Palm Pre Launch Date Announced

Cell Phones — By ericjmartin on May 19, 2009 9:56 pm

Let the summer of smart phone officially begin. Palm has announced that the new kid on the smart phone block, the Palm Pre, will be available June 6th. Exclusively offered by Sprint, initial pricing is set at $199 USD. This will be the first entry of what is expected to be a competitive jump-start for the smart-phone industry that has been so dominanted by the iPhone since its arrival.

The Palm offers much to appeal from both Blackberry and iPhone customers alike. Sporting both a keypad and a touchpad, Palm hopes to pick up the span of users yet undecided. Unfortunately, the price may not be low enough to undercut equivalent offerings from other providers, and seems to be targeted to retain Sprint customers as opposed to creating converts the way the iPhone did for AT&T. 

Nevertheless, all of the original video and demo of the unit seems to suggest that the Pre will be a very smooth and well integrated experience, and as Palm looks for this product to keep its loyal user base moving into the next generation of personal electronics, it better work well.  As usual, Palm has spent as much time on support sofware as the phone itself, and will leverage online technologies like Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail, along with Outlook. No sign of Thunderbird or Apple mail support, but plugins are bound to pop up if Palm can exploit  ground roots in the field. 

Only time will tell who will win this battle, and rumors are flying of a new iPhone out soon, which could steal Palm’s thunder. Looming in the dark are Android enabled phones, which may bloom in the near future. If you had a Palm Pilot, and are feeling nostalgic, on top of being stuck with Sprint, take a chance to test drive the Palm Pre on June 6th, and let us know what you think.

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