Hasta La Gadget!

Sprint has formally announced that the Palm Pre will be available on June 6th for $199.99 on a two-year contract, after rebates. Interestingly, that’s two days before Apple’s next big event and probable product launch.

Also announced were the stores that’d be carrying it: far from a Sprint Store exclusive, the Pre will be sold in Best Buy, Radio Shack and Wal-Mart from launch day (a Saturday, oddly enough). You’ll have to opt for an Everything Data plan or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plan (both of which start at $70) to get one, and you’ll have to send off a $100 mail-in rebate to knock the price down to the advertised $200, but otherwise, no surprises here.

Update: From Palm’s Twitter feed:

@marek_k: @palm_inc Any international release dates yet? (Europe) [Not yet]

In case the presence of Tweetspeak caused you to instinctively look away, that just means that they haven’t made any announcements for availability outside the US, but that they probably will, eventually. [Press Release]

Sprint to Offer Palm Pre Nationwide on June 6

Digital-age-defining Palm webOS phone is built for consumers and businesses alike, powered by America’s most dependable nationwide 3G network, with the best price plan value

OVERLAND PARK, Kan.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Sprint (NYSE: S) today announced pricing and nationwide availability for the highly anticipated Palm® Pre™ phone, offered exclusively from Sprint. Palm Pre will be available nationwide on June 6 in Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, select Wal-Mart stores and online at Sprint.com for $199.99 with a two-year service agreement and after a $100 mail-in rebate. Running on the new Palm webOS™ mobile platform, Pre brings together your important information from where it resides – on your phone, at your work or on the web – into one logical view.(1)

For those who juggle life circa 2009 – bouncing from conference call to car pool schedule, from doctors’ numbers to doctoral thesis data, from social calendars to social networking – Pre marks a new wireless crossover standard. Before Pre, you had to compromise when selecting a wireless phone. To get the business features you needed, you had to sacrifice the personal entertainment features you wanted. Pre consolidates your important information – professional, social and personal – into one revolutionary device using an operating system that redefines the experience of living and working wirelessly.

“The argument that you need one phone for work and another phone for play, or that you have to make compromises between business and lifestyle productivity, is over,” said Dan Hesse, president and CEO of Sprint. “With Pre, compromises of the past are history.”

Palm Pre will run on America’s most dependable 3G network and come with Sprint’s industry-leading, value-oriented Everything Data plans that offer savings of up to $1,430 over two years vs. comparable AT&T and Verizon plans for smartphones and PDAs.(2)

“The Palm Pre takes full advantage of Sprint’s Everything Data plans,” said Avi Greengart, research director for Consumer Devices at Current Analysis. “The Pre has been expressly designed for multitasking among multiple web pages and applications. It also builds on Palm’s heritage in PDAs by managing your digital information – whether that’s on a corporate server or on the web.”

“The Pre’s dynamic ‘activity cards’ approach to handling and navigating multiple applications is a great advance, but the core breakthrough is the integration of information across multiple applications on and off the phone,” said Andy Castonguay, director of Mobile & Access Devices Research, Yankee Group. “With social networking and messaging being so important to consumers, the device’s new ‘Palm Synergy’ functionality – which gives Pre the ability to automatically pull friends’ contact details, messaging addresses and personal calendars from different applications online and on the phone – will greatly simplify people’s ability to communicate with their friends and colleagues the way they want.”

Pre: A New Kind of Phone

The new webOS platform introduces Palm Synergy™, a key feature that brings together your personal and professional calendar, contacts and e-mail into one centralized view, making transitions between work and personal life smooth and easy to manage.

With Palm Synergy, users get:

* Linked contacts – With Synergy, you have a single view that links your contacts from a variety of sources, so accessing them is easier than ever. For example, if you have the same contact listed in your Outlook(3), Google and Facebook accounts, Synergy recognizes that they’re the same person and links the information, presenting it to you as one listing.
* Layered calendars – Your calendars can be seen on their own or layered together in a single view, combining work, family, friends, sports teams, or other interests. You can toggle to look at one calendar at a time, or see them all at a glance.
* Combined messaging – Synergy lets you see all your conversations with the same person in a chat-style view, even if it started in IM and you want to reply with text messaging. You can also see who’s active in a buddy list right from contacts or e-mail, and start a new conversation with just one touch.

Palm webOS lets you keep multiple activities open and move easily between them like flipping through a deck of cards. You can move back and forth between text messaging and e-mail, or search the web while you listen to music. You can rearrange items simply by dragging them, and when you are done with something, just throw it away by flicking it off the top of the screen.

Finding what you need is also easy with universal search – as you type what you’re looking for, webOS narrows your search and offers results from both your device and the web.(4) WebOS crushes the barriers to true mobile computing.

“Pre is truly a new phone for a new web-centric age,” said Ed Colligan, Palm president and chief executive officer. “We’re a mobile society, and we want our people, calendars and information to move with us. With Pre’s exquisite design and the unique webOS software, running on Sprint’s fast broadband network, we’re changing the perception of what a wireless phone can be.”

Pre comes with a charger in the box, but for anyone tired of plugging a cord into their wireless phone, Palm introduces the Touchstone™ charging dock, the first inductive charging solution for phones, available exclusively for Pre. Simply set Pre down on top of the dock without worrying about connection, orientation or fit. Pre is active while charging, so you can access the touch screen, watch movies or video, or use the speakerphone. Set Pre on the charging dock when you’re on a call, and the speakerphone automatically turns on; when you take a ringing Pre off the dock, Pre automatically answers the call. Other mobile operating systems allow multitasking, but Palm has developed an intuitive method of switching between “cards,” which resemble clicking different tabs on a Web browser. New applications can be launched easily using the “Launcher” software button at the bottom of the home screen, and users navigate between different applications.

With nearly every wireless device today you have to exit one application completely before you can use another. That’s not what people are accustomed to; think of your PC and all the applications you can have open at one time.

Pre: The latest NOW Network milestone for Sprint

Pre also lets you access feature-rich Sprint content on the Sprint Now Network, including exclusive applications such as:

* Sprint Navigation(5)
* Sprint TV
* NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile Live

“Sprint’s Now Network brings you America’s most dependable 3G network, the largest push-to-talk community, and in selected markets Sprint is the only national carrier bringing 4G to life in 2009,”(6) Hesse said. “The Now Network is more than just a physical network – it’s also data plans that are all-inclusive, eliminating fear of data overages and a perfect fit for Palm Pre users.”

Sprint’s networks are now performing at best-ever levels, and Sprint’s high-value Everything data plans consistently beat AT&T’s and Verizon’s comparable plans in savings by hundreds, even thousands, of dollars over two years. With the revolutionary launch of Ready Now, which Sprint pioneered, customers leave the store educated, comfortable and confident about the phones they’re about to take home. As a result of these measures and more, Sprint customer satisfaction indices – from first call resolution to billing satisfaction, from customer care response time to service and repair – have all significantly improved during the past year.

Pricing and Availability

The Palm Pre phone will be available from Sprint on June 6 for $199.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year service agreement on an Everything Data plan or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plan. An array of compelling accessories also will be available for Pre, including the Palm Touchstone charging dock. The Touchstone™ Charging Kit, which includes the Touchstone charging dock and Touchstone back cover for Pre, will be available June 6 for $69.99. The Touchstone charging dock and Touchstone back cover also are available separately from for $49.99 and $19.99, respectively.

More information is available at www.sprint.com/palmpre.

We don’t know a lot about driving cars really fast, but we do know one thing: this guy sure does seem excited about the prospect of a touchscreen-driven, QWERTY-equipped slider smartphone with webOS, from struggling handset manufacturer Palm. Apparently at some point during the race somebody from Sprint confirmed that they’ll be outing a launch date in the “next couple of days.” We like the sound of that.

[Thanks, Leo B. and Kenny]

Read – PreCentral forums
Read – Sprint’s NASCAR landing page

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm Pre makes conspicuous appearance at large gathering of cool people originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 17 May 2009 04:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like HTC’s giving Sprint its own version of the Snap, albeit with some slight modifications compared to the T-Mobile variant. According to the snapshots from PPCGeeks, all specs are pretty much identical except for a 1500mAH battery in place of the 800mAH, a revived Inner Circle, and a potentially nonexistent WiFi component. It also looks like the middle unit has been changed to a more traditional d-pad configuration. The forum poster who uploaded the pics claims it’ll launch for a hair under $150 on June 7th, which would be rather odd should another high-profile release date rumor pan out.

[Via WMPoweruser]

Filed under: Cellphones

HTC Snap snapped with larger battery, Sprint insignia, June 7th launch date? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 May 2009 21:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What one CDMA carrier can do, another can do better, right? Eh, not quite, but they can stare each other down holding the exact same weapon, just daring each other to make the next move. Just a week after Verizon Wireless launched the MiFi 2200 portable EV-DO router, Sprint has decided to offer up the exact same product for use on its network. The battery-powered box, engineered by Novatel Wireless, enables users to connect up to five WiFi-enabled devices to Sprint’s EV-DO Rev. A network, and it’ll be marketed in stores as the Sprint Mobile Hotspot. According to the carrier, its unit will be the first in the US to support MiFi’s GPS capabilities, allowing users to take advantage of select location and mapping applications. It should be noted, however, that Sprint’s service plans differ quite significantly from those offered up by VZW. The up front cost is the same at $99 after a $50 mail-in rebate (on a two-year agreement), though the only two options for getting it connected are as follows:

• $59.99 per month mobile broadband only plan (excluding taxes and surcharges)
• $149.99 per month Simply Everything Plan + Mobile Broadband (phone plus device connectivity — excluding taxes and surcharges)
• Both plans include up to 5 GB per month and 5 cents per megabyte overage for the MiFi 2200. [Ugh, disgusting.]
  
• Available in early June.

[Via phoneArena]

Continue reading Novatel’s MiFi 2200 portable EV-DO router comes to Sprint

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Networking

Novatel’s MiFi 2200 portable EV-DO router comes to Sprint originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 May 2009 13:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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People are always eager to point out cool technologies that America ignores, but what about the ones that we—and only we—use? Enough with the grousing: Here’s what we’ve got that they don’t.

TiVo
For a long while, TiVo was the undisputed king of TV recording. Other DVRs have come a long way in the last ten years, but they’re all late to the party, and still playing catchup: The TiVo name is now permanently tattooed into the public’s consciousness, synonymous with recording shows and backed up by still-impressive hardware.

But the fact that TiVo has attained a near-Kleenex level of brand recognition in the US doesn’t mean a thing overseas. As of writing, the service is only available in a few other places—Canada, the UK, Mexico, Taiwan and Australia—where it has been met with limited enthusiasm. While the US, with its huge, old, fragmented cable industry, offers a fantastic opportunity for a meta-service like TiVo, smaller countries with one or two dominant pay-TV providers—which have their own increasingly formidable DVR alternatives—are tougher nuts to crack.

The Kindle
This choice might seem odd—or at least inconsequential—on account of the steady stream of new e-reader hardware available all over the world, but Kindle exclusivity is actually a technological feather in America’s cap. Why? Because the source of the Kindle’s importance isn’t its hardware, but its connectivity and the service it’s tied to.

Anyone can slap a case around a panel of E-Ink and add an off-the-shelf Linux OS—and plenty of companies have. But being linked wirelessly to a massive library of legal downloads, bestselling books, magazines and newspapers, is what will make a reader great. For now, the only mainstream reader that can claim such a feature is the Kindle, and the only country that can claim the Kindle is the US. Not that it can’t go global—similar services for music and TV, like the iTunes store, have found ways to deal with tricky licensing and gone global—it’s just that it probably won’t for a while.

Push-to-Talk
Without a doubt, this is the technology that feels the most American on this list. Intended primarily for the workplace, push-to-talk technology has tragically seeped into the mainstream, subjecting millions of innocent mall shoppers to that incessant, inane chirping, and the shouting at the handset that accompanies it. Who hasn’t been inadvertently pulled into the middle of a heated, long-distance argument about novelty Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches flavors while waiting in line at Walmart? Well, pretty much anyone who doesn’t live in America—and not just because they don’t have Jimmy Dean, or Walmart.

As it turns out, PTT’s Amerophilia can be explained by little more than poor marketing. According to ABI Research:

In other world regions MNOs have failed to market PTT successfully to business users or have opted to market to consumers, and it just hasn’t taken off.

Nextel, which was inherently crippled by a proprietary network technology that wasn’t built out in any other country but the US, found success with PTT by pitching handsets to businesses as turbocharged Walkie-Talkies, not by marketing them directly to consumers, most of whom would have trouble imagining a more efficient way to make themselves look like brash assholes.

Video On Demand
iTunes has gone worldwide and services like BBC’s iPlayer have brought the Hulu model overseas, but America still has the best VOD situation in the world, bar none. The problem is simple: Even countries with a healthy entertainment industry import a tremendous amount of American TV, often well after it was originally broadcast. This regional disparity seems kinda stupid in the age of the internet and VOD, but it’s just as severe as it ever was.

European or Asian viewers have to wait for painful weeks or months for a domestic channel to license, schedule and dub international American hits like Lost or Mad Men, and hope, assuming their stations have a VOD service, that the show eventually finds its way online. As an ad-supported service and a product owned by the networks who profit from the above arrangement, Hulu’s reluctance to stream content to countries is understandable, but the despair is deeper than that: You can’t even pay for TV if you want to. People without American billing addresses are barred from VOD services like Amazon’s Unbox, and will find their iTunes video selections sorely lacking.

Satellite Radio
Since is smells distinctly like a waning technology, satellite radio might not do much to stir your techno-patriotism, but goddernit, it’s ours. The US has far more satellite radio subscribers than the rest of the world combined, all through the remains of Sirius and XM, now merged under the lazy moniker of “Sirius XM”. Why? We have lots (and lots) of cars.

Satellite radio actually has roots as a proudly international service—after all, it is broadcast from frickin’ space—having been developed in part by a humanitarian-initiative company called 1Worldspace, which was established to broadcast news and safety information to parts of the globe without reliable terrestrial radio infrastructure. They still exist today, but they broadcast to fewer than 200,000 subscribers, mostly in India and parts of Africa. Satrad’s American success can be solely credited to our auto manufacturers, who eagerly installed satellite units in new cars for years, healthily boosting subscription numbers (but not necessarily car sales). With no comparably pervasive car culture to take advantage of anywhere else in the world, satellite radio is a tough sell.