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!
We just had a chance to play around with the new Palm Pre Plus (and Palm Pixi Plus), and we must say — they’ve made some solid improvements to these devices. We’re going to focus on the Pre, since it’s really had the bulk of the changes. Firstly, it’s now a Verizon branded (and bound) phone, which should bump the status of the device in many people’s minds. The company has also improved the action of the slider mechanism, which is now way, way snappier, and clicks into and out of place with a confidence-stoking solidness. Palm has also changed the keyboard a bit, getting rid of the orange coloring, and revamping the action of the keys, making them far clickier (and maybe a bit more raised). The feel is closer to the Pixi, and that’s a really good thing. Of course, they’ve added an additional 8GB of storage, making the internal capacity 16GB, and Palm is going full steam ahead with gaming on the device thanks to its PDK. Check the video and gallery below for the full story.
Good ole’ Jon Rubinstein, live on stage just announced the Palm Pixi Plus. Looks like the only difference here from its predecessor is that it’s got WiFi — and it’s bound for Verizon Wireless’ network. Coming January 25th, just around the corner. No price, but you’ll know when we do.
Update: Full specs are down in the source, and the press video is just past the break!
And just like that, you’ve got specs. We’d already heard that the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus were headed to Big Red for some more EV-DO action, and now we’ve got a leaked image of the phones’ spec list. Guess what? Nothing much to see here — just a storage bump for the Pre to 16GB, and WiFi enabled on the Pixi, unlike its Sprint counterpart. As for release schedule, we’ve got nothing, but you can expect hear more about these two dudes at Palm’s CES event tomorrow, which we will — of course — be covering live.
