Palm announces pricing, availability for GSM Pre in Europe
(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET)
Finally, our friends in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany are getting their moment with the Palm Pre, as Palm and European carrier O2 announced pricing details and availability dates for the GSM version of the WebOS smartphone.
Germany will be the first to get the Pre, with sales starting on October 13, while the U.K. and Ireland will follow on October 16. The various price plans for each country is listed below, and just like Sprint and Bell Mobility in Canada, the Pre will be an exclusive to O2 for an undisclosed amount of time.
The European version of the Pre is a quad-band (850/900/1800/1900), tri-band UMTS/HSDPA (850/1900/2100) phone, so if unlocked, you could pop in a T-Mobile or AT&T SIM card and be able to make calls, but you'd only get 3G service from AT&T since T-Mobile's 3G network uses the 1700/2100MHz bands. It's not as easy as importing the phone and just popping in a SIM card, though. As Precentral.net points out, the U.K. and Ireland models are SIM-locked to O2, though Precentral readers are saying that the German Pre will be available unlocked.
There have not been any announcements about when the U.S. might see a GSM version of the Pre, though AT&T expressed interest in the device a few months ago. Sprint has the exclusive on the Pre through 2009.
Bonnie Cha is a senior editor for CNET, covering smartphones and GPS. When she's not testing the latest gadgets, you can find her chasing after her crazy lab or surfing in the chilly waters of Northern California. E-mail Bonnie.
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Tell me, what the hell does pricing and GSM avaliability have anything to do with reviewing the phone? I've been observing your articles for months now, and your activities indicate that it is extremely likely that you are a shareholder. The Pre finally came to Canada and after reading some your articles I decided to check it out. The material looks like the same cheap plastic you'd find on a free phone that can't be given away, and that sliding mechanism looks like it could snap at any time. The key selling feature is an unsupported hack to masquerade as Iphones,,, Even verizon doesn't want it anymore (Probably because USB forum ruled that it was Palm who broke the rules by hacking, not apple) and you're still saying it's a great phone? Iphone is so coveted that everyone begs to be it's partner, and Palm is going around desperately looking for carriers, but only second string networks would ever be caught dead carrying it...
So please stop publishing such blatantly obvious pumps and write an objective report for once, or at least stop using loaded languages.
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by laughingtime
November 5, 2009 3:39 PM PST
- Wow! So I will be able to use my Sprint Pre Cell phone in Europe?
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(6 Comments)Just found a great charger, no plugging in or none of that! found it on sprintprecellphone.com
Ditched my mp3 player too! Now all my music in loaded on the Pre! And when all else fails there is Pandoraaaaaa!