Good news iPhone haters, this week, Palm announced the release date for the Palm Pre. The much-anticipated touchscreen/keyboard hybrid will be available June 6th at several locations including Sprint stores, RadioShack, Best Buy and even Wal-Mart.
So why is everyone so excited for the Palm Pre anyway? The Palm Pre has several main advantages over the iPhone. They include:
- Touchscreen / Keyboard Hybrid – One of the biggest complaints of iPhone users is the lack of keyboard. The Pre combines the QWERTY keyboard of the BlackBerry with the touchscreen easy of the iPhone.
- Synergy – Palm’s new Synergy service allows you to group all your conversations by contact not service. This means all conversations with a contact – even if it’s a mix of several services including phone, MMS, IM, email, or SMS – will all be grouped together on the same screen.
- Multi-App OS – Palm’s new OS allows users to run more than one application at a time and quickly switch between them. In comparison, the iPhone has to shut down each app before opeing another.
The Pre was the darling gadget of CES 2009 and Palm has a lot of momentum right now. Palm is using this momentum by aggressively going after Apple. Not only are they matching the iPhone price of $200 with a 2-year commitment, but June 6th is only two days before Apple’s WWDC keynote. Two days doesn’t give Apple much time to calculate a response. The rumor mills have been pretty quiet, but who knows, maybe Apple has something clever up their sleeves for WWDC.
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