Prelude
Palm unveiled its new smartphone - the Pre - way back at the start of the year and, ten months later, the UK will finally get its hands on it exclusively via O2.
Why should we care? Well, from a business point of view this could represent the last throw of the dice from Palm, a name once synonymous with the now defunct PDA form factor but which has struggled latterly.
On the technology side, there are some novel features too. The processing is done by a Texas Instruments OMAP3 chip, which contains both ARM Cortex A8 CPU and Imagination Technologies Power VR SGX graphics designs. This means it has some of the latest low-power silicon under the hood.
Additionally, it features a unique operating system called Palm webOS, a Linux-based OS that Palm itself designed from the ground up. It's intended to offer, via the capacative touch screen, an iPhone-like gesture driven user interface. But then there's also a QWERTY keyboard too.
"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 CEO of Palm. "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."
Here's a table showing how you can get the Palm Pre for ‘free'.
