Palm Pre now rumored for mid-April launch on Sprint!
By Will Park on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 5:58 PM PST In Devices, Hottest Hardware, Palm, Palm Pre, Sprint, Web OS
If you thought the previous rumor about the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre being launched by Sprint (NYSE: S) on April 30 was full of hot, Tweeted air, you’ll find this latest Palm Pre rumor even more outlandish. Rumblings along the mobile grapevine are hinting at a mid-April launch for the highly-anticipated Palm Pre – April 15 or 16 is the new rumored launch window!
[Update]
The Palm Pre is now rumored for a mid-May launch. Specifically, alleged internal Sprint documents point to a preliminary May 17 launch for the Palm Pre. Based on employee vacation freezes, it’s safe to expect the Palm Pre launching in May. More here.
The rumor is based on an Everything Treo forum-member’s claim that a Sprint Nextel customer service representative verbally told him that the Palm Pre would be available on April 15th or 16th. “Inittowinit” goes on to claim that the Sprint rep said the Palm Pre would be launching with a $300 price-tag when purchased with a new 2-year contract.
Given the rather polished state of the WebOS and the Palm Pre applications that we were shown at CTIA Wireless 2009, it wouldn’t surprise us to see the Pre launching next week. Palm was also waiting for PalmOS legacy support before going live with the Palm Pre (the Palm Pre’s WebOS isn’t compatible with older Palm OS applications), and the Palm OS Classic emulator demonstration proved that Palm is ready to support PalmOS emulation on the Palm Pre. It seems Palm has all their ducks in a row.
Still, it’s hard to put faith in this kind of unsubstantiated claim.
[Update]
The Palm Pre is now rumored for a mid-May launch. Specifically, alleged internal Sprint documents point to a preliminary May 17 launch for the Palm Pre. Based on employee vacation freezes, it’s safe to expect the Palm Pre launching in May. More here.
[EverythingTreo via: ComputerWorld]
$300? = Fail! The pre looks super cool but it’s not $100 cooler than the iPhone. I can’t imagine Sprint and Palm are stupid enough to price the Pre THAT much higher than the iPhone. Frankly, I think it needs to be $200 or less or else it’s going to fail. If it fails, so does Palm… for good. Which would be too bad and very sad.
Kirk Tyler and all the other retards complaining about the price of the Pre. If the Pre comes out at $299 (I hope it comes out at $199 also)You have to figure in the $30 a month you save for service which equals $720 less in the 2 year contract period. Maybe Sprint can push out the lower price by raising your bill for a year by $10.Still chepaer then ATT and the iphone service by quite a bit.
Isn’t it funny how they keep saying the 15th of every month? Feb 15, then March 15, now April 15th?
I got have this weird feeling Palm is going to give us a release date more then a week
before it will actually launch. I’ve never seen a company just release something without
warning, especially something so highly anticipated.
Get a grip people.
The rumor is days old and has pretty much been dismissed. Palm has always released its products on a Sunday anyway. Do you really think that everyone at Palm and Sprint kept the release date a secret until the news reached down to the CSRs?
YEAH BABY! BRING IT ON.
Now what is the likely release date for Australia for what is probably the most significant phone since the iDrone?
However Missy Apple could be coming up with a sweet proposition in June at their developer conference!!!
This is funny sprint employees do not even know when the phone is being released or the price it will launch at. Palm reps have just gone to training on the device so I don’t see this coming out for another month
If the Pre comes out above $199 I will drop sprint and get an iPhone. There is no way I am going to pay more for a lesser developed phone. Sprint-Palm, get your heads out of your a**es and make the Pre $150 or Plam and Sprint are doomed.
Umm tyler go to ATT and pay an extra $720 plus for the service,us intelligentt folk wil take the PRE and have enough money to buy one unsubsidized if we wanted.Only an Idiot would not think about the immediate savings in the first 3 months that would pay for the extra up front costs.What a marooooon!!
Hold on a second…
You are comparing a PDA to a Media phone… Do you see the inherent problem here? Yes… Contrary to popular belief the Iphone is a MEDIA PHONE. This is why the Instinct was so heavily marketed against it. Why? Because the Instinct is also a MEDIA phone.
Translation: Pre will do computer stuff. Iphone will do music stuff.
Enjoy buying all that music from ITunes and not being able to use it on anything other than Apple products.
Yeah so I called sprint last night and JUST like the palm PRO which was so Confused with the palm PRE but the lady had no idea when it was coming out and it is 6 days away…now the spint stores get a inventory list of what is coming in a week in advance….so just like the PRO the release date was Jan 25th, Feb 15th, and March 15th it finally made its way to the internet….so the PRE will probley do the same…but dont get to excited people I think it will be a little long for a phone that is anounched in Jan not to come out till 5 or so months later is just suicide
Palm will be digging their own grave if they price the Pre at $300. As much as I want a Palm Pre, there is no way I’m paying $300. They’ll argue though that you’ll end up saving money with Sprint vs. AT&T. And maybe that is true if you were to get identical everything/unlimited plans. Even if it is true, not a lot of people want to pay $300 for a phone. And if you’re palm, you want a lot of people to buy this phone.
If Palm and Sprint want to grab iPhone users they’ll have to price the Pre at an equal or lesser price than the iPhone AND have a less expensive phone plan.
If you’re the smarter brother, your family lineage must be questioned. “Retards” was a bit over the top.
I have to agree with the price of the phone. Consumers are not going to analyze and amortize total cost of hardware and services when they look to buy, they will look at the price of the device and say “No thanks, iPhone is cheaper”. Lets face it, $30 a month isn’t significant for the slice of the consumer market that smartphones are geared at.
There is too much hype, to large a fanboy network behind Apple, and Palm/Sprint need to pull every trick in the book to gain customers. $300 price won’t get it.
I’m waiting for the Pre on Verizon anyway, so all these gyrations are meaningless. From what I understand, Sprint’s got it locked until the end of this year — I’m hoping Verizon makes this phone available January 2010…
I work for Sprint in the Advanced Tech department… I dont know who the guy was that told someone that… but there has been no official scheduled launch date set for the Pre. We have not even been given an estimated launch date. Furthermore, Palm almost always sends us test phones for techs to use a month prior to a new device launch. We have not seen a single one yet. Doubtful that it will be mid April…
“$30 a month isn’t signficanT”???? In this economy?? Palm and Sprint aren’t the only ones that need to get a grip of the economic realities right now.
How does that make any sense…? you’d be paying way more money for switching…. yuk..