You didn’t think Germany was gonna have all the Palm fun, did you? The UK is keeping pace with its longtime nemesis by matching the May 28 launch date for the Pre and Pixi Plus on O2, and has even supplied us with a handy reference sheet containing all price plans available for the handsets. You’ll find it after the break, but sadly it’ll only be of interest to true WebOS enthusiasts. There’s nothing south of £25 ($36) per month available, and if you want a reasonable call allowance, you’ll have to get on into the £30 and above bracket. All contracts do at least come with unlimited texts and data, but overall the cost seems too steep to entice us, what with all the Desires and Bolds floating around at better price points.
We said it was coming on June 6, and we weren’t lying — the Pixi Plus, that is, rife with GSM compatibility for AT&T’s airwaves. The Pre Plus is already available (with a free Touchstone thrown in, no less), but if you’re looking for something a smidge smaller with a little less horsepower, you might be holding out for this one. For what it’s worth, we’re hearing that the Touchstone promotion won’t apply to the new model — largely because it’ll sell for $100 less on contract, if we had to guess — so be sure you come packing enough cash on the 6th if wireless charging is your secret, irrepressible passion.
Say what you will about the Pixi Plus; it may not be the best smartphone in the world, and heck, it might not even be the best webOS device on the block. But you know what? When your net cash outlay is a big, fat zero, it’s pretty tough to argue — especially when you’ve got dumbphones running $20, $50, $100, or even more. On that note, Verizon dropped the Pixi Plus from $30 to $0 on contract after rebate this week, which makes a pretty compelling case for the thing — if nothing else, you could just use it for its free mobile hotspot service and pay $50 less upfront than you do for a MiFi (granted, you’ll be paying more month to month, but… you know, you’ve got an actual phone). Now, here’s our question: with this kind of insane price pressure, what comes next after free?
So we know the Pre Plus is hitting AT&T this coming Sunday — but what about its little brother? We’re hearing that AT&T has lined up the Pixi Plus for a June 6 launch for $49.99 on contract after rebate, $100 less than it’ll be charging for the Pre Plus — in other words, you’ll be able to get a Verizon Pre Plus or an AT&T Pixi Plus for the same price, and the latter won’t include free mobile hotspot service. Voodoo math aside, we’ve got a few more goodies in here for you: the aging LG Vu will apparently be replaced on June 6 with a Vu Plus model for $149.99 on contract with rebate, Samsung will re-up the rugged Rugby with the Rugby II for $129.99, and Pantech’s Pursuit swings in for $49.99. It all makes for an exciting June, does it not?
Wherever the Pre goes, the Pixi typically likes to follow, which makes it pretty interesting to see that Vodafone Spain will be launching Palm’s new GSM flavor of the Pixi Plus on the 10th of this month without any sign of its Pre Plus sibling. That’s a marked departure from the line Vodafone and O2 have both been taking in other markets, so it makes you wonder: does Vodafone think that the Pre Plus won’t sell well here (it already offers the Pre), is there some firmware issue holding back the localized version, or is there some other mysterious conspiracy brewing altogether? At any rate, follow the break for Palm’s press release.
HP announcing that it’s going to buy Palm in a $1.2b all-cash transaction certainly took everyone by surprise, but in many ways the deal makes perfect sense. HP is a gigantic player in the tech industry but has no appreciable presence in rapidly-growing mobile space, and Palm — well, you should know how we feel about Palm by now. Even still, we can’t say we were expecting this one, and it looks like most of you weren’t either — HP only got two percent of the vote in our “who should buy Palm” poll, while Engadget (that’s us!) got… fourteen percent. Oops.
But now that we’ve had a day to wrap our heads around the news and think about what Palm and HP said to us last night and to analysts on the conference call announcing the deal, we think we’ve got a pretty good set of educated guesses on how things might shake out over the next few months. Read on!
Hardly the most exciting Palm news you’re gonna hear this week, but the company that still owns itself for the time being has just updated its WebOS software on Verizon to the extremely granular version 1.4.1.1. The helpful changelog informs us there are no new apps, but pinch-zoom now works correctly in Doc and PDF views, a lag in the camera shutter sound has been rectified, and forwarding videos uploaded to YouTube on to your friends via email has also been made to work as it should. The most important fix of all, though, is to a keyboard input issue whereby a single key press would generate a letter twice — both Pre Central and one of our readers report that this problem appears to have been consigned to the past. Good stuff, now let’s see it go global, shall we?
Hey, France, you really want to rub some salt in AT&T customers’ wounds for no reason other than the fact that you’re feeling scrappy? Well, alright then: pop open your web browsers come next Tuesday and navigate over to SFR’s site, where you’ll be able pick up the GSM flavors of both the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus, which confirms previous chatter that an April date for these devices east of the Atlantic was a lock. Both devices will have access to Palm’s Mobile Hotspot app (though there’ll be additional usage charges associated with it) along with a selection of custom goodies like SFR TV and SFR Wi-Fi, which presumably helps customers identify the extensive WiFi hotspot network they’re entitled to by virtue of using the phone. Oh, and if you don’t want to order online, you’ll be able to pick these bad boys up in-store starting May 11.
Just a few days after earning its all-important GFC wings, the European flavor of Palm’s Pixi Plus has caught a jet plane over to the good ol’ US of A where it’s picking up FCC approval — you know, just in case an owner or two ends up deciding to spend some time in the States. Model number P121UEU (as opposed to the AT&T variant, the P121UNA) now has the full blessing of the boys and girls at the Feds — so when you pick up a Pixi Plus from your O2 shop on the next few weeks, take comfort in the knowledge that you won’t be Tased, tackled, and placed under arrest for attempting to use one on American soil. That’s a good thing, we’d reckon.
Palm’s news activity doesn’t seem like abating any time soon, as the company has just made the Deutsch arrival date for its Plus-ified phones official as April 28. It matches earlier speculation about late April, but also — very importantly — introduces a new carrier options for our Teutonic brethren in the form of Vodafone. Formerly locked in with Telefonica (whose local representative is O2), Palm seems to have finally seen the error of its ways and started offering choice as a side dish to its delectable WebOS main course. So, forget about who’s buying the company, will you be buying its phones?
