Palm Pre Release Date

Ever since it was originally unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2009, everyone has wondered when exactly is the Palm Pre release date. This smartphone is supposed to be one of the biggest competitors to the Apple iPhone, offering the same sleek appeal while offering all sorts of new innovations as well.

While the Palm brand enjoyed quite a bit of success with its Palm Pilot series of personal digital assistants (PDAs) in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Palm soon fell out of favor in the smartphone market. The Palm Treo line, which certainly robust, did not have the same kind of appeal as alternatives like the BlackBerry.

Palm made an attempt to capture the lower end of the smartphone market with the Palm Centro, but this was not enough to bring the Palm brand back to its former glory. This is largely because the operating system felt and looked dated in comparison to competitors.

In this way, perhaps the most exciting thing leading up the Palm Pre release date wasn't really the hardware, but rather the new smartphone software that would be loaded onto the Palm Pre. Known as WebOS, this platform better integrated with online services like Facebook and Gmail.

The Palm Pre features a large touchscreen display, integrated camera, high-speed wireless data, and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

When it was unveiled to the world in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show, the Palm Pre release date was tentatively set as some time in 2009. Early estimates ranged anywhere from March to Christmas. So, when did it become available?

The Palm Pre was made available exclusively through Sprint in the United States on June 6, 2009. The phone went on sale nationwide, not only at official Sprint stores, but also at Best Buy, Radio Shack, and select Wal-Mart locations.

For customers who signed up for a qualifying two-year service agreement, the Palm Pre was initially listed at $199.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate. This pricing scheme was perfectly in line with competing BlackBerry devices and the Apple iPhone.

Just as AT&T had the American exclusive on the iPhone, Sprint also had the American exclusive on the Pre. While the information certainly has not been verified by either Sprint or Palm, there are rumors that this exclusivity deal with essentially expire at the end of the 2009 calendar year.

In this way, you could be looking at a Palm Pre release date through competing US carrier Verizon Wireless some time in 2010. Similarly, there is unconfirmed word that the Palm Pre, or some variation of it, will be ported over to AT&T as well.

In Canada, customers had to wait until the second-generation iPhone (also known as the iPhone 3G) before they were officially able to get that cell phone in Canada. By contrast, the Palm Pre should launch in Canada very soon. No date has been confirmed, but it should happen well before the end of 2009.

For the time being, there has only been a Palm Pre release date in Canada through Bell Mobility. According to the Bell website at the time this article was written (June 2009), the 3G Palm Pre is "coming soon" to Bell.

Looking toward the future, most industry analysts and pundits are assuming that a Palm Pre, or some slightly modified variation, will arrive at Telus Mobility as well.

In addition to the CDMA version being offered in North America, a GSM version of the Palm Pre is also being sold in Europe and Asia. This is because those regions rely much more heavily on GSM-based networks rather than the CDMA ones used by Sprint, Bell, and Telus.

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