Palm Pre Plus, Pixi Plus headed to AT&T

LAS VEGAS--At CES 2010, AT&T revealed that it would add two Palm WebOS smartphones to its lineup. On Monday, we learned the identities and prices of the upcoming devices.

The Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus will be available from AT&T in the coming months (no specific release dates were given) for $149.99 and $49.99, respectively, with a two-year contract and after a $100 mail-in rebate.

There are not a lot of surprises in the announcement, since the hardware and software on both phones are largely similar to their Verizon Wireless counterparts. However, both smartphones will ship running WebOS 1.4, which brought features such as video recording and a Flash 10.1 plug-in support for the Web browser. Also, AT&T customers buying the Pixi Plus will be able to choose between two colors: black or blue.

In addition to support for AT&T's 3G network, you will get access to the carrier's more than 20,000 Wi-Fi hot spots around the country as part of the unlimited data plan. Other supported AT&T services include AT&T Navigator, the recently launched AT&T Address Book, and Yellow Pages Mobile.

Palm will be at CTIA 2010 where we hope to catch a glimpse of the two smartphones in action on the AT&T network; however,  admittedly,  we're a little disappointed and yet not terribly surprised by the fact that there isn't any new hardware.

Just last week, Palm reported weak third-quarter sales and while the addition the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus to another carrier will help, we think it's pretty safe to say that we're all looking for some new and better hardware. As ZDNet's Larry Dignan said, it's all a vicious cycle with Palm, isn't it?