The long awaited Palm pre™ has almost been released in the US. "Almost?" Well, it's going to be released very soon, but details of it are already on the Best Buy website, but it's not going to be cheap...
We all know how expensive Best Buy can be. Not too long ago the Nokia N95 was $700 PAYG, as well as the Samsung Blackjack II $550 PAYG, but this is pushing it a bit too far, as Best Buy are charging $849.99 for the Palm pre on Sprint/Nextel Inc. That's right, $849.99. Eight hundred & forty nine . ninety nine US Dollars. There have been no extra details regarding the pricing from Best Buy or Sprint/Nextel Inc. , but it's been speculated that such a high price has been put up to put off people wishing to purchase the Palm pre on release due to a worry that not enough stock will be in.
Some analysts said Palm and Sprint deliberately scheduled the launch on the Saturday two days before Apple Inc.'s WorldWide Developers Conference, where more is expected to be revealed about the iPhone 3.0 software and possible iPhone hardware upgrades. Both Sprint and Palm could use a boost, even if it is only small, given their financial pictures. With the release of the iPhone 3G & BlackBerry Bold on at&t, the T-Mobile G1 on T-Mobile and the BlackBerry Storm on Verizon Wireless, all Sprint has had really is the last of the BlackBerry Curve 83xx series (the 8350), and the last device released by Palm was the Treo Pro, running Windows Mobile 6.1, and generally inferior to many other Windows Mobile devices (such as the HTC Touch Pro, HTC Touch HD & HP Data Messenger), so it's about time Sprint released a much anticipated, desired device into the market and that Palm released another groundbreaking device running Palm's own operating system. The smartphone market will also be busy this summer, with highly anticipated iPhone and Pre launches as well as further news from RIM, Nokia and several Android phone manufacturers.
Incase anyone is un-aware of the Palm pre, here is the gist of it:
In terms of software, it's running Palm's brand new "webOS™", supporting MP3, AAC, AAC+, AMR, QCELP & WAV audio formats, MPEG-4, H.263 & H.264 video formats and GIF (and Animated GIF), JPEG, PNG & BMP image formats, as well as including built-in GPS software (and hardware).
It has a beautiful 3.1-inch touch screen with 24-bit color, 320×480 resolution & a HVGA display, giving displays near to the BlackBerry Storm & iPhone displays.
It has 3G EVDO Rev A (which will be on the Sprint network) and supports Microsoft Outlook e-mail with Microsoft Direct Push Technology and POP3/IMAP (Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, etc) e-mail, putting it up there with the rest of the business phones for power users (HTC Touch Pro, BlackBerry Curve/Bold, etc). Luckily they're not pulling an iPhone on us by forgetting MMS, as it also includes integrated IM, SMS, and MMS.
In terms of hardware, it has a 3.1-inch touch-screen, a trackball (similar to that found on many newer BlackBerry devices) and slides up to reveal a physical QWERTY keyboard, keeping to the same Palm style. It also has a 3 megapixel camera with LED flash and extended depth of field. Not fantastic compared to a lot of smartphones coming out now, but enough to take great quality photos. Not only that, it also features an ambient light sensor, a proximity sensor and an accelerometer, looking to promise us some quite interactive games and other applications.
It then presents us with Wi-fi 802.11b/g with WPA, WPA2 and 801.1x authentication and Bluetooth® 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo bluetooth support, giving us the ability to use stereo bluetooth headsets that some other phones haven't been able to promise us (*hint* iPhone *hint*) as well as 8GB of on-board user storage memory and micro-USB connectivity. It has the usual 3.5mm stereo headphone jack, saving us from having to mess around with those annoying little convertors like we have had to on quite a few BlackBerry and HTC devices.
Dimensions
Width: 59.5mm (2.3 inches)Height: 100.5mm (3.9 inches)
Thickness: 16.95mm (0.67 inches)
Weight: 135 grams (4.76 ounces)(Palm pre specifications from http://www.palmpre.org/specs)
(Best Buy details from http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9133378)
