Palm Pre Launch Date Still a Mystery

The eagerly-awaited Palm Pre will hit the U.S. market in the coming months, but the exact date remains a matter of rumors and speculation.

Sprint is the wireless carrier who will be the exclusive provider of the first webOS-based smartphone at launch, and all it or Palm will say is that the Pre will be introduced in the first half of this year.

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse recently told RCRWireless that a big factor in the timing will be trying to get enough devices in the U.S. to meet demand:

Clearly it's going to be a device that's going to be in high demand, and it is going to be in shortage no matter when we launch it, but we don't want it to be too early where there's only a handful of Pres in the whole country. We want to make sure that we can also have production ramped up at a reasonable level before we launch the product.

What the Rumors Say
Many people are waiting hopefully for March 15, as that is the date that the Pre will arrive in Sprint's warehouses -- according to an unconfirmed report, anyway.

Since that surfaced, though, other rumors have surfaced that say this smartphone is running into delays going through Sprint's certification process.

Dan Hesse says the device isn't going to be launched until it's ready:

Obviously when you're bringing out a new device with this level of sophistication and functionality, there's a lot of work required. The guys at Palm are working 24/7 and we're working 24/7 to bring it out as soon as we can, but we're not going to bring it out until we're really confident that the launch is going to be really successful in terms of how it operates.

An Overview of the Palm Pre
The Palm Pre will be the first device to use Palm's just-announced webOS. This will be a multi-tasking operating system with a strong focus on the Web. It will be able to wirelessly synchronize a wide variety of data with online services like Google and Facebook.

The Pre itself will feature a sliding keyboard as well as a multi-touch-capable 3.1-inch display. This device will also be equipped with 8 GB of on-board storage, Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth 2.1, and a 3.0 megapixel camera with LED flash. 

As mentioned earlier, it will be available first from the U.S. carrier Sprint, who will add its mobile broadband service EV-DO Rev. A.

Via: RCRWireless