Official: Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus hitting Vodafone and O2 Germany on April 28
By Vlad Savov 
posted April 13th 2010 6:48AM
posted April 13th 2010 6:48AM
[Thanks, gizmo21]
posted April 13th 2010 6:48AM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
I want a Palm Pixi Plus Factory Unlocked why the F**K cant I have one ?
UK = User pissed off with a company who cant sell a great product
FYI I have an IPHONE and I want one of these 2 !
@Diesel1313 I want an unlocked Pre Plus.. But then I don't think that's ever gonna be possible.. :(
@Diesel1313
You're lucky you have the Pre in Europe, these aren't even RELEASED in Australia.
You're making me angry Palm
@camroncake
By the time they launch in Australia they won't be Palm Pre's anymore
they'll be the new HTC patent plus
with built in protection against lawsuits
@Diesel1313
What's the big deal with Unlocked Phones?
@Diesel1313 I want a UK pre plus, I don't care what carrier or whether its locked or not, just bring it asap please palm
@TheLondonExchange
Europe has a large culture (?) of purchasing unlocked (sim-free) phones quite occasionally as opposed to the general 2 year+ contracts of the US. All our networks provide the same services at same prices with added value benefits here or there so it's nice to have a choice of where we wish to connect as well as taking abroad or passing them on. Resell value is also much much higher.
Having said that, not really interested in Palm devices in the UK.
@camroncake: palm phones are also not released in austria!!! i don't understand that!
@TheLondonExchange You can use it on any carrier you like.
In the USA it has less significance due to Verizon and Sprint not letting non-approved devices on their network (can't take a Moto Droid to Sprint or a Hero to VZW) and AT&T/T-mobile operate on different 3G (though you can use unlocked phones on their 2G networks because they're compatible).
In Europe their wireless networks are treated like public roads. Government keeps them up. Meaning not only do you get cheaper service (though likely a lot of it is invisible through taxes) but since one entity overseas the wireless infrastructure it all runs on the same RF.
You can easily import the Palms into the UK unlocked and use it on any network you chose. Alternatively, you can import them to the USA and use them on 2G on either AT&T or T-Mobile.
@TheLondonExchange
You can use your phone on any compatible network and You don't have to pay contract prices for Voice & Data. (I Believe).
@camroncake
I had a pre in au since Nov last year, got it off expansys. It’s not worth it man. I waited months for palm to put out a decent speed update, they never did. Webos definitely needs decent hardware or they still need to optimise for it a lot more. The 800mhz patch made the phone way more useable but in the end it's form factor and quality is just too shit. It’s too small (mainly screen) and it doesn't feel solid.
I got a nextg 850mhz nexus one yesterday and totally haven't looked back. This phone is the fastest phone I have ever used hands down and I used quite a few in the last year; Bold9000 to iPhone to pre to n1.
Even if palm bought out 1ghz 4" slate phone I wouldn't look at it as it would be still too slow I guarantee it
@thernus You obviously haven't tried the 800MHz patch. It's then a Pre on Red Balls.
I want a 4" palm pre, with a capacitive screen, and a tegra under the hood.
Is that too much to ask?
@sshole Considering Palm's current troubles, yes.
@sshole
Already has the capacitive screen so you're part way there...
@sshole lol @ your name
I want that QWERTZ keyboard on my AT&T Pre (if it ever gets here). That would be cool.
@Smart People Play Tuba Import this German one.
@sshole Your mentioning of Tegra is funny since the Palm Pre Plus features the same CPU as the iPhone 3GS which is _faster_ than Tegra! The GPU is most likely slower, but then again there are not many games available for WebOS anyway ... If anything, only Tegra 2 would make sense. And afaik that's not out yet.
@jonshipman
The German Pre (non-Plus) was Edge only, so I'm guessing this one is too. No thanks.
A bit too late ha! Companies like Palm should know from get go that if they want to be successful then they must be able to offer the phone worldwide as soon as they hit the designing dept! I believe that they wouldn't be in this hole if they had introduced this phone worldwide from beginning and look how long it took them to bring it to Canada, and iPhone took a huge chuck of possible Pre market share here since people grew tired of waiting. That said, I hope HTC buys Palm and improve their practice. You have to offer the best to compete with the best!
@hero785 +++++++++
@hero785
True That !!
And well put !
@hero785 Palm just snubs an advanced market until the rope is choking bad...tough luck, enjoy the downfall. If HTC picks up palm it must kill it as soon as possible and salvage any worthy IP. These biz models of palm suck balls, can't even contract proper advertising, a bunch of morons running around on bank money just waiting to be crashed.
@hero785
Easier said than done when you're cranking out horrible ads, hardware that is defective, don't have much cash, etc.
A small company like Palm needed to incubate a bit..at least a year.. on a carrier like Sprint. Especially with a new OS, new app store, new hardware. Ideally we'd have seen the Plus Pre on Sprint months ago and they'd be fine tuning this mess ready to expand later this year. No Pixi either, but a slab.
Instead Palm rushed to try to get to scale with multiple carriers on half baked hardware, a 1.0 OS that was still pretty impressive, a halfbaked SDK, a beta app store, etc combined with the most horrible marketing imagined.
Ruby stated getting to scale was their priority not profit. And now Palm is for sale.
@cardfan
I see your point. But I still think that they should have had the Pre just by itself for at least a year then upgrade to a new hardware. If we take a look at Apple we can see that the success obtain on iPhone is all due to siticking to one handset, make it appealing, find good carriers and establish an app store. Palm should have done the same. They should have made sure that the hardware was appealing. Offer better app, find good carriers before even the launch date. I believe that they would be on a different page right now had they gone for Bell, Telus, Sprint, Verizon, Vodafone and O2 from the go. That is a huge coverage base, amazing market share. But they brought it out to early and to a few customer base, woke up later and shipped it up north when we gave up on waiting for it (I had my iPhone 3G and was going to switch and see but glad I didn't). And yes HTC should buy them, take that OS and make it even better and have one or 2 great handsets that will be appealing to the market and improve the app store. And one more thing, they also failed because they said this was made for women, like wtf? Don't they know that we men own multiple handsets sometimes and teenagers love great phones too? I think that's another reason, they lost the 16-24 age group becaue of their advertising schemes. Oh well, they might as well start over!
@hero785
The Pixi would of been their saviour in Europe im sure, 150 euros on payg and they would have sold shed loads.
Great, now they can not sell them in Europe, too!
das ist sehr gut!
@benderfender als ob das teil jemand kaufen würde
@kokskarl: wieso nicht? ich würds zwar nicht kaufen aber es gibt sicher genug die drauf gewartet haben!
Nur wenn es weniger als 300 € ist
Anyone knows why there is no trackball? Sorry i don't know much about the plus editions
@Billy There never was a trackball. That thing you see on the original Pre is a button, but since the whole bottom area is touch sensitive, Palm ditched the button and just made tapping the middle of the touch area do the same function.
If o2 cock me around over upgrading to the PrePlus I am done with Palm.
@gusgorman yes that makes sense be pissed at palm because your carrier sucks
@crappypunk
Point is that I have been permanently jealous since getting it. First at having an inferior app store to the US (still far less available in UK) and now two weeks after they sort that out there is superior hardware on the way which I probably won't be able to get. Pre has barely been available here for six months. Even Apple have the courtesy to wait a year before making you covet a new handset.
They're not even sold in sweden. *grumble, grumble*
@fabarati for now, you've hot swedish women to play with. *grumble, grumble*
@benderfender That's true *gloat*
Depending on the price, I'm either going to buy a Pre Plus or a Pixi Plus. I'm really excited! Hopefully they will be sold unlocked at Amazon again!
Anything about the price for the palm Pre Plus in euro?
What's the big deal with Unlocked Phones?
@TheLondonExchange The big deal is that you can use unlocked phones with prepaid cards. In Germany, currently you get 1GB traffic for 10€ per month and pay 9¢ per minute talking. And you can cancel any time. That's much better than what T-Mobile offers for the iPhone, for example.
@Yoshi1080
Plus you can sell your cellphone anytime and still retain your number.
Keine scheisse un teuer Handys, bitte - last time I went to Konstanz, I checked the Pre in some store and it was near €550 - you can effin' keep it!
@DariaMorgendorffer
o2 Germany sells the Pre for much less than 550€. Afaik 481€ at the beginning and 361€ today.
@xray
unlocked you mean?
*runs to the German border*
@DariaMorgendorffer
Sure it is, every phone you can get from o2 Germany today is unlocked and can be used on any carrier you want. But I don't know if the European GSM Pre supports the US GSM/UMTS frequencies.
Looking at the picture in this article, I just realised that the coolest thing about Palm's latest products is the awesome product photography and the background wallpapers on the phones. Glistening dewdrop FTW!