AfterDawn: News

Sprint gives Palm Pre a price

Sprint Nextel has announced it will begin selling the hotly anticipated Palm Pre smartphone on June 6th for $200 USD with a new or upgraded two-year contract. The price is equal to that of the lower capacity Apple iPhone, the phone the Pre is most directly rivaling.

Alongside the announcement however, Sprint CEO Dan Heese did admit he expects shortages of the phone during launch week.



"We don't intend to advertise it heavily early on because we think we are going to have shortages for a while," Hesse added. "We won't be able to keep up with demand for the device in the early period of time."

Despite the high anticipation for the new smartphone, many analysts believe it can be upstaged right from the get-go by a cheaper, updated iPhone expected to be launched on June 8th.

CL King Associates analyst Lawrence Harris notes, "It would've been nicer if the device was out in the market for a longer period before any potential iPhone."

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 19 May 2009 14:11

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• 10 comments

• cart0181

  Can it sync with MS Outlook?

  19.5.2009 14:53 #1

• CNDLG

  Seems like its a little late to the party. RIM and Apple have such a head start that it'll be tough to compete.

  19.5.2009 22:54 #2

• ripxrush

  I dunno fads come & go! Lets see if palm has a 2nd fad in them!? iPhones where so 2007! thats 2 year old technology! Palm tried that with Treo600-755/800/pro about 4 years! You can only re release the same device so many times! I know their is a 3rd gen iphone coming out but it has got to have some major improvements! I am not saying pre will destroy but everyone that got a 1st iphone is out of their 2 year contract & this is the "new" tech toy! as long as this dosent suck ass they have a good shot! excellent timing!

  20.5.2009 01:28 #3

• JOHNSTARR

  This will be my next phone only cause my contract is up and they give the usual 150$ instant rebate to resign for 2 years.
  
  sprint sucks but they are much better these days than lets say 1 year ago!

  20.5.2009 03:06 #4

• jookycola

  It will never compete with the iPhone. Apple has a staggeringly huge app library to compensate for it's shortcomings. The Pre has nothing and the only thing that would have made it a true iPhone killer would have been a micro SD slot for expandable storage. For some crazy reason Palm didn't add one so you're stuck with the wimpy 8 gigs of internal storage. I was all ready to get one till i found that tidbit of info that i see they are keeping VERY quiet about.
  
  Expandable storage is what makes ALL the Palm phones so much more than just a gadget. Without it you're stuck with an iPhone rif-off that has no apps. Big FAIL for Palm.

  20.5.2009 13:47 #5

• Morreale

  Originally posted by jookycola: It will never compete with the iPhone. Apple has a staggeringly huge app library to compensate for it's shortcomings. The Pre has nothing and the only thing that would have made it a true iPhone killer would have been a micro SD slot for expandable storage. For some crazy reason Palm didn't add one so you're stuck with the wimpy 8 gigs of internal storage. I was all ready to get one till i found that tidbit of info that i see they are keeping VERY quiet about.
  
  Expandable storage is what makes ALL the Palm phones so much more than just a gadget. Without it you're stuck with an iPhone rif-off that has no apps. Big FAIL for Palm.Yea cause iPhones have expandable memory and aren't stuck with a wimpy 8GBs... Oh wait :S
  
  Yea sure, there's a 16GB but that's still too tiny for the price. My 30GB iPod Video is just about full so there is no way I'm buying an iPhone for music... Apps to me are like the Wii, they're all cool and stuff at first but later on it's just like who cares. At least it's easy to mod (jailbreak) like a Wii :P

  20.5.2009 22:05 #6

• varnull

  Interesting option in this field.. shame about the stupid contracts you are forced into buying as well. If they just sold the damn things open to any network and let customers decide who and what they wanted to use them for they could have a winner... tying people to crappy 18 month phone contracts drive 60% of the potential customers away before they start.. these devices are out of date in 12 months. Who wants last years PDA??
  
  buy a blackberry and a pay and go sim.. so simple really.

  20.5.2009 22:53 #7

• jookycola

  Quote:Originally posted by jookycola: It will never compete with the iPhone. Apple has a staggeringly huge app library to compensate for it's shortcomings. The Pre has nothing and the only thing that would have made it a true iPhone killer would have been a micro SD slot for expandable storage. For some crazy reason Palm didn't add one so you're stuck with the wimpy 8 gigs of internal storage. I was all ready to get one till i found that tidbit of info that i see they are keeping VERY quiet about.
  
  Expandable storage is what makes ALL the Palm phones so much more than just a gadget. Without it you're stuck with an iPhone rif-off that has no apps. Big FAIL for Palm.Yea cause iPhones have expandable memory and aren't stuck with a wimpy 8GBs... Oh wait :S
  
  Yea sure, there's a 16GB but that's still too tiny for the price. My 30GB iPod Video is just about full so there is no way I'm buying an iPhone for music... Apps to me are like the Wii, they're all cool and stuff at first but later on it's just like who cares. At least it's easy to mod (jailbreak) like a Wii :PYou totally missed my point. I know the iphone doesn't have Expandable storage. Palm has always offerd Expandable storage, to not offer it makes it no better a phone than an iphone, with less to offer. It was a mistake for Palm to omit this feature.

  20.5.2009 23:19 #8

• ee2skater

  Originally posted by ripxrush: I dunno fads come & go! Lets see if palm has a 2nd fad in them!? iPhones where so 2007! thats 2 year old technology! Palm tried that with Treo600-755/800/pro about 4 years! You can only re release the same device so many times! I know their is a 3rd gen iphone coming out but it has got to have some major improvements! I am not saying pre will destroy but everyone that got a 1st iphone is out of their 2 year contract & this is the "new" tech toy! as long as this dosent suck ass they have a good shot! excellent timing!
  However, all past Palm phones have has either their own outdated OS or WM (and we all know how fast and productive that is..). We just gotta hope this WebOS comes out as strong as everyone wants it to...

  21.5.2009 15:37 #9

• sidcypher

  Quote:buy a blackberry and a pay and go sim.. so simple really.
  a BB and pay as you go, geez...i have seen phone bills with a couple 100megs of download..most non-pay as u go..are .01/kb that adds up.
  
  but then sprint doesn't use SIM's..never be able to use with att or t-mobile.

  22.5.2009 20:31 #10