About bloody time

The announcement was made this morning that O2 are going to get the Palm Pre in the UK, Ireland and Germany, with fellow Telefonica subsidiary Movistar getting it in Spain.

But while this confirmation is nice to have, the carrier information was already more or less a given - very few people doubted, especially in the last few weeks or months, that O2 would be the one to take the Pre to market here. The arguably more important information about pricing and the release date - which was also rumoured to be getting a reveal this week - hasn't materialised yet.

I'm still hoping to get a Pre on release - and in fact the later it lands, then the easier it should be to get out of my current Vodafone contract - but it's frustrating to have so little firm information. They'll apparently be bringing the phone to market before the end of the year (in time for Christmas, allegedly), which is certainly pointing towards the end of November or start of December, if the verbiage used to describe the US release is anything to go by. Palm spent the first five months of 2009 telling people that the Pre would be out "in the first half of the year", and released it in early June - so it's a fair bet that a "second half of 2009" release won't materialize until early December.

(I realise this is turning into a bit of a one-track posting habit, but hopefully I'll stop talking about the bloody thing once I finally get it.)

Pre, post-launch

So, the Palm Pre is out now in the US. Anybody got one (or tried one out) yet? I've read a whole bunch of reviews and forum posts, but the opinions of people I know online are always much better than random blogs and forum idiots.

I'm dying to get my hands on a device to try it out for myself; even just so I can try out the keyboard, which seems to be the main area of complaints, and the only part of the phone I have any significant concerns about. There have been a few reports of overheating, bricking and screens being warped, but this is a first-gen device and I don't think anybody was expecting a perfect machine straight out of the gate. Sprint and Palm seem to be doing a good job of replacing faulty devices, but that can't be doing wonders for their already-low stock levels.

I've got it on good authority that the UK release for the Pre will be in October (pending supply; December if things fall through), on O2. Presumably we won't hear any official announcements until the stock situation calms down enough that they can forecast availability for the UK launch, but it's frustrating to have to rely on third-hand information and rumours for so long.

In any case, I'm hoping that the hardware and software issues that have been encountered during the American launch will be largely ironed out by the time we see the Pre arrive on this side of the pond.

Palm Pre: Can Has?

Since it was announced at CES in January, I've been following the new Palm Prē very closely. I don't think I've ever been this excited about a piece of gadgetry.

(In case you've not seen it yet, here's a pretty decent 26-minute demo.)

At CES, it was mentioned (probably in passing) that information about the UK launch of the device would be announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which has been running since Monday. I'm checking the "gadgets" folder in my Google Reader feeds every 20 minutes to see if anything new has been announced, but so far there's been nothing substantial; a few new features, some clarification on what it can and can't do (so far), and the first chapter of the textbook on developing new applications for its webOS operating system.

Rumours abound about the carrier that it'll eventually land on in the UK. The American version of the phone will be on Sprint, while a lot people seem to think that Vodafone will get the UK contract. The strongest evidence is that the phones at the MWC were running on Vodafone's network, but I thought that they would be too concerned about the impact on Blackberry Storm sales (and now, the HTC Magic) from the Palm Prē - which seems to have a buzz about it bigger than any I can remember other than the iPhone.

The MWC ends today, so there's only a few hours for them to announce the UK carrier - if it doesn't come out of the congress, chances are it'll be long after the (still un-dated) American launch before I get any idea of when I'll be able to pick one up.

3D Projector

The Dude abides

I need these Big Lebowski action figures right now.