Palm may be down, but they’re not out just yet. Following the launch of the Pre and Pixi on Sprint last year and their respective Plus editions on Verizon back in January, Palm has just announced that they’ll soon be launching the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on AT&T.
While its never bad news to get your handsets onto a new carrier, just how good this news is for Palm depends almost entirely on how AT&T handles it.
Palm’s exclusive launch with Sprint came as the carrier was smack-dab in the middle of their never-ending customer bleed, and their debut on Verizon had the unfortunate timing of coming right after VZW had just dumped a monstrous marketing budget into the Motorola Droid. With AT&T expected to only have an exclusive lock on the contract-magnet wunderkind that is the iPhone for another year (and a half, at most), how much time will they put behind properly marketing Palm’s goods?
From a hardware standpoint, the handsets being offered up for AT&T are virtually identical to that which we saw hit Verizon, save the fact that these latest ones are GSM. The Pre Plus has a 3.1″ screen, while the Pixi Plus’ comes in at 2.63″. Both handsets have 802.11b/g WiFi, integrated GPS, and Bluetooth 2.1+.
The software has seen some minor changes. The on-the-fly WiFi router Mobile Hotspot software that debuted on the VZW handsets didn’t make it over. On the upside, Palm threw in a new feature they’re calling “Whisper”, which automatically connects AT&T Hotspot customers to any AT&T WiFi point without requiring them to retype their credentials.
Neither company is saying exactly when to expect the handsets to hit the shelves, outside of “in the coming months.” When they do, the price tag will be set at $149.99 for the Pre Plus and $49.99 for the Pixi Plus, both after an always-annoying $100 mail-in rebate.
bad deal palm
If PALM can hang around long enough for Adobe to launch Flash 10.1 for smart phones (1st half of 2010) users will quickly see how much better a smart phone with Flash is compared with the iPhone.
Check out the review for it at http://www.baduku.com/topics/palm-pixi-plus-verizon_240
I still have my hopes with the palm-kind, I mean even if they have a plummeting career this year in both financial and technical aspects, one thing that keeps me on following them is their WebOs.
Who exactly were doing the negotiations for Palm? As you rightly pointed out, at almost every opportunity Palm have managed to find themselves second-bested by a competing handset manufacturer.
Palm needs to give people a reason to pick them over the iPhone/HTC Desire/Nexus One/etc; you have to wonder what are the USPs for the Pre & Pixi?
Calendar/messaging integration and mobile hotspot are pretty cool features, and Palm has finally started to push them (albeit with a frantic, lecturing ad that probably moves too quickly for most viewers to really understand it).
But Palm was dead when Android phones hit the market. All the mistakes with early ads, Sprint exclusivity, hardware and performance problems – they just accelerated an inevitable decline.
It saddens me that Palm isn’t doing better than they are because webOS is by far the best mobile operating system. I’m beyond happy with my Pre and encourage people to get one but they’d rather get the phone they’ve seen the most commercials for (Droid, iPhone, ect)
palm needs to stop pushing their pre and pixi… and start working on a new line of phones… the pre is physically JUNK, compared to other Android handsets, but true, WebOS is really nice…
Right. I’m on my second broken Pre now. Both times now the Power button stopped working, the processor gets buggy and slow for some reason and, at least on the first one, the slide mechanism on the phone got pretty loose. WebOS is fantastic, but I need a more durable phone to run it.
It saddens me that Palm isn’t doing better than they are because webOS is by far the best mobile operating system.
Totally agree. I’ve been developing for the Pre and I really like WebOS. I like the functionalities of Pre but it’s true that it’s physically junk. Me and my other buddies who have Pre are already having issues with the handset after a few months of use. Gonna switch to Android.
You can’t have 2 smart phones. Palm needs to vacate the smart phone space immediately. Most everybody who wants a smart phone has one already, there’s no way I can purchase a palm phone and still have an iphone or droid or t1 because I would already have a contract for those other devices. Palm would not need a reason for people to pick them *over* a competitor if people could realistically own more than one smart phone. If I could get a non phone version of the pre for $149, I’d have one and I’d be writing apps for it and I would be telling my friends to get one. But for now, wireless lock-in precludes me from owning 2 smart devices.
The Pre would be a cool phone if they would fix the keyboard – it sucks.
My fingers won’t work on the top row of key because the slide part is in the way.
You should check out this G4TV review. They talk about the upgraded keypad.http://smi.sh/d8bd2
Palm should focus on mobile cloud and provide some more vertical cloud services to users. Merging with Facebook will give a big lift if facebook also pickup rightscale.com…
At this point, my only real hope for the platform is that Nokia buys Palm. Nokia needs some great software, and Palm needs better hardware and enough backing to convince people they’re a serious player.
Having owned Palm gear since their first PDA, I really want them to make it. But I think they’ve stumbled too many times over the past few years to recover successfully. I hope they prove me wrong!
Palm got its competitor wrong all along. They were trying to beat iphone all the time. All they had to do is beat droids and blackberry
Even though I’m an iPhone die hard I’m rooting for Palm to make it. I remember the good ole days with my last palm treo…http://smi.sh/2dfc5
iPhone battery dies in 4 hours– not exactly diehard.
Who needs a Palm when you have the ipad?
I need a palm because I dont have a girlfriend.
Palm is too late for me. When Google announced the Nexus One for ATT 3G bands was in the wild, I ordered it.
That has been Palm’s problems all along, they are too little, way too late.
uh-oh.. not appearing again
Well I think Palm is going to disappear in 2010 and Nokia really should go after it http://www.mobilecreek.com/5-reasons-why-nokia-should-buy-palm/.
Leave the best to the best Palm, Pixi is some undone handset.
That’s a nice thought, but Nokia already has two OSes (Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo) and adding another one doesn’t make sense. They would have to manage three OSes, related APIs and application libraries. Nokia is VERY heavily invested into Symbian and Maemo is great. Although I am not sure how Intel partnership is going to work out and Nokia’s CEO seemed to be rather confused when asked about how the company is going to segment the market between Symbian and Maemo.
I am sad to see Palm go the way of the dodo just as they finally got a modern OS with great multitasking system out the door. The hardware is horrible (quality and design), the company is cash starved and judging by how hard they keep pushing rehashes of Pré and Pixi they don’t have anything new in the pipeline. C’est la vie, I suppose.
If anything, I would prefer OHA pick up Palm. Then we can be sure that WebOS concepts/implementations make it to a wide variety of devices for us to enjoy.
Alternatively, RIM should buy them. They are in a desperate need for a major OS look/feel refresh. I love my BB for email/keyboard/BBM but otherwise the OS is archaic and outdated. Bringing a decent browser (sometime this year … perhaps) isn’t going to solve the problem of an old OS that is not exactly consumer oriented, not touch optimized and is downright ugly. RIM still enjoys a great market share they just need a “better” OS to keep it. RIM’s glacial pace OS development continues … OS 6.0 is only due in 2011 and all BB owners will get this year is a new browser and 5.2 bug fix release … by that time we’ll have iPhone OS 4.0, WM7, Symbian X3 and probably a new version of Android. I keep going between my Bold with 5.0.0.509 and Curve 4.5.0.182 and besides some look and feel the two are the same for all intents and purposes … the differences are minimal … I can only dream of a BB with WebOS multitasking, BB email, BBM and Synergy … my HTC Desire should be arriving within the next 14 days …
More carriers make Palm more palatable to enterprise (volume) buyers, who already have a choice carrier and are unlikely to change. Organizations are beginning to realize that they’re not getting the productivity gains from smartphones that they hoped for, given that they don’t access much of the enterprise data required. The question is, as organizations begin to actually build strategic mobile apps, will they develop them for the Palm/WebOS. About Me
I’m happy with my Pre