O2 has announced that the Palm Pre phone will be available in the UK on 16 October exclusively on the O2 network. Customers can purchase the new device directly from O2, the Carphone Warehouse, Phones4U and Business partners who are part of O2's specific partner programme. It will also be available for purchase online from the O2 shop.
Ronan Dunne, CEO of Telefonica O2 UK said: "Today's announcement reinforces O2's position as the home of the smartphone. With the addition of the excellent Palm Pre to our already extensive portfolio, we will continue to offer our customers the widest range of the very best devices on the market today."
"There's a lot of excitement about Palm Pre in Europe as we continue to expand Palm webOS products across new carriers and countries," said Jon Rubinstein chairman and chief executive officer, Palm, Inc. "We look forward to launching Palm Pre with O2 so people in the UK can see firsthand how Palm webOS offers a new and better smartphone experience."
Palm Pre for consumers
Palm Pre is free to O2 customers taking out a 24-month contract and to customers taking an 18-month contract at £44.05 or £73.41 per month. All customers will receive unlimited UK data browsing over O2's HSDPA network and unlimited access to 7,500 Wi-Fi hotspots through both The Cloud and now BT Openzone.
The Palm Touchstone Charging Dock allows connectionless charging of your Palm webOS phone. Palm Touchstone is based on inductive technology based inside the Touchstone Charging Dock which allows the user to charge the handset without connecting a wire directly to it. The Touchstone and Back Cover will retail at £44.11 a saving of £10.
Palm Pre for Business
Palm Pre running Palm webOS is a business device, offering Palm Synergy features, multitasking capabilities, a full sliding keyboard, touch screen, robust messaging, GPS, and compatibility with 3G and secure Wi-Fi networks. It delivers business capabilities, including support for Exchange ActiveSync policies.
Palm Pre will be available on current O2 business tariffs as a monthly bolt on, with the device available for free to account holders on all business tariffs from £30.91on a 24 or 36-month contract. Palm Pre business customers can also receive the same benefits as existing O2 business customers including unlimited calls between O2 customers, unlimited calls to ten landlines, shareable minutes and texts between users plus multi-user billing and activation and free, 24×7 access to business customer care specialists.
Palm Pre is the first phone based on the all-new Palm webOS software, which brings mobile applications together in a multi-tasking platform that enables consumers and businesses to connect to their information in more 'useful and useable ways'. Palm webOS also introduces Palm Synergy, which is said to bring information from the many places it resides into a single place.