O2 confirmed today that the Palm Pre will be available in the UK on 16 October exclusively on the O2 network.
O2 will make the device available to pay monthly and business customers initially and hopes to offer the device as pay as you go "soon". Both O2 and Palm are excited to offer the device in the UK. "There"s a lot of excitement about Palm Pre in Europe as we continue to expand Palm webOS products across new carriers and countries," said Jon Rubinstein chairman and chief executive officer, Palm, Inc in a press announcement today.
Palm Pre for consumers
O2 will be offering the Palm Pre to customers on 24 month plans for free with a £35 a month subscription which includes 600 UK minutes and 500 texts. All Pre plans offer unlimited data and use of BT Openzone and The Cloud"s Wi-fi hotspots across the UK. If you don"t wish to sign up for a full 24 months then there are also 18 month contracts where the phone cost is £96.89. See below for full tariff deals:
The Palm Pre was originally introduced at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas earlier this year. Palm recently issued a software development kit allowing developers to code applications for the device. The impressive spec list for the Palm Pre is listed below:
- High-speed wireless (EV-DO Rev. A or HSDPA, depending on version)
- 802.11b / g WiFi
- Integrated GPS
- 3.1-inch 24-bit color 480 x 320 display
- Dedicated gesture area below display
- Slide-out portrait QWERTY keyboard
- Exchange email support in addition to POP and IMAP
- IM, MMS, and SMS messaging
- High-performance browser
- 3-megapixel camera with LED flash and "extended depth of field"
- 3.5mm headphone jack
- Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with A2DP
- 8GB of internal storage
- USB mass storage mode
- MicroUSB connectivity with USB 2.0
- Proximity sensor for detecting when phone is near face
- Light sensor to automatically dim display
- Ringer mute switch
- Removable rechargeable battery
- 59.57 x 100.53 x 16.95mm closed
- 4.76 ounces
It remains to be seen how popular this device will be in the UK. There"s tough competition against Apple"s iPhone 3GS which is currently selling out on a weekly basis. Palm plans to launch the Pixi phone in the US this fall too so O2 could be a little late to the party.