There wasn’t much fanfare for the Palm Pre 2, which is surprising given the long wait and the new backing that Palm got with HP. But alas, it got itself one, maybe two paragraphs in a press release that told us it was coming to SFR in France this week and will arrive in North America within the coming months. Rumor says the CDMA version for Verizon, which we saw in an FCC filing a few days ago, will be arriving November 11.
There isn’t anything concrete, as it’s just the rumor for now, but it makes sense if HP wants the Palm Pre 2 to be on shelves before the holidays – especially before Black Friday.
The Pre 2 is the successor to the original Palm Pre and will be the first device to officially sport webOS 2.0. While webOS was a very promising mobile operating system, most complaints came from the hardware on which it was found. After the Palm Pre was released, folks were questioning the easily scratched plastic screen, the squishy bubble keyboard and there were even videos online that showed users cutting cheese with the sharp side of the Pre.
Unfortunately, it looks like the Palm Pre 2 is an inconsequential upgrade from the original version, replacing the plastic screen with glass, adding a 5MP camera and boosting the processor to a 1GHz unit. For long-time Pre fanatics, it’s certainly a big let down that almost a year and a half later, they’re only getting a very minor hardware update.
For HP, it’s all up to webOS 2.0 now and just how well it will play with other hardware – including tablets. Hopefully we’ll be seeing some of that new hardware, including perhaps new smartphones, packing the intuitive and elegant webOS 2.0. It would certainly be the biggest shot HP has in making a serious name in the mobile space.
[Via: Pre Central]