The Pre was released on O2 in the UK this morning with zero fanfare. Has anyone else got one of these?
Here is more on the Euro launch: Palm Pre Central It's supposed to come out in Verizon next year, IIRC. I love my Pre.
The hardware and software are supposed to be terrific, but the dearth of apps (for now) means it's hard to compete with some of the other big OS players.
I played around with one while waiting for my better half at a Sprint store. It's *really* nice, software seemed pretty responsive, if not always intuitive, and it felt really solid in my hand. I do think the app selection will be its downfall though. In the U.S., only Sprint carries it, and Verizon is supposed to have it next year, but since they're making a YUGE push with the Droid and the Android platform, I don't know how much that's going to help. I can't imagine developers shifting resources away from iPhone OS and Android enough. Palm does have the low budget Pixi coming out, though, so that's something.
41 new apps and 1 update hit the app store on Wednesday so things are starting to pick up particularly with paid apps now available. In the meantime you have Classic to run Palm OS apps, the homebrew scene is growing from strength to strength and you have plenty of web based solutions. It is not bad for a device and platform that is a little over four months old. Granted out of the box it is missing a few features that homebrew has sorted out but homebrew is not a solution for the majority of the userbase. Palm needs to consolidate a lot of these tweaks into a major webOS update and one that will bring parity to all of the regions. It is a great product and hopefully Palm can build some momentum heading into the holiday period and in the face of the Droid invasion.
There was another slew of app inclusions and updates between the time I posted that and returned from picking up some milk.