Hasta La Gadget!

Oh, hey, look at that: you can buy a Pre now! As of 8:00AM on the East Coast, the phone went on sale at Sprint stores, with Best Buy, Radio Shack and Wal-Mart also retailing the phone today as Saturday dawns across the country. After Sprint’s invite only pre-Pre launch event last night, we still saw plenty of folks lined up outside Sprint’s “flagship” New York store in the Flatiron Building before the doors opened. Apparently people started queuing around 5:00AM, with Chris Lee and Randy Williams the first through the door — replacing a Treo Pro and a HTC Mogul, respectively. Like last night, the process took about 40 minutes, but a lot of that is spent waiting for a small pit crew of Sprint employees to swap over your address book, so if you forgo that we’d say you can be in and out in 30, which should still be plenty of time to savor the moment. Word is that the Flatiron store has about 100 units, but it’s clear that inventory varies widely between locations and retailers — Touchstones seem to be a much rarer commodity.

We’ll be checking out some other launches across the country, so stay tuned, and be sure to send in your own pictures and impressions!

Some word from the wilds:
Tipster Brad says that his Best Buy store in Orlando has only 9 Pres available, and they’re giving them out one by one on an appointment basis — he was fourth in line, so he’ll be going back at 12:15PM to pick his up. Unfortunately, their Touchstone stock is zero.

Kevin C. Tofel was fourth in line at his local Sprint store, which purportedly had 30 phones in stock, but he picked up the last of the Touchstones.

We just checked in at the Bryant Park Sprint store in New York City, and while Pre inventory is cool, they are all out of Touchstones. We’re starting to think the supply of those is quite limited. We also hear that at least one tenacious gentleman got in line at 6:00PM yesterday, and spent the night outside the store in order to get his first.

Continue reading Palm Pre goes on sale nationwide, line forms on the right

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm Pre goes on sale nationwide, line forms on the right originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Jun 2009 09:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

• Tethering is not supported and Sprint has no plans to offer a tethering add-on. The company says it just isn’t a very good user experience and would prefer folks added on a data card line instead.
• About 1,000 invitations were sent out to randomly-selected Premier customers for this evening’s events at ten locations across the country. We’ve heard intermittent reports of folks getting in with no invite, but the Chicago store was staying firm.
• We were told that no store selling Pres this evening would be out of stock for tomorrow, but all bets are off once the floodgates open on Saturday. Company-owned stores got the lion’s share of stock while Best Buys and Radio Shacks were held to lower levels, so your best bet over the weekend is likely a Sprint store.
• We played with our keyboard and then a Sprint employee’s immediately after that had been in use for two weeks; the keys had lost some of their “stickiness,” which we take as a good sign. Fresh Pres have a slightly odd feel across the key surfaces.

Got any other interesting tidbits from your adventures this evening? Throw ’em in comments!

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm Pre: takeaways from Premier night originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sure, Sprint and Palm are hoping the Pre turns the page on their relatively dark recent past, but karma’s a bitch sometimes — the other Palm news this week is that Sprint and Palm have settled a class-action lawsuit alleging the two companies misled customers into thinking there’d be WiFi and Bluetooth accessories for the Treo 600. Remember how crushed we all were when nothing ever hit the market? The pain was almost immeasurable — unless you’re a class-action settlement attorney, in which case you instinctively know anyone who bought a Sprint Treo 600 before October 27, 2004 is owed either a $20 Sprint service credit or a $27.50 credit to be used in Palm’s online store. So, anyone still have their Treo 600 receipts from 2004? Yeah, we didn’t think so.

[Via TamsPalm]

Filed under: Cellphones

Attention Sprint Treo 600 owners: you’re owed $27.50 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

In this week’s edition of the Gadget Lab podcast, Danny Dumas and I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the Palm Pre, as well as the challenges that lie ahead (cough, the App Store). It’s a solid, beautiful smartphone indeed, but will developers wish to code for it?

Looking ahead, I lay out my analysis on what hardware announcements to expect at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference 2009 next week. Hint: No Apple tablet (yet), but plenty to say about the next-generation iPhone, which we’re betting will be announced at Monday’s keynote. Check Gadget Lab at 10 a.m. Monday for Wired.com’s live coverage of WWDC 2009. We’ll also be tweeting the keynote, so follow us now!

This week’s podcast features Danny Dumas and Brian Chen, with superb audio engineering by Michael Lennon.

If the embedded player above doesn’t work, you can download the Gadget Lab podcast #77 MP3 file.

Use iTunes? Subscribe to the Gadget Lab Audio Podcast in iTunes. Do it now!

Like video? Aim your browser at the Gadget Lab Video Podcast — available on iTunes and right here on the Gadget Lab blog.

Look, if this were one of those elusive GSM Pres, we might be able to understand this. But seriously — $899.99 for a Palm Pre that you won’t get until launch day anyway? ‘Course, there are those certain folks that are born everyday, but we couldn’t caution you enough to steer clear here. After all, lines won’t even be a problem come tomorrow, right guys? On another note, how did some chap from Encino end up with five of these gems? White panel van delivery or something?

[Via GadgetVenue]

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm Pre hits eBay prior to official launch: just $900 and a fistful of shame originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments