One of Verizon’s first webOS phones will be a direct upgrade to the Pre if a leak is accurate. The company’s internal systems reportedly show a “Palm Pre Plus” without supplying further details. What it would involve isn’t clear, but the badge suggests a similar design and that upgrades are most likely to revolve around more storage or better performance.
The tip to Phone Arena is the first to directly point to a new Palm model outside of Sprint and backs up a report of advance Verizon training for webOS as a platform. The carrier is also rumored to be receiving a Wi-Fi equipped Pixi and appears to be committing to Palm in a significant way. Both phones could be critical for the smartphone maker as its lack of carrier choices, combined with competition from the iPhone, has led to declining sales even compared to its pre-webOS days.

Read the full story on Electronista

iPhone · Palm · palm pixi · PalmPre · Smartphone · Sprint · Verizon Communications · WebOS

Palm this afternoon sent an invite to members of the press to attend a keynote on January 7th, the first official day of CES. The company has provided no clues as to what it’s expected to release other than “new” developments. Last year was the company’s first CES keynote in a long time and saw the introduction of webOS and the Pre, both of which were key to revitalizing the struggling phone maker’s business.
Likely candidates for new introductions are a new phone model as well as adaptations of the Pixi or Pre for other carriers, including a Pixi with Wi-Fi for Verizon and other devices that end Sprint’s exclusivity in the US. A major webOS update is also a possibility and could address some of the remaining criticisms for the platform, such as its lack of 3D games and other truly native apps.

Source Electronista

Handhelds · Palm OS · PalmPixi · PalmPre · Sprint · Verizon Communications · WebOS · Wi-Fi

Best Buy doorbuster special deals have just gone live and one of the special Black Friday 2009 deals includes the Sprint Palm Pre.

You can buy the Sprint Palm Pre on Black Friday for only $79.99, at the moment when you shop Best Buy is offering the Palm Pre for $149.99 so just sit back and wait until Black Friday and get it a lot cheaper.

The special doorbusters special price will be available in stores November 27 and online on November 26, you will get it for the low price mentioned above after savings with an upgraded or new 2-year agreement with Sprint and activation through Best Buy.

[Source: Phones Review]

Best Buy · blackfriday · Doorbuster · Handhelds · Holidays · Palm OS · PalmPre · Sprint

Highlights of a review of the Pixi from NY Times:

Twenty-five bucks for an app phone? That’s unbelievable. (Or, rather, it emphasizes how irrelevant a phone’s starter price really is. The true cost is embedded in your two years of monthly service fees–in this case, $2,309.)

Anyway, the Pixi is absolutely gorgeous, with a razor-thin (OK, .4-inch-thin) design. The front is flat glossy black; the back is curved hard rubber. It weighs just over 3 ounces. THREE OUNCES!? That’s insane. If this phone were any smaller and lighter, it would cease to exist.

This time, the illuminated keyboard doesn’t slide out—it’s always there beneath the screen; the phone is a slab design. The keyboard is very tiny indeed (just over two inches wide), but because the keys are super-raised and rubberized and move and click when you type on them, it’s not bad. You wind up supplementing each press with your thumbnail, and it works.

The operating system is the same fluid WebOS you can read about in my Pre review here. Once again, it integrates contacts, e-mail and calendars from all online sources—Google, Yahoo, Exchange and so on—and merges them on the phone.

However, on the Pixi, almost everything from the Pre has been diminished. The most painful change is the screen, which is only 320 by 400 pixels; that is, it shows 17 percent less, vertically, and you really miss those extra 80 pixels. You feel a little cramped.

The camera is 2 megapixels, down from 3. The battery life is shorter. The speaker is quieter. You can’t open as many apps at once.

There’s no Wi-Fi, either, so your only connection to the Internet is over Sprint’s cellular airwaves; cellular connections are generally slower than Wi-Fi ones. (Then again, I’ve found Sprint’s Internet coverage to be excellent.)

Worst of all, the cheaper, slower processor in the Pixi makes it slow to open apps, load Web pages and trigger functions. Sometimes it gets ridiculous; you might wait a whole minute for a Web page, for example.

Google · New York Times · Operating system · Sprint · Sprint Nextel · Telecommunications · Wi-Fi · yahoo

Market research firm IDC has for years been compiling data on the best-selling smartphones in the US. While their numbers from the second quarter of 2009 ranked the Palm Pre at #8, in the following three months the Pre moved up to #6. The jump was likely spurred on by a number of factors, including increased supply and price cuts at Sprint and resellers, as well as the fact that the Pre was only on the market for one third of the second quarter.
It will be interesting to see the top ten list for Q1 2010, since by then the Pre will have launched on Verizon.

[Source: Pre Central]

Advertising and Marketing · Business · International Data Corporation · MarketResearch · PalmPre · Smartphone · Sprint · Sprint Nextel

Consumer Reports recently released their annual top products list, which had 398 items. The Palm Pre is on the smartphone section. The Pre was given a score of 67, while the first place had a 73.
The low score was taken by the BlackBerry Pearl 8130 on Sprint, with a 59. That puts the Palm Pre right in the middle, which by the way, has the old sticker price of $200. If they had use the newer price, the Pre could have gained some extra points.

[Source: My Pre]

Blackberry · BlackBerry Pearl · Handhelds · Palm OS · PalmPre · Smartphone · Sprint · Video Games

Online phone retailer Wirefly is launching the Palm Pixi at a price lower than you’ll find anywhere else: $24.95 for new contract customers. Current Sprint customers won’t left out in the cold either – they’ll be able to pick up the Pixi from Wirefly for a mere $99.99 with a renewed contract. Both new customers and current Sprint subscribers will be treated to a rebate-free experience.

[Source: Pre Central]

Handhelds · Palm · Palm OS · palm pixi · Sprint · Sprint Nextel · Unix and Linux · Verizon

The Palm Pre’s little brother, the Palm Pixi, is due to hit the market this Sunday, November 15th, and retailers are already offering the phone at discounted prices.
The Palm Pixi will be Sprint’s second webOS-powered smartphone. It features the same touchscreen and gesture-support that came with the Palm Pre. However, screen size is smaller at 2.6 inches as it has a slate-style QWERTY keyboard, compared to the Palm Pre’s slide out keyboard.

Other features include a; 2-megapixel camera, GPS, 3G data, 3.5mm headphone jack, and 8GB of onboard storage. The Pixi does not come with WiFi, but as long as you’re within reach of Sprint’s network, you’ll get 3G data speeds.

If you get the phone on Sprint, it will cost $99.99 on a two-year contract with a $100 mail-in rebate, but there are already better deals out there.

Walmart’s partner LetsTalk.com is offering the phone for $30 for a two-year contract without the mail-in rebate Sprint asks for. The only catch is that this needs to be a new contract, not an upgrade.

[Source: ibtimes]

Handhelds · Palm OS · PalmPixi · PalmPre · Smartphone · Sprint · Touchscreen · WebOS

Gadgetell is trying to decide if the Palm Pre has saved Palm:

The successful launch of the Palm Pre, Palm’s darling of a phone running the “revolutionary” webOS was supposed to save Palm. Launched on June 6 in the US, the Pre was off to a fast start, depending on who you asked. The Pre continues to be sold on one network, Sprint, while it’s application catalog fills out. The question now becomes, did the Pre save Palm?

That was the question poised to me by our Robert Nelson who was standing next to me when the phone was announced at CES last year. Both of us left with a sense of hope and excitement about the new phone and about the webOS. Where are we now?

Robert says, “To me, I think it has gone stale. It almost seems that Palm is back on life support. But at the same time, I like the Pre (of course, that could just be the fan boy in me).”

My take is two parts: I agree with Robert the gloss has faded a bit on the Pre. I attribute that to an unappealing design, at least for me. I am edging closer to despising key’d phones, the split second it takes to slide out the keypad or worse, reorient the device is far too long for me. The Pre doesn’t live on the now network, it lives on the, wait for it, slide out, network.

So it’s clear I am not a big fan of the hardware on the Pre. That’s a personal call and one that I may be on my own with it; I can deal with that. I have the same problems with the Moto Droid and the slew of Android phones with slide out full-size keyboards. A phone store clerk explained it to me like this: the teens and 20 year olds love the slide out, the 30 and up crowd digs the slider phones. Test that one out, I’ve found it to be a decent predictor.

Part two is this, while the Pre hasn’t saved Palm, the webOS will. The OS is fun, simple, brilliant in some ways. I think the Pixi will do well, assuming it gets off Sprint in record time. I think the phone after Pixi will do even better. There is much competing operating systems could learn from webOS. While it still could use some polishing around the edges, it works and works well.

There is no question in my mind that the webOS can compete with Android for most people. Competing with the iPhone OS isn’t the problem, it’s the Santa’s sack of apps that is getting harder to get around.

Palm · Palm Pre · Sprint