Sprint Palm Pre In Stores June 6 !!!
Official Sprint Announcement Today Confirms Palm Pre Launch Saturday, June 6 Price At Competitive $199.99
Palm and Sprint today announced the official release date and pricing for the Palm Pre – Saturday, June 6th and $199.99 (after $100 rebate and service agreement) – and will be available to buy at Sprint Stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack and a few Wal-Mart stores.
Interestingly, the launch date of the Palm Pre will be just two days before Apple’s WWDC Conference taking place June 8–12 where it is anticipated that the company will showcase the new 3.0 software for its iPhone as well as possibly announce new iPhone models (see Palm Pre vs. iPhone Comparison). At the same time we can expect a rather heated “smartphone summer” not only with Apple but also more BlackBerry releases anticipated.
Unlike most wireless devices today which can only handle one open application at a time (such as the iPhone), the Palm Pre delivers best-in-class multitasking capabilities. Sprint’s press release further emphasizes that:
“For those who juggle life circa 2009 – bouncing from conference call to car pool schedule, from doctors’ numbers to doctoral thesis data, from social calendars to social networking – Pre marks a new wireless crossover standard. Before Pre, you had to compromise when selecting a wireless phone. To get the business features you needed, you had to sacrifice the personal entertainment features you wanted. Pre consolidates your important information – professional, social and personal – into one revolutionary device using an operating system that redefines the experience of living and working wirelessly.”
Dan Hesse, president and CEO of Sprint also adds “The argument that you need one phone for work and another phone for play, or that you have to make compromises between business and lifestyle productivity, is over. With Pre, compromises of the past are history.”
Sprint is also emphasizing value stating that “with Sprint’s industry-leading, value-oriented Everything Data plans that offer savings of up to $1,430 over two years vs. comparable AT&T and Verizon plans for smartphones and PDAs.
A couple of mobile analysts have also come out with very positive views on the Palm Pre. Avi Greenart, research director for Consumer Devices at Current Analysis says that “The Pre has been expressly designed for multitasking among multiple web pages and applications” while Andy Castonguay, director of Mobile & Access Devices Research, Yankee Group says that "The Pre's dynamic 'activity cards' approach to handling and navigating multiple applications is a great advance, but the core breakthrough is the integration of information across multiple applications on and off the phone.”
Thanks to the new webOS platform, the Palm Pre also introduces Palm Synergy, a key feature that brings together your personal and professional calendar, contacts and e-mail into one centralized view, making transitions between work and personal life smooth and easy to manage.
With Palm Synergy, users get:
- Linked contacts – With Synergy, you have a single view that links your contacts from a variety of sources, so accessing them is easier than ever. For example, if you have the same contact listed in your Outlook(3), Google and Facebook accounts, Synergy recognizes that they’re the same person and links the information, presenting it to you as one listing.
- Layered calendars – Your calendars can be seen on their own or layered together in a single view, combining work, family, friends, sports teams, or other interests. You can toggle to look at one calendar at a time, or see them all at a glance.
- Combined messaging – Synergy lets you see all your conversations with the same person in a chat-style view, even if it started in IM and you want to reply with text messaging. You can also see who’s active in a buddy list right from contacts or e-mail, and start a new conversation with just one touch.
Palm’s president and CEO Ed Colligan is clearly proud of what his company is delivering stating that “Pre is truly a new phone for a new web-centric age. We’re a mobile society, and we want our people, calendars and information to move with us. With Pre’s exquisite design and the unique webOS software, running on Sprint’s fast broadband network, we’re changing the perception of what a wireless phone can be.”
Pricing and Availability
The Palm Pre will be available from Sprint on June 6 for $199.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year service agreement on an Everything Data plan or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plan. An array of compelling Palm Pre accessories will also be available including the Palm Touchstone charging dock. The Touchstone Charging Kit, which includes the Touchstone charging dock and Touchstone back cover for Pre, will be available June 6 for $69.99. The Touchstone charging dock and Touchstone back cover also are available separately from for $49.99 and $19.99, respectively.
Overall though, this Palm and Sprint announcement still leaves many unanswered questions. For example, we still don’t have the full specifications of the Palm Pre – particularly its battery life – nor the list of pre-installed applications that it will have (such as Pandora, Google Maps, YouTube, Facebook and many more). Additionally, further questions remain about its “over-the-air” sync capabilities as well as the mechanics of its App Store.
Having said this, for now at least I’m absolutely delighted about both the release date and the price – I simply can’t wait to finally have a Palm Pre in my hands…
Sources:
Palm Pre to arrive on Sprint on June 6 [Palm Blog]
Sprint to Offer Palm Pre Nationwide on June 6 [Sprint Press Release]
Preonauts are ready to launch! 
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Comments
I'm excited about this phone and will be glad to retire my 700P.
I'm very interested to know the real world performance of this phone especially the battery life.
Palm has a lot of work cut out for them and I feel for their employees who are probably working like slaves to keep this project rolling.
The Apple machine has yet to play its card so this game is still in full swing.
@David - it's unlikely that there will be any news about the GSM Palm Pre for at least another couple of months as Palm and Sprint will naturally want to focus exclusively on this release.
@proee - yes, I'm also very much looking forward to having a Palm Pre in my hands to test its "real world" performance...
Cheers, A.
I really wanted to be excited about the Palm Pre. I've been a Palm fan for many years, going from the Palm Pro, to the III, the IIIxe, the Kyocera 6035, Treo 600, 650, and finally the 700p. While I've loved the Palm interface over the years, the main reason why I've kept with them has been because of the software investments that I've made and my familiarity with the platform. It hasn't been because Palm has had good support or really innovated since they first came out with the first devices.
I've got to say that I'm not excited about the Palm Pre at all. It's good that they did not build in the backwards compatibility with PalmOS apps, as we've seen that making such a break can be really beneficial for a platform (i.e. OSX).
But I just don't see the app developers flocking to the platform as they have with the iPhone. It will likely be similar to the Android situation, where there's some stuff, but not really the compelling marketplace. That's not to say that the iPhone App Store or platform is perfect. In fact there's much room for improvement.
The accessories for the Pre seem to be priced too high. Although I am a current Sprint customer and prefer them over ATT.
Also, I just have to say, in regards to the article, what gives cause to write that the Pre will have "best in class multi-tasking"? The thing hasn't even been released yet. Reviewers haven't even been allowed to use it in an unscripted manner. I've got to say that the cheer leading seems really false to me.
So I'll be waiting to see how the Pre pans out, if there's an Android released for Sprint, and what the iPhone v3.0 works out to be. I suspect that my wife and I will be getting iPhones this summer.
Ok, I will start out with the fact that I had/have been a palm supporter for a while. Started out with the Treo 650, moved on to the more refined 700p and ending with the Centro. Yes I said ended. I all but gave up on Palm, waiting for the (Pre) to come out with nothing in sight worth waiting for (last November there wasn't even any clues). So I moved on to the HTC Touch Pro (ahhhhh! puts up shield from Palm lovers throwing rocks!) I was ready to be impressed by Windows Mobile 6.1 as I'd heard some good things, but unfortunately I have been dissapointed. Yes it has a few more bells and wolf calls that past Palm phones lacked as far as functionality on the Palm OS, but honestly with what is out there (G-phone, I-phone etc...neither of which is on or near being included with Sprint) the Touch Pro seemed to be the odd man out. It's like the Danny Gokey of phones...really really good, but just doesn't measure up where it counts. (Sorry... bad AI reference)
So here comes the Pre...amazingly...and admittedly a little late...a Palm phone that does what I want and need it to do. Will I miss a micro flash drive? Yes, but as far as anything else, from the looks of things I have a feeling this will knock my socks off with ease of use and functionality. Will it be an I-phone killer? Probably not, but at least it will be a serious contender giving it a run for its money, and at this point I'm not really sure what Apple can do to really win me over. I've tried the I-phone out on a friend's loaner, but I was not as impressed as all the hype it receives. Not to say it's a bad phone, just not for me. But when I watch all the new things coming out on the Pre, I get a little giddy, along with some goosebumps.
That hasn't happened in years. This is MY phone!
Does anyone know if Sprint will have any kind of deals for people who want to retire their old phones "upgrade". I talked to customer care yesterday and they only offered me the 150 off any phone at retail price.
Regarding backward-compatibility of existing PalmOS applications to run on the Palm Pre please not that MotionApps has already announced a PalmOS Emulator that will allow you to use existing PalmOS apps under webOS.
See: http://blog.treonauts.com/2009/04/palm-pre-mojo-sdk-released.html
Cheers, A.
I also was a long time supporter of Palma. Had a few Handsprings, then the Treo 650, and 700p. The 700p was a great phone, but not without it's faults. I have since moved onto the ATT Fuze (HTC Touch), and with some tweaking of the ROM, I have made it almost as good as PALM OS for what I need it to do. One thing that Windows Mobile can't do that I have found, is use the phone as an along modem right from a command line to dial into my routers remotely. Sure I can tether the phone and use the laptop to get to the internet, but I just can't use Conklinsystems CSONLINE to dial out. If the Palm PRE could do this, I'd actually think about switching. But for now... I'm sticking with Windows Mobile (the OS I have tried my best to stay away from)
Can someone please explain why Palm is chasing the "App Store" as some kind of standard to attain to?
I've been using Palm Pilots since 1998, and I've been downloading, testing and installing software on my handhelds for years (most recently, the 650, 680 and on a Centro for my wife).
The internet is full of sites (including this one) that provide opportunities to find 3rd party apps, from freeware to shareware to trialware...
What exactly does the App Store do that I haven't already been doing all these years?
Make it really, really easy for non-techies to download, install and immediately use an app
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