Time to get those speculative juices flowing again. Pre Central have unearthed the above O2 Germany promotional poster displaying a Palm Pixi stood in front of such smartphone luminaries as Sony Ericsson’s X10 and Motorola’s Milestone. Given that the Pixi has yet to make the hop over the Atlantic, their supposition is that we’re looking at its Plus variant and that this early flier is indicative of a soon-ish release for the Euro-bound Plus devices from Palm. Can we be any more specific than that? Why yes we can, thanks to Laurent Guyot, a French PR chap, who indicates an April 27th launch date for the Pre and Pixi Plus on the SFR network. Put as much trust into this info as you feel appropriate, though it does look like a resoundingly logical time to get these handsets out into eager European hands.
Yes folks, it’s finally really happened. Today Palm announced that its dynamic duo — the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus — will be making their way to AT&T’s network “in the coming months.” We won’t bore you with too many details on the devices, since you can read our review of the non-Plus Sprint variations here and here, and the Verizon versions right here. What we will tell you is that at an undisclosed time, the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus can be yours for just $149.99 and a deep-discount $49.99 (with a $100 mail-in rebate and two-year contract), respectively. The Pre Plus will be similarly equipped to its Verizon counterpart (16GB of storage, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1), and the Pixi should look awfully familiar as well (8GB storage, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth 2.1), though AT&T will be offering a variation with a blue back plate (in addition to the standard black and other swappable covers). Both UMTS / HSDPA devices will support AT&T’s new Address Book service as a Synergy sync option, and will have free auto-connect access to the carrier’s WiFi +20,000 hotspots. We don’t know when we’ll get our hands on these guys, but Palm will be showing off the AT&T-ified versions of the handsets at the upcoming CTIA… which we will of course be attending. It should be interesting to see if hopping on AT&T’s network will move the needle for Palm, let’s just hope those “coming months” are, you know… pretty soon. Full PR and one more pic after the break.
Oh Palm. Just a little over a year ago your future seemed so bright, so renewed. You walked away from CES 2009 reborn, held aloft by a completely innovative new mobile operating system, a striking piece of hardware, and a feeling amongst the press and investors that you were back in the game and playing to win. Now, less than a year and a half later, you’ve nearly returned to the dark and desperate place you’d found yourself in at the end of 2008; a rapidly declining mindshare, the bottom falling out of your stock, and bad dips in phone sales. All of it is leaving you backed into a corner where the common perception now is that you’ve got to sell to survive at all. So what went wrong? How did such a promising launch lead to such a disappointing reality? And how can you wrestle your way back from the brink yet again? Is that even an option?
In 2007 the editors of Engadget penned an impassioned open letter to the company, pleading for many of the changes we eventually saw at Palm. This isn’t a follow-up, but it’s very much in the spirit. We’re going to take a look at the missteps that put the company in its current spot, and talk about what we think can pull it back out. Palm, it’s time for a little tough love… again.
Palm might be able to use a bit of goodnews right about now, but it looks like it may not be able to count on that coming from AT&T. As AllThingsD‘s John Paczkowski reports, Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek is now saying that Palm’s still as yet unconfirmed launch on AT&T has been pushed back from its rumored April debut to June or July. What’s more, Misek says that the delay isn’t one of the usual variety, with AT&T reportedly citing a “long list of technical issues with the Pre and Pixi,” and even going so far as to decrease its initial order size and “sharply reduce” its marketing budget for the launch. Of course, we are still taking about a rumored delay to an unconfirmed launch, but we should be hearing directly from Palm soon enough — it’s scheduled to report its third-quarter earnings after Thursday’s closing bell.
Here’s a little spicy rumor for you Palm fans on this tranquil Sunday: according to TopTongueBarry who claims to work for AT&T, his company has just finished certification tests with GSM flavors of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus ahead of a possible April 26th launch — a date not far from what we’ve heardearlier. However, the bigger news from Barry is that the big A will soon be testing a third mysterious webOS device by the name of Palm Elan, which may greet us mere mortals on May 10th (but possibly in Europe first). Another forum member Shadow-360 also dug up some cached pages that claimed to have accessories for the non-existent device, as pictured above. Of course, this could be just a crude joke for a keyboard-less Palm device that many of us seem to desire — as reminded by the good folks at PreCentral, Elan is also the name of the company that sued Apple over multitouch patents last April. So, any thoughts on this leak? Are we all ready for a new webOS phone?
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Update: Turns out the Elan may just be the Pixi. Or it could be your wildest dreams about to come true.
We aren’t trying to lump these two together or anything, but we figured we’d give those of you who opted for Palm’s second set of webOS handsets an opportunity to pool your thoughts in order to make the smartphone landscape an even better place to survey. We personally didn’t find too much new to laud on Verizon’s Palm-branded twofer compared to the original Pre and Pixi, and those of you who were hoping for all new hardware from the company at CES were undoubtedly let down. Still, there’s something to be said about a webOS product on America’s “largest 3G network,” and frankly, we’re interested in hearing how you’d change things. Would you have overhauled things more drastically? Expanded the screen size? Bumped the resolution? Enlarged the keys? Go on and tell Jon exactly what you think in comments below — who knows, the Pre Plus Plus might just carry your calling card.
According to a little late night tweet from Palm — and the update screen on our device — the stacked new webOS 1.4 update is making its way out into the world for the company’s Verizon-flavored devices. That’s right, Plussers — video recording (and editing) is just a small download away. So why are you still reading this?
Officially speaking, the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus still have a weekend ahead of ‘em before they can be sold, but if you know the right person in your local Best Buy, you could very well be playing with one hours before your contemporaries. An anonymous tipster beamed over the image you see above via our handy iPhone app, noting that both of Palm’s first entries onto Verizon’s network were in stock. Granted, neither are for sale per se, but what’s stopping you from moseying on down and giving it a shot? Nothing, that’s what.
In case you missed it in our review, Palm has gone and spilled its Verizon pricing info on its official blog. The Pre Plus is hitting shelves at a cent under $150, closely followed by the Pixi Plus at $99.99 — both after $100 mail-in rebate and on two-year commitments. Available to buy from this coming Monday, the new handsets are also incentivized with a free Pixi Plus coming with every purchase — a limited offer running until February 14. That’s after yet another mail-in rebate, meaning you’ll probably be shelling out a cool $450 to get your webOS fix on Verizon, but we can’t argue with the final tally after all the paperwork has been done, filed, triple-checked, lost, recovered, and your money’s finally reimbursed.
It’s been about a year since Palm pulled itself back from the brink of imminent destruction with the announcement of webOS and the Palm Pre, and even less time since the products announced actually hit the market. In that time span, the company has issued another handset (the small, less powerful Pixi), released a number of over-the-air updates to its OS (nine in all), and created and disseminated a slew of developer tools, including iterative releases of its SDK and a new web-based development environment called Ares. Throughout the ups and downs of the past 12-or-so months Palm has been “back,” the company has stuck with Sprint as its lone carrier partner in the US — so while it’s been innovating and tweaking on its platform and devices, the third-place partner has kept it from the larger audiences AT&T or Verizon might offer. Now — almost a year to the day — Palm has turned around and opened its devices up to the country’s largest carrier, in addition to bumping the specs and features of both phones it offers (the Pre getting an additional 8GB of storage and double the RAM, the Pixi is now equipped with WiFi). All the while significantly improving its SDK (with the new native Plug-in Development Kit) and app distribution model. So can Palm finally really get this ship sailing, court the developers it badly needs, and deliver on the promises of webOS, or is it too little, too late? Read on to find out!
