Finally! Sprint has officially announced that the Palm Pre will be launching on June 6th for $200 after a $100 MIR and a two-year contract. You’ll be able to purchase a Pre from Sprint, Best Buy, Wal Mart, and Radio Shack.
When purchasing a Palm Pre you must add one of the following plans: Everything Data plan or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plan, which start out at $70. Also available on launch day are the Palm Touchstone and Touchstone back cover for $50 and $20, respectively. There’s a Touchstone Kit available for $70 that, you know, includes the dock and back cover. That’s it for now.
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – May 19, 2009 – Sprint (NYSE: S) today announced pricing and nationwide availability for the highly anticipated Palm® Pre™ phone, offered exclusively from Sprint. Palm Pre will be available nationwide on June 6 in Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, select Wal-Mart stores and online at Sprint.com for $199.99 with a two-year service agreement and after a $100 mail-in rebate. Running on the new Palm webOS™ mobile platform, Pre brings together your important information from where it resides – on your phone, at your work or on the web – into one logical view.(1)
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.
“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,” said Dan Hesse, president and CEO of Sprint. “With Pre, compromises of the past are history.”
Palm Pre will run on America’s most dependable 3G network and come 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.(2)
“The Palm Pre takes full advantage of Sprint’s Everything Data plans,” said Avi Greengart, research director for Consumer Devices at Current Analysis. “The Pre has been expressly designed for multitasking among multiple web pages and applications. It also builds on Palm’s heritage in PDAs by managing your digital information – whether that’s on a corporate server or on the web.”
“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,” said Andy Castonguay, director of Mobile & Access Devices Research, Yankee Group. “With social networking and messaging being so important to consumers, the device’s new ‘Palm Synergy’ functionality – which gives Pre the ability to automatically pull friends’ contact details, messaging addresses and personal calendars from different applications online and on the phone – will greatly simplify people’s ability to communicate with their friends and colleagues the way they want.”
Pre: A New Kind of Phone
The new webOS platform 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 webOS lets you keep multiple activities open and move easily between them like flipping through a deck of cards. You can move back and forth between text messaging and e-mail, or search the web while you listen to music. You can rearrange items simply by dragging them, and when you are done with something, just throw it away by flicking it off the top of the screen.
Finding what you need is also easy with universal search – as you type what you’re looking for, webOS narrows your search and offers results from both your device and the web.(4) WebOS crushes the barriers to true mobile computing.
“Pre is truly a new phone for a new web-centric age,” said Ed Colligan, Palm president and chief executive officer. “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.”
Pre comes with a charger in the box, but for anyone tired of plugging a cord into their wireless phone, Palm introduces the Touchstone™ charging dock, the first inductive charging solution for phones, available exclusively for Pre. Simply set Pre down on top of the dock without worrying about connection, orientation or fit. Pre is active while charging, so you can access the touch screen, watch movies or video, or use the speakerphone. Set Pre on the charging dock when you’re on a call, and the speakerphone automatically turns on; when you take a ringing Pre off the dock, Pre automatically answers the call. Other mobile operating systems allow multitasking, but Palm has developed an intuitive method of switching between “cards,” which resemble clicking different tabs on a Web browser. New applications can be launched easily using the “Launcher” software button at the bottom of the home screen, and users navigate between different applications.
With nearly every wireless device today you have to exit one application completely before you can use another. That’s not what people are accustomed to; think of your PC and all the applications you can have open at one time.Pre: The latest NOW Network milestone for Sprint
Pre also lets you access feature-rich Sprint content on the Sprint Now Network, including exclusive applications such as:Sprint Navigation(5)
Sprint TV
NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile Live“Sprint’s Now Network brings you America’s most dependable 3G network, the largest push-to-talk community, and in selected markets Sprint is the only national carrier bringing 4G to life in 2009,”(6) Hesse said. “The Now Network is more than just a physical network – it’s also data plans that are all-inclusive, eliminating fear of data overages and a perfect fit for Palm Pre users.”
Sprint’s networks are now performing at best-ever levels, and Sprint’s high-value Everything data plans consistently beat AT&T’s and Verizon’s comparable plans in savings by hundreds, even thousands, of dollars over two years. With the revolutionary launch of Ready Now, which Sprint pioneered, customers leave the store educated, comfortable and confident about the phones they’re about to take home. As a result of these measures and more, Sprint customer satisfaction indices – from first call resolution to billing satisfaction, from customer care response time to service and repair – have all significantly improved during the past year.
Pricing and Availability
The Palm Pre phone 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 accessories also will be available for Pre, 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.
More information is available at www.sprint.com/palmpre.
No new information but it’s confirmed on the official Palm blog
http://blog.palm.com/palm/2009/05/palm-pre-availability.html
Thanks Peter. I wouldn’t have known this info if you didn’t write here because I never visited Palm’s Web site if I was not planning to buy anything. By the way, I like the price.
Not only pinch gesture, they copied even price of iphone.
iphone making thousand changes to their apps like notifications and background apps. it will learn a lesson well and good.
Yeah…cuz Apple invented multi-touch right?….noob. Go look at Apple v Palm patents on Engadget, dumbass.
They copied the price of the iPhone? Hey there, Mr. Smarty… The iPhone launched at $600… So, yeah, Palm is totally copying Apple. I can’t believe them!
anyone know if you can buy the pre unlocked (i.e. without a plan) ?
It’s not a GSM phone to be “unlocked”, the only other major carrier in the US you can use it with would be Verizon.
And it’s unlikely that Verizon would let you waltz in with any random phone to use on their network.
Is there any news of a UK release date & network?
Hmmm
How curious~~~
Will it be available at 6am?
Since there is an certain jesus phone on the horizon.
Is Pre trying to play satan?
$100.00 mail in rebate = epic fail
Wow. I agree, a Mail-in rebate is an absolutely terrible idea. I refuse to buy anything that requires me to wait 6 to 8 weeks for my money.
Umm, hello? People camped outside Apple stores to shell out $500 for the iPhone when it first came out… am I missing something here?
Prediction: Usability is going to feel like it a bunch of features were thought up and then implemented. Like Palm made a checklist of what the iPhone has and then just threw them in. Kind of like American car companies just come up with features and then just throw them in the car for “Lets take everything Lexus does and then lets put in a rear seat that you push a button and it automatically folds down to make more storage”. Nevermind it takes 20 seconds to do when I can just pull a lever and push down in 2 seconds in my Lexus.
But this is the issue with most American companies. They never focus on the overall experience, but rather, “me copy feature and put in my product”. Its what happens when you put analytical people in charge.
But it will haz a qwerty kiibood!
You, my friend are a tool. Everyone knows that the Palm Pre is feature rich and pretty amazing… on paper.
I am still waiting to see real life performance and battery life. Those two can and will be the major reason whether it succeeds or fails.
No you are a tool! It could be successful as I think some might consider the Blackberry successful.
It won’t be around in 3 years, gone! Feature rich? Yeah I am sure you can say all enterprise applications are feature rich, but navigating them and learning how to use them is impossible.
No consistency what so ever!
If you don’t understand features + feature + feature + feature vs. experience then my friend you are the tool!
Going out on a limb, but I am guess you are very analytical. You are the same as those Palm marketing and product development geniuses.
This is what happens when you try to duplicate a better product. You try to copy each feature separately and one more thing on top of that feature to say its better then shove all of them into the product so you can go out and market each feature as one better. But when you do this the entire experience is crap.
Case study for you Moe (where is larry and curly btw), ask one of your cool friends to look at tweetie on his iPhone, then compare that to an Twitter application on any of the other cell phones and tell me which is better, they will both have all the same features, but according to you the non Tweetie version is best because “Its feature rich, man!”
Keep on living the dream Moe!
No I’m a tool! I will NOT buy this phone… Palm has better phones on the horizon that will incorporate the rich features of WebOS in a (hopefully) sexier form. Hopefully the company can survive long enough to release em. The Pré looks too god damned small. And I’ve migrated away from using tiny QWERTY Keyboards since my understanding of the iPhones typing system, i.e. “trust it”. I type faster on my iPhone than I do on a full size keyboard… weird. BUT I am excited about WebOS, just not the Pré. It looks like a fat pebble… like a bloated turd, and until Palm releases a physical phone that excites me… I’m fully content with my beautiful iPhone.
And by the way Jason, Blackberry’s are outselling iPhones these days… by a pretty wide (combined) margin… so I wouldn’t be too quick to predict the death of the OG of the biz….
the only reason blackberry is selling more then iphone is because of the “buy one get one free” so which one is actually getting more revenue? exactly
“Usability is going to feel like it a bunch of features were thought up and then implemented.”
Seems like a standard way to create features. If they implemented features before they thought about them, then they might have a problem
User Experience. I know for you, “it ain’t somethin I cun touch, it don’t exist!” people, this is difficult to understand.
Go to youTube find the Palm Pre demo and watch how things work on the phone. UX sucks. Prime example is the mirror “FEATURE” on the back.
I can just hear the lady in marketing or prod dev group, “We need something to appeal to women. We need a mirror on the back so they can check their hair, makeup and if they have anything in their teeth.” Then Jim says, “Wow, great idea Jane”.
Not sure I follow your argument. How is Palm merely copying features from the iPhone?
Does the iPhone multi-task?
Does the iPhone cut and paste?
Does the iPhone have a physical keyboard?
Does the iPhone have universal search?
Does the iPhone have a removable battery?
Does the iPhone have integrated contacts?
Does the iPhone have an OS which allows virtually any web programmer to start writing apps for it?
These are all brand-new, BIG-TIME features which hardly equate to the addition of a “mirror for the ladies” … although I gotta say that’s nice too LOL.
Granted, it’s left to be seen if the Pre can meet expectations… if it does, then Palm could very well have a game-changer on their hands. Don’t think the folks at Apple haven’t taken notice, either………
You have just proved my point.
They took the iPhone copied all the touch screen stuff. Then said lets try to tackle all the things that the iPhone didn’t do (not in a holistic way though).
Physical keyboard.
Removeable battery.
integrated contacts.
cut and paste.
Their is a reason Apple made the choice not do those things. Try cutting and pasting on a touch screen this small, sucks. More effort than its worth. I bet if you kept track of cut and paste on Pre it would be used less than 20% of the time.
Hard keyboard not that much different than software based.
Removeable battery? I have had my iPhone for 2 years and had no need to take out the battery. Why? Again I bet Pre users use less than 20% of the time. If you are going to carry around an extra battery why not just take the plugin?
Just like all analytical companies they don’t think through everything….bandage approach. Me see problem me fix… Buersch had good idea for a new book … Critical thinking for dummies. Or how about Sytems think for dummies?
smells like fail
F**K TRENT REZNOR!!!!!!
Yeah! Wait, no. Wha?!
I think it will actually do well. Enjoyed reading your blog. Keep up the good work! Clicked some links for you.
Kas
There is a preorder page here, but not much knew information:
https://secure.bluefishwireless.net/promo/palm_pre_preorder.cfm
I don’t understand the concept of stooooopid mail-in-rebate unless Sprint is counting to make money on the fact that there would be quite a few people who would fail to fill up mail-in rebate.
Totally stupid of Sprint! Just sell the phone for $200 straight why adding more inconvenience to the already reluctant users.
Dude… people had no problem shelling out $500 for a new iPhone when it was first released… what’s the big deal here? People crying about this have very short memories.
anyone know when you can buy it in Europe ?
Mail-in rebate = stinks.
Plus, I don’t see a whole lot about this phone that’s supposed to “kill” the iPhone.
I’m actually a big fan of the Sprint Mail in Rebates. I purchased a Blackberry Pearl and was supposed to get a rebate for $100 and instead received a rebate for $220! (I also notified them of the mistake and they didn’t care)
I had a similar case where I got a rebate of $450 when it was supposed to be $100. I can’t wait to go for this offer!
“Plus, I don’t see a whole lot about this phone that’s supposed to “kill” the iPhone.”
Stick around and learn……. although I think the one thing that could doom this device is lack of public awareness, which has more to do with advertising and media blitzing than the phone itself.
The steaming pile of dog shit that is Sprint will destroy the potential of this innovative machine. Mail In rebate? I haven’t used a mailbox in over a year…
I will buy one. I am an iPhone user but would like to switch out. The iPhone is a fun device but need something a bit more serious for business functions.
i’m in the same boat. I like the iphone but AT&T is horrible where I live. “Less bars in more places” if you ask me. can’t wait for the pre!
will always go back to what apple said “the keyboard is only there when you need it” that keyboard looks like junk.
you are all very, very sad people for arguing about cell phones on the internet.
iPhone users, please don’t cry. No one’s taking your precious toy away from you. You’ll have your turn to thumb your noses in a couple of days.
Sheesh…
The $70 plan is per month, right? So the Pre is over a grand and a half, plus the cost of the phone itself?
It would cost the same as the iPhone.
aka $200 bucks plus 2 yr contract
24 months at $70 dollars a month = $1680
Sprints plan includes unlimited everything: data, texting, internet tv, pic messaging, video messaging, radio for 70 bucks.
AT&T’s plan includes: data…… for 70 bucks.
It would cost the same as the iPhone.
aka $200 bucks plus 2 yr contract
24 months at $70 dollars a month = $1680
Sprints plan includes unlimited everything.
AT&T’s plan includes only data.
Fail.
I have to ask… why in the world would you buy a Pre or a BlackBerry or some other $200 smartphone with a $70/month plan when the iPhone costs exactly the same? I guess if you hate Apple… but seriously, is the Pre or any other smartphone that costs exactly the same any better or more useful than the iPhone?
You are obviously not very smart and you have not actually researched phones lately. Sprints plan includes unlimited everything: data, texting, internet tv, pic messaging, video messaging, radio for 70 bucks.
AT&T’s plan includes: data…… for 70 bucks.
You are a tool.