Comments on: Palm Pre to arrive June 6 for $200

Sprint will sell the smartphone for that price after a $100 mail-in rebate and with a two-year contract for a data plan.

$500 for existing customers and no rebate? What a crock man.

[WallyChamp]

$200 is a satisfactory price. nothing spectacular to get hyped up about.

[mikeburek]

What is it like returning a phone? My Helio contract expires in August, but maybe I'll try out the Pre for myself, and then return it. Then later choose either the Pre or the iPhone.

[swrobel]

Rebates are annoying. That's what I think of their pricing.

[scottc127]

Bonnie - will you guys get the Pre in advance of it's release so that you can do a comprehensive review of the phone?

[bonnie.cha]

We're working on it!

[djstewpac]

yeah radioshack gets it three weeks after the other stores. best buy should have it at launch?

[djstewpac]

the pre is the obama of the cell phone world.

[scottc127]

Interesting. I emailed Sprint customer service and this is what they told me:

The Palm Pre is priced at $549.99 and after the $150.00 rebate and the
online offers the cost of the handset is $199.99.

Didn't I read somewhere that Sprint employees spent a day in training a few weeks ago? This doesn't seem like it.

[Willie Winkie]

Apple and ATT are the Nazis of the wireless world. The Pre will be a truly open development platform that will be free from all the Apple censorship BS. And Sprint's 3G network just plain blows the doors off of ATT's GSM now-you-have-it-now you-don't 2.5G.

You can tell just by all of the features the Pre will come with that there will be a far more open attitude with Palm and Sprint running things. Apple on the other hand, plays firmware games so that they can dribble out features that the iPhone should have had from day one. Then they enable the features and have the nerve to call it an "upgrade". Maybe they'll wheel Steve Job's onstage for the Apple shill ( oops I mean developer"s) conference. My guess is that Apple's 3.0 iPhone is going to be as sickly as Job's slim-Jim physique.

[techie_guy4]

All the companies that were sleeping when apple was innovating will die soon..

[djstewpac]

both best buy and radioshack have pretty much gotten away from rebates.
I know there isn't a phone radioshack sells that comes with a single mail in rebate, and I know the best buy near my house is the same way. since both companies buy and own the phones as a store.

I bet the phone will launch at both locations without a rebate.
granted you don't get much help from radioshack(i'm an employee and I know we kind of suck, especially since we can't transfer numbers.)

I'd bet my mail in rebate best buy won't have one.

love the release date tho, I've been stuck with my centro(which I have loved) for a while now and was almost fed up enough to just get a curve.


so excited.
-stew

[jjrodrigo]

I live and work in Los Angeles County so each carrier has areas where there coverage is less than ideal. I have been a customer of both AT&T and Sprint. I am not a FREQUENT international traveler so I do not require GSM. From my personal experience and for the areas that I am in 95% of the time, I get better coverage with Sprint. I can even get a signal in the basement at work. When I was with AT&T, I got a terrible signal in the Cerritos Mall and several other stores in that area. At work, it was difficult to get a signal practically everywhere I went unless I was outside in an open area away from tall buildings. I experienced far more dropped called with AT&T than with Sprint. In fact, when I am talking to one of my buddies who has an iPhone, he will drop off so many times in a single conversation.

In terms of the phones... first I have to say that I am a big fan of Apple. I love what they have done in terms of their products. Product design is second to none. Given my experience with AT&T, the iPhone was not a viable option for me. Therefore, I decided to stick with Sprint.

I've had several Palm devices in the past, but I went with the Instinct when it came out because of its similarity to the iPhone. There were a lot of apps that it had that the iPhone did not have. As someone said above, it was great at first but it had a lot of problems which have yet to be fixed. Also, the lack of Instinct apps and an Instinct apps store extremely hindered the popularity of this device. Also, I realized that I REALLY missed having an actual keyboard to type on.

When the Palm Pre was announced, I was extremely excited. Now that it has been announced that it will be available on June 6, I am going to try to be the first to get one. As someone else commented, the only thing that would convince me not to get the Palm Pre is if there was a CDMA version of the iPhone. I would agree as long as it has a real keyboard, a removable battery, multitasking, universal search,... eh... maybe I'll just get the Pre.

[jjrodrigo]

I also wanted to add that my experience with the customer service with Sprint has been between good and excellent on average. My experience with AT&T customer service has been OK on average. I've had more bad experiences with AT&T than with Sprint. I will admit that Sprint's customer service wasn't that great when I first became their customer but that was several years ago. They have significantly improved their customer service to the point where it has not been an issue. In fact, I don't believe that one can point to Sprint's customer service as a major negative any longer.

IMO, Sprint has not been losing customers is not due to their customer service. Let's face it... the iPhone attracted a lot of customers to AT&T. It's a great phone from a company known for it's product design. It's basically a handheld computer. Sprint had nothing like it to compete with until now. Since the Pre was announced in January, sales have slowed because people are waiting for the Pre to come out. I think the Pre is going to surprise a lot of people, maybe even a few critics. Competition is good for consumers, right?

[Dominick_7]

I don't care about the lack of tactile qwerty iPhone. I've been waiting for an upgrade to my Samsung i730 for a while and the Pre may just fit the bill!

[Hellcat]

The Pre all the way. I have a feeling the Pre is going to make the iphone look like a toy.

[Hellcat]

Its such a mass hit for the same reason most apple divices are....brain washing. Apple can put a turd and apple fanboys will buy it and say its the best thing ever.

[pks27]

When Sprint brought the Palm Centro to market, the Sprint Store rep was very flexible with me (waived the mail in rebate - made instant, allowed me to keep my current unlimited data plan rather than switch to a new one, and gave me the two year contract price even though it had not been two years since my last phone upgrade). I can only hope that I have a similar experience moving to the Pre (I have been a loyal Sprint customer and Palm smart phone user; the Pre would be my fourth generation Palm, including Handspring).

I came across a cnet Crave article from May 2008 that claimed that Sprint's Simply Everything data plan actually limited users to 5GB data usage per month. Is that still the case? I do not currently have that limitation with my unlimited data plan.

[nejl20]

i cringe about all this talk about sprint's "great" network. numbers don't lie. sprint has been losing customers left and right bc of their network, not from lack of great phones. the joke at sprint (where i used to work here in va before i botled bc i read the writing on the wall) is that it's where great phones come to die.

anecdotes aside from individual experiences with sprint, their overall network quality continually ranks behind att and verizon. so regardless of how great the pre may (or may not) turn out to be, it will not be enough to lure people to the network like the iphone did for att and the blackberry phones did for verizon.

and network experience coupled with customer experience is what keeps customers with a network. fanboys and girls aside, most customers don't care much about the minute details and differences between all the smart phones. they just like a phone that works well, gets good customer support and has great coverage. sprint is lacking in those last two.

[dirty55409]

Strange.... in the Best Buy catalog in our newspaper(Minneapolis,MN) it is selling for 249.99 after rebates. hmmm

[arshield]

You are looking at the Palm Pro, not the Palm Pre. The Palm Pre doesn't have ads out yet. The Palm Pro has been out for a couple months.

[boonchail]

I'm in for three, my daughter is so waiting for it.

[databrain]

About time Sprint and Palm put a damn release date on this phone. I was so excited after seeing palm announce this phone at the consumer electronics slow last January but ever since that excitement turned to (meh) now that the pre has a date and with the upcoming release of a new iphone just days after the palm is released, it would be interesting to see how these 2 devices fight it off.