Okay, so as our friends at Precentral reported and Engadget repeated, the “Plus” models of the Palm Pre and Pixi are coming to Europe… and as Engadget adds, by the end of this month. As seen on an O2 Germany window banner, a Pixi Plus is prominently displayed in front of all other smartphones, including the Motorola Droid (I sense a theme here with webOS devices since Smartphone March Madness… do you?) Not only that… SFR PR representative Laurent Guyot let it be known on Twitter that the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus would be released in France on April 27th. … That’s a couple weeks away!
We’re happy for our friends overseas as they have been awesome fans of webOS, having had to wait so long just to give Palm their money for paid apps… Things are finally coming together for them, and it’s great to see.
Now… earlier this week I wrote a piece saying how I was a happy Palm Pre (8 gb version) customer on Sprint. I don’t feel slighted that seven months after the Pre launched, that a refreshed Pre Plus model hit Verizon stores. And yet… and yet, during all this talk about “Plus” webOS devices spreading to the far corners of the Earth (Verizon and AT&T in U.S., SFR and O2 in Europe, Telecom in China) I have yet to hear one thing about Sprint, the original and exclusive launch partner for webOS. This has me wondering. Not complaining, mind you… just wondering.
- Are “Plus” phones hitting Sprint without any fanfare because of the new EVO 4G?
- Has Sprint given up altogether on webOS because of early launch wrinkles?
- … Or is Sprint due to receive a (hopefully short) exclusive on the second generation webOS device?
I’m thinking the last scenario is the most likely. But regardless, here’s my problem: in the interim, I’m finding it harder to recommend the Palm Pre to other Sprint customers, knowing that the Pre Plus is on sale everywhere else, and that the 4G EVO is about to hit. So, Sprint… Palm. What’s it going to be? Can you at least give us your roadmap for the original launch carrier for webOS? … Is this thing on?
I agree that the last scenario seems most likely…they need to be quiet & more pre+ before we hear about the next device & everyone holds out for that. The fact that they were hiring earlier THIS year for hardware eng. for the next gen of webOS devices makes me (sadly) think it will be later this (or even next) year than we want…
Yes, I've thought the same. Have been trying to drag my brother-in-law and sister over to Sprint from AT&T due to their much cheaper rates, but the 2-for-1 deals and more functional plus phones on Verizon are making that argument not as convincing. If Tmobile and/or AT&T get the plus, it will be harder still. The only thing that “helps” is that my brother-in-law, who was previously eyeing the Nexus 1, is now more interested in the EVO. Still, it is hard to recommend people come over to Sprint from another carrier because the costs tend to even themselves out more and the phones (at least the Pre phones) are better on Verizon. It's just dumb that we have to deal with different phones on each carrier. One day things will be more open. I wonder if 4G will make it so that you can bring your phone to all the carriers, as you can do in Europe via 3G GSM and Simms
I couldn't wait and bought a standard Pre on O2 :)
I couldn't wait and bought a standard Pre on O2 :)