Palm Pre goes on sale (photos)
updated 10:45 am EDT, Sat June 6, 2009
Palm Pre On Sale
(Updated with photos) Sprint today officially started sales of the Palm Pre, its first multi-touch phone and what's been regarded as the most direct contender with the iPhone. Initial reports of stock sent to Electronista vary and show that both supply and demand vary heavily depending on the region: Sprint stores, particularly in major cities like New York, have relatively large supply of as much as 100 or more. However, third-party stores like Best Buy and Radio Shack have relatively much smaller supply and little to no queuing.
Leaks from within Best Buy ahead of the launch had suggested the retailer may not have healthy supply until July, prompting speculation either that Sprint's stores were favored much more heavily than others or else that supply was so low that third-party stores couldn't be guaranteed reliable stock. No slips have surfaced about Radio Shack's availability ahead of today's debut.
The Pre's key selling point is webOS, which debuts on the phone. Besides offering a comparatively intuitive, finger-driven interface and full HTML web browsing, it offers a handful of key features that will be absent from its Apple rival even with iPhone OS 3.0, including true multitasking for features such as background Internet radio, universal search that includes Google, Twitter and Wikipedia, and an online sync concept known as Synergy that can merge contacts and calendars from the phone, Google and Facebook while automatically eliminating duplicates. Lighter restrictions on third-party apps allow PalmOS emulation.
A 3-megapixel camera and a slide-out hardware QWERTY keyboard are its key advantages over the current iPhone; otherwise, it has 3G, 8GB of built-in storage, GPS and Wi-Fi much like its key challenger at the $199 price point.
Both Palm and Sprint are depending heavily on a successful launch to turn around struggling businesses but have been helped by mostly positive reviews that praise the operating system while raising concerns about the keyboard and some minor but notable build quality concerns.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jun 2009
pawns in marketing game
I got to the Best Buy on Broadway and Houston (New York) a few minutes after they opened today. There were already about 10 people in line. For the next 45 minutes, I watched a single employee sell two phones, moving with a kind of Tai Chi slowness that would have been funny if it weren't wasting my Saturday morning. Only after overhearing two people at the front of the line and then confirming with a direct question to the employees did I learn that the downtown Manhattan store had only four (4) phones for sale to begin with. Even though they could see that there were many more people than that standing in line, they did not bother to say anything. I then walked over to the Sprint store a few blocks away. Similar story. The large store was empty inside (and open), with the long line of people kept outside the store for everybody to see. I waited in that line for about 15 minutes without seeing it move at all. The Sprint Employee guarding the door said she didn't know how many phones they had but that she thought there would be enough. At the rate that the line was moving, that might have been technically true, but I wasn't going to ruin the day to find out.
It is clear to me that Sprint and Best Buy and probably Palm are using their customers as advertising pieces, much as nightclubs sometimes keep people waiting outside the velvet rope.
I'd suggest voting with your dollars