way back when. It's a great device, I'm not going to deny the groundbreaking achievements in technology that Apple has made with it, but just say that it's simply not for ME. It's quite simple... "To each his own".
Again, I'm an all around tech fiend when it comes to announcements and new efforts by the play makers in the industry so yeah, I'm also quite anxious to see what will transpire at WWDC.
Put simply, regardless of which side of the campfire you're sitting there's no point in bashing others because of their preference. Above all, no one will know anything for certain until the Pre gets out there in the wild and Apple announces whatever tidbits of newness they've got in store for us. So until the whistle blows... "Can't we all just get along!!" Lol
Thankful for everyone here who has time to pay attention!
1. iPhone looks great, but switching family off Sprint for more expensive Verizon plan is dubious.
2. Hoping Pre is worth its hype, but been with Palm since 1999. Am tired of all the quirks. But am hesitant to switch to new phone with new quirks
3. Next computer will be Apple (with multiple VMs for work projects, so overarching OS doesn't matter to me). That could be a factor.
4. Will come back after Apple announces new iPhone news.
5. After years of PDA use, have learned/vowed to never buy any PDA before its been out 6 months. I have no time to overmanage a device.
6. Hey, I need Flash on my phone to essentially replace my netbook.
katiecheng....Sprintshops.com isn't the right site... Check these posts first:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/853745/
and
http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=0&p=16316295
the site is really http://rx.sprintshops.com
I chatted with them here, and there is going to be a promo code that will reduce the price of the Pre to 99.99 (not 49.99). They said that the promo code is BOOM, but won't be active till the phone is on the site later today. If you also read the first two deals link, they are doing other top Sprint phones for as low as 99 cents. Another note from chatting with them is that these guys ship directly from the Sprint warehouse, and overnight phones to you. Basically that means that you don't have to worry about empty shelves, and that the phones are serviceable/returnable at corporate Sprint stores. Some of the deals seemed to be heavily geared towards new business, so I'm switching over my VZW lines once I can get my hand on this bad boy....
Why is EVERYTHING being compared to the iPhone? OMG! LOOK, Motorola V3, but can it beat the iPhone? I've seen such silly comparisons, as if the iPhone is thee most perfect device in the existence of man kind. 'Look! An apple, but is it better than the Apple iPhone?'. Who made the iPhone a benchmark to anything, it's far from perfect, and although Apple makes the best computers, why make a phone?
Palm has been manufacturing mobile devices for quite a while now. They aren't new to this game, but sadly, it seems that iPhone will steal it's thunder and people will make Pre look terrible. Even though it's in fact an interesting device. I actually doubt anything could be released that will stop stupid comparisons to iPhone.
Palm Pre, good luck.
I agree too many apple fanboy dick suckin losers
I have been with Sprint for over 10 years now. I remember waiting on the phone for hours upon hours to get customer support. And then getting put on hold for another 10-15 minutes at a time to get an answer. Those hours are not even 10 minutes now. Must be from all those people moving to other carriers or they finally listened to the people and pulled their heads outta their (_!_)'s. I'm going to get the Pre for my wife when it's released. I'm not going directly to a Sprint store or a corporate store unless they give the rebate instantly. I've seen on here Radio Shack no longer has a MIR and Best Buy automatically discounts the phones. A guy at a corporate store gave me that info a few month backs and I started laughing. All 3 of my phones are ready for upgrades. I'm still debating on the HTC Pro or the Pre for myself. I've had the PC-6700 for 2 years and then got upgraded to the Mogul when the PC took a dump. I've had the Mogul for almost 2 years now. 3 phones with unlimited data plans, 2000 ATM, nights and weekend starting at 7, 300 texts, unlimited picture share for under $150 a month. I tried upgrading my plan, but the representative said that it would be hard to find a plan that would match this. So I keep grandfathering my old plan with my new phones. And the Moto Q my wife currently has can also be used as a internet phone modem without paying the extra $$.
If you had Sprint in the past, you might want to give them a try again. When they had me on those long waits, I used to get $75 credit on the following months bill. They also have monthly help specials if they couldn't help you. I received a $50 credit towards my bill when they couldn't answer my question the first time, also when I was having troubles with my phone and the tech couldn't help, they issued a $25 credit. A customer support rep asked me last year if I re-upped my plan I would get a $50 credit for 2 years. Got it. I normally get help within the first couple of minutes now! Good luck with your decisions.
I am getting excited for it's release.... Apple better have an ace up their sleeves....
I'm glad I didn't wait for this phone - I dropped Sprint and went for AT&T and the iPhone; got the phone for $200 without having to fool with a MIR or be forced to subscribe to an "everything" plan. Too bad for Palm and Sprint - this could have been a killer phone.
I agree. If the palm was on another carrier i think this phone could go a lot farther then just sticking with sprint. But i guess this is Sprints way of attracting costumers. every one has to have there own form of iPhone.
This will be an interesting out come. The Palm Pre release within just days of the WWDC. I hope Apple will come out with a new iPhone but if not the Palm Pre wins this year. Only time will tell.
does this device have native OS copy/cut and paste? for applications like the calendar? unlike the fruit device, which doesn't.