It was announced to the world in January, it went on sale in the USA in June, in July we heard it was coming to the UK “in time for the winter holidays” and now, finally, O2 have announced the launch date of the Palm Pre in the UK. From October 16th the Palm Pre can be had for free when you sign up to a two year contract at £34.26 per month.
So what is all the fuss about, if you have missed the different stages of the Palm Pre’s life, it is a multimedia smartphone aimed squarely at the iPhone. It has a 3.1-inch touch screen (320×480) display. The phone can slide open to reveal a QWERTY keyboard used to make messaging much easier. Similar to the iPhone, the touch screen is used with your finger and not with a stylus.
The Palm Pre comes with all the bells and whistles which we would expect with a modern touch screen smartphone including 3 megapixel camera, GPS, Wi-Fi and of course an MP3 player. On the messaging front the Palm Pre supports Microsoft Exchange email with Microsoft Direct Push Technology and the ubiquitous POP3 for use with services like Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, etc. For web browsing the Palm Pre comes with a custom built web browser based on ‘webkit’ which powers browsers such as Safari, the iPhone browser, Google Chrome, and Nokia Web Browser for S60.
Along with the 2 year/£34.26 per month tariff, the Pre will be free to customers signing up to an 18 month contract but with the higher monthly subscription of £44.05. For all other plans you will need to pay £96.89 up front. For your £44.05 you get 1200 UK minute included and 500 messages. All of the Palm Pre plans include 'unlimited' data and WiFi hotspot access through The Cloud and BT Openzone.
If these tariffs seem familiar to you it is because they are exactly the same as for the 8GB iPhone 3G. It is clear that O2 consider the Palm Pre, which also has 8GB of storage, to be equivalent to the iPhone. It will be interesting to see how the Palm Pre competes head to head against the iPhone in the UK. Which is the better phone? It looks like the consumers will decide.