Palm Pre On Its Way to Verizon, and Possibly AT&T

Earlier this week, Verizon's CEO promised that his company will release the highly-anticipated Palm Pre, making it the second U.S. carrier to commit to this device. AT&T's CEO also recently expressed interest.

Lowell McAdam said, "Over the next six months or so you will see devices like Palm Pre."  If Palm's latest smartphone really debuted from Verizon in 6 months it would be in time for the holiday shopping season, but it's not going to work out that way. Sprint has made it clear that it has exclusive U.S. rights to the Pre for the remainder of 2009, which means Verizon will be releasing it in early 2010.

Maybe AT&T Too
AT&T's chief executive also talked about the Palm Pre this week. Randall Stephenson didn't go as far as McAdam did, but he did indicate strong interest in this model.

"Would I like to see that on our network some day? Of course I would."

According to unconfirmed reports, AT&T will be getting the follow-up model called the Palm Eos. Like its predecessor this will allegedly run the webOS, but will have a smaller screen and keyboard that's fixed in place.

This device will supposedly debut later this year. If true, it will show that Sprint's exclusivity agreement covers only the Palm Pre, not all webOS-based devices.

An Overview of the Palm Pre
The Palm Pre will use Palm's webOS, the replacement for the venerable Palm OS. This will be a new, multi-tasking operating system 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 (7 GB available to users), Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, and a 3.0 megapixel camera with LED flash. 

This smartphone will launch on June 6 from Sprint, who will add its mobile broadband service EV-DO Rev. A, Sprint Navigation, and Sprint TV.  It will cost  $200 with a two-year contract and a mail-in rebate, though some non-Sprint stores are going to offer it at that price without the rebate.

A Canadian version from Bell Mobility will be released later this year, while the GSM version for Europe and Latin America is also expected before 2010, and will have the 3G standard HSDPA.

Source: Reuters