Verizon confirmed in an analyst conference call that the Palm Pre, the little smartphone the could, will be available on Verizon’s network between Q1 and the end of Q2 next year. This should come as a relief to people who are waiting to ditch their Blackberry Storms for Palm’s new offering.
There’s not much more info than that: they just said it would happen. This confirms rumors that the Pre would break out of its pen at Sprint sooner than later and could mean new Sprint models coming running Palm’s WebOS.
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Looks like WebOS 1.1 is coming in “the next 30 days” with some new applications as well as exchange server policies that allow for remote wipe and smarter password controls. A tipster leaked this slide which is purportedly from the secret lair of Palm herself.
If you find yourself wishing your Palm Pre had a tad more battery life, Seidio is now selling an extended life battery for $45. It’s the same size as the regular battery pack so it doesn’t require a special back cover for you to use it.
We’re all quite excited here to find out that O2 and Movistar will get the Palm Pre in GSM form, opening the phone up to unlocking, hacking, and all sorts of molestation. UK, Ireland and Germany will get the phone on O2 and Spain will get it from Movistar. When, you ask?
Christmas.
That’s right: by the time Palm pinches off the GSM Pre Apple will have probably released iPod Touches with cameras and the HTC Hero, an Android phone that I wouldn’t kick out of bed for eating crackers, will be dancing on the Sprint Pre’s grave. It’s like Palm wants to fail.
This is probably the oldest bit of news you’ll ever see get posted on CrunchGear, but I came across this today and just had to share. See, it’s a robotic tattoo machine that’s being powered by a Palm IIIxe (maybe?) that’s simply running Palm OS.
Update: We now have video of the tattoo machine in action.
Sprint’s CFO got crunk all over an investor conference, informing them (between WHAT!s) that Pre sales don’t seem to have been affected by the launch of the iPhone 3G S. WHAT!
Yes, they’re still selling out, but hopefully will be catching up with demand soon.
Now that everyone has had their say about the Palm Pre, I thought it wise to say a few words about the oft labeled “iPhone killer” that Sprint and Palm hope will bring each back from the edge of the dreaded deadpool. It seems as though every touch-screen device to launch since the first generation iPhone has faced an uphill battle and the Pre is no different. It’s unpolished, sure, but Palm’s webOS has managed to slip in right behind Apple’s iPhone OS, which is something the other smartphone operating systems have failed to do. But it’s not perfect and, let’s face it, nothing is ever perfect on launch day.
The Pre is emerging as a polarizing device, even more so than the G1 (which everyone agreed was kind of beta), probably because it’s the closest thing to a legitimate threat that the iPhone has faced. Who wouldn’t get defensive? With strong sales in its first two weeks and an entirely new OS for developers to do their thing with, it’s strong out of the gate but controlled — because the jockey is holding the reins tight. Palm didn’t expect a dynamite launch or a million app sales in a week; what they’ve got so far is, if we can believe what they say, pretty much what they’d hoped for.
Of course, the TechCrunch network is a treasure trove (a rat’s nest, some would say) of opinions, and we have been known to attack the Pre (savagely and repeatedly) despite our interest in it. The app sales numbers for the Pre need more context than a direct comparison to the iPhone App Store, but that is an important data point, so let’s at least do it thoroughly.
The iPod Comet orbits the Earth in a biannual rotation, bringing new devices and attendant accessories into our view every Spring and Fall. The constellation is followed by a set of third-party developers and manufacturers who bolster the cloud as it swings into view and then disappear as the excitement wears off, relegating the devices to CostCos and Sam’s Clubs until the next rotation. But this season the orbit brought an anomaly: the Palm Pre, a device that is ostensibly compatible with the cloud, namely iTunes, but is definitely not of Apple’s world.
The Pre, as you’ll remember, masquerades as an iTunes-compatible device, a feature that Apple promises will soon be remedied through software updates. To this Palm replied:
“Palm’s media sync works with the current version of iTunes,” Palm spokesperson Lynn Fox told me. “If Apple chooses to disable media sync in a future version of iTunes, it will be a direct blow to their users who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience. However, people will have options. They can stay with the iTunes version that works to sync their music on their Pre, they can transfer the music via USB, and there are other third-party applications we could consider.”
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We’re not sure if there’s a direct connection here or not, but here’s the way we saw it: PreDev Wiki opens the floor to anyone looking to discuss tethering the Pre, then nixes the topic at the request of Palm. Just hours later, the first tethering solution has gone up. Coincidence? Did someone get a spark of motivation after the discussion got pushed under the rug? Either way – tethering works!
In an example of rolling over in the name of “good relationships,” the Pre Dev Wiki has shut down their tethering page because “Sprint could get angry.” This is in stark contrast with iPhone devs who couldn’t give two squirts about “good relationships” and instead produce interesting technical content including unlocked phones.
“We have been politely cautioned by Palm that any discussion of tethering during the Sprint exclusivity period (and perhaps beyond—we don’t know yet) will probably cause Sprint to complain to Palm, and if that happened then Palm would be forced to react against the people running the IRC channel and this wiki.
Got a Pre? Like Nintendo? If you fit in the overlapping intersection of that particular Venn diagram, then have I got some good news for you. Some enterprising individuals over at the Pre Dev Wiki have gotten a NES emulator up and running on the Palm Pre.
It hasn’t been a secret for months, but Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam has confirmed that a multitude of devices from RIM, Palm and Android-based devices are coming to the nation’s largest network in the next six months.
Nearly two months before the Pre hit the shelves, one of our Pre-toting compadres gave us the run down on how to take screenshots on the device.
Now, that wasn’t all that useful two months ago. Outside of the hundred or so people running around with a pre-release Pre, no one would be taking screenshots for quite some time. With the device now on the shelves, however, we’ve been seeing a whole lot of people asking how to grab screen captures, and countless other sites relying on the old “point a camera at the screen and pray” method. We figured it was time for a refresher course.
It’s easier than you might expect. Ready to grab some screens? Click here for the details.
Lots of excitement today over a second Palm WebOS device now that the Pre has launched. The only problem is that none of this is news. We broke the story about the device, code named Pixie, on April 29. A day later we had the Pixie name and additional details.
As far as I can tell there are no additional details coming out now. So I’ll supply additional information that we’ve gathered. Our sources in Asia tell us that Palm continues to push development of the device but is far from making a launch decision. “Palm has decided to put the Pixie on hold until they have better visibility into how its current models are selling in the market.”
Our guess is that low Pre sales rates make it less likely for the Pixie to hit the market this year. Palm’s WebOS is the best mobile operating system in existence, in our humble opinion. But the hardware is, at best, a B.
It’s not surprising as we’ve seen these sorts of acts in the past, but Verizon is really pushing it by comparing the Pre to the BlackBerry Storm. I’ve had my Pre for just a few short days and I’m already itching to ditch my Curve and skip on over to Sprint for the Pre. Anyway, hit the jump to check out all the Verizon propaganda.
$70 for a charger is asking a lot, but when Palm announced the pricing for the Touchstone, we all acquiesced because it was such a cool little device. And of course if you’re getting a Pre, you really should have the thing. But it turns out that, while the Pre itself costs nearly as much to make as you’re going to pay for it, the Touchstone charger is made of bargain-bin electronics that probably cost only a handful of ducats to manufacture.
Highway robbery? Not really, since Apple (among others) has been doing this kind of thing for a decade.
The Internet – a barren wasteland full of haterage and pain and woe betide the company who wanders into its unblinking eye of malice. After saying that the Pre was an also ran last week, other interested parties have started to come out of the woodwork to predict a fiery demise for Palm’s savior-phone.
William Hurley, for example, writes in BusinessWeek that Palm’s efforts to court developers failed early on and that the Palm’s efforts will all be for naught. Here’s the kidney jab:
First it was AT&T mouthing off about carrying the Palm Pre and now Verizon’s CEO Lowell McAdam is stating that VZW will begin selling the Palm Pre “over the next six months or so…” Also mentioned was the Storm 2 by McAdam, which will also go on sale in the same time frame. Side note: Palm shares went up 11 points while Sprint’s went down 3 points after this announcement.
This popped up this weekend but it’s worth a look. Apparently there’s a special manual that Palm and Sprint put together to train in-store folks how to sell the Pre. They won’t sell the phone to just anyone, mind you. Only early adopters and artsy hipsters with jobs AKA “non-IT Centric business users” should apply. Real business people should look elsewhere including the WinMo-powered Treo Pro.
