We already knew that the Palm Pre has been sitting in Sprint Stores for a little while now.  We assumed that we knew that Sprint employees wouldn’t be able to help giving us some hands-on video and photos of the little guy.  True to form, we have the above from skrilla1987.  We’ll forgive you for calling it a "Treo Pre" – but mainly because we’re glad to see the camera in action there at the end of the video.

Thanks to everybody who sent this in!

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Each week we bring you the biggest stories from around the Smartphone Experts network. We’re changing up our format this week: shorter, bite-sized, yet still delicious.

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Boy Genius Report does first Palm Pre review, says software great … Dallas Morning News, TX I'm now sure how the nerds at The Boy Genius Report got their hands on a functioning Palm Pre more than a week ahead of the official launch, but they did, and have some early thoughts on the device. Bottom line: webos is awesome, the screen is superb, …

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If you’re a follower of our PreCentral Palm Pre forums, you’re probably familiar with PedroTheGoat.  The Goat (as his friends refer to him) managed to snag a full hour with the Palm Pre and posted up his thoughts:

• "You cannot even imagine how nice this critter feels.  Go ahead and throw the "Fisher Price" stuff out the window. [...] It fits great in the hand and has a nice ergonomic feel to it.
• "After only about 1 minute I was able to type just as fast as on my BlackBerry."
• The battery is good enough for a day of moderate use, but heavy users will want to pay attention to WiFi, Bluetooth, and location services.
• The screen, and we quote: " WOWOWOWOWIE! Bright, crisp, gorgeous."
• The browser, and we quote again: "WOWOWOWOWIE! FAST! Precentral loaded as fast as it did on my netbook! (Dieter, if you check your hits, you may see my Pre tag hit your site)" [You and about 30 others yesterday, Sir Goat! ]

Go on and give The Goat your congratulations!

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Apparently the kindly folks behind Radio Shack counters are slightly tired of Best Buy getting all the rumor-tastic attention.  In addition to the launch-day list of stores that should have stock for the Pre, we were also sent the above photo suggesting that – at least as of now – Radio Shack will be pricing the Pre at $599 out of contract.  Seems a might bit high to us, but at least it’s not Best Buy numbers. 

Additionally, another Radio Shack tipster lets loose with an internal email detailing some of Radio Shack’s launch-day plans.  The stuff you need to know:

• No Pre-orders, no way, no how.  No early selling either, despite the fact that the Pre phones may very well be in the back room any day now:

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT – Stores CANNOT use the advance deposit functionality in the POS to "reserve" a Palm Pre for a customer, nor can any sales or "reservations" be made prior to June 6. Due to the production of the Palm Pre, initial supplies will be limited. For that reason, supply will be limited at the time of launch, and we want to ensure that all on-hand units are available for customers on the June 6 launch date.

• No purchases with employee plans (in other words: no Pre sales for employees at first)
• Each store will have one live demo unit that is to be attached to the hip of a Radio shack employee and may not under any circumstances be sold.
• No transfers to other Radio Shack stores are allowed – if your local Radio Shack isn’t on the stock list, don’t expect that they’ll be able to have one shipped over
• Displays, training materials, and the like are headed out to stores now and should all be in place by June 4th. These materials include a video demo DVD

There you have it, folks.  Limited Radio Shack locations, no pre-orders or pre-sales of any kind allowed, and we’re betting they’re not even going to throw in a free 10 Ohm resistor with every purchase.

Thanks anonymous tipsters!

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It’s that time again, folks!  Chapter 8 of Mitch Allen’s Palm webOS Rough Cuts has just surfaced.  This chapter covers system and cloud services, which include a wide range of things such as alarms, sounds, power management and location services, to name a few.

While chapter 8 may be out now, it appears chapter 7 has caused a bit of a stir in our forums recently. This particular line from the book is the apparent cause of the commotion:

Both Contacts and Calendar will allow applications to add information that will get merged into an integrated view. They don’t allow applications to read, delete or update any data that wasn’t created by the same application.

Essentially this means we won’t be seeing any today-screen apps anytime soon.  While a well-done today-screen app can be very handy, the above restriction does make some sense security-wise, especially if Palm wants to try to sell the device to business professionals.

That being said, another reason they may have done this does come to mind.  It’s very possible Palm wants users to only be able to use the built-in Calendar and Contacts applications to get people used to them and like them. See, if Palm removes the restriction (even partially to just allow reading the data) then developers would be able to make replacement contacts and calendar apps (perhaps DateBk for webOS) and still be able to import synergy via the built-in calendar. Palm wouldn’t want that kind of competition, especially while their own apps are still fresh and new.

We do hope Palm will eventually update the SDK to allow such things, but considering it was in chapter 7 of the book, this restriction will probably make it to the first public SDK release.  Not that its a completely bad thing.  Increased security during a new OS’s release definitely has it’s advantage and it’s not as if the built-in Calendar and Contact apps look bad.  So far they look quite the contrary: beautifuly designed and extremely functional.

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PreDevCamp seems to have recovered and moved forward quite well since the PR nightmare over a week ago.  At the end of that incident, 2 of the 3 founders (Whurley and Giovanni) decided they would back out of organizing the global preDevCamp initiative, with Dan Rumney choosing to remain an organizer. Best wishes go out to Whurley and Giovanni; there really wouldn’t have been a preDevCamp without them.

This essentially left Dan with preDevCamps scheduled for June 13th and lots of planning and decision-making to be made.  Well, he’s not alone anymore.  Both Greg Stevenson, organizer of the Orange Country preDevCamp, and Lisa Brewster, organizer of the San Diego preDevCamp, stepped up to help Dan with the efforts.

This is where the challenges began.  How could all the preDevCamp city organizers get access to the SDK and be familiar enough with it to address the developers attending their camps?

At first it was suspected that Palm may be bringing all the city organizers into the Early Access Program, but then Greg Stevenson made an open letter to the community about the issue asking for input. Let’s face it, June 13th is very close to the WWDC event and overall doesn’t give much time for the city organizers to get familiar with an SDK they may have only just been introduced to.  So Greg offered 6 possible options:

1. Hold a hands-on pDC on June 13th
2. Hold general tutorial pDC on June 13th
3. Hold a hands-on pDC at a later date. (Maybe after SDK is released.)
4. Hold general tutorial on pDC at a later date. (Maybe after SDK is released.)
5. Hold general tutorial on pDC on June 13th and a hands-on session at a later date.
6. Hold general tutorial on pDC at a later date and a hands-on session at an even later date.

Greg also goes into a fair bit of detail on 4 major challenges facing each city’s preDevCamps: agenda, venue, topics/speakers, and attendees/promotion.  If you’re a city organizer or just going to be a preDevCamp attendee, I highly recommend checking out Greg’s suggestions as they will definitely make things run much smoother if planned out well.

Long story short, based off feedback, preDevCamp has officially been rescheduled for Saturday, August 8th, 2009.

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Product Reviews

Sprint Looks to Palm Pre for Turnaround Help PC World In the latter category, Sprint is hoping that it will finally achieve big-time smartphone success when the Palm Pre is released later this week. Following in the footsteps of the Apple iPhone and the BlackBerry Storm, the Palm Pre will be sold for $200 … Boy Genius Report does first Palm Pre review, says software great … Dallas Morning News Five reasons why the Palm Pre will be a homerun TechRepublic Palm Pre syncs with Apple's iTunes Cnet Asia GigaOm - eWeek all 47 news articles

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Product Reviews

Palm Pre Gets Mixed Early Review: Not An Apple iPhone Killer eWeek,  NY Palm Pre, the smartphone that Palm hopes will revive its ailing fortunes and provide a viable smartphone competitor to Apple's iPhone and Research In Motion's Blackberry, was reviewed by The Boy Genius Report. Apparently, the Pre has some innovative … Palm Pre Review Soft Sailor Palm Pre Reviewed Slashdot Sprint prepares Situation Rooms for Palm Pre launch I4U TechSpot - MobileTechReview.com all 12 news articles

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Boy Genius Report

Sprint prepares Situation Rooms for Palm Pre launch I4U I am not sure if Sprint hired CNN's Wolf Blitzer, but Forbes (via Techmeme) reports that Sprint is preparing "situation rooms" for the Palm Pre launch next week. The Palm Pre is the biggest device launch for Sprint in 2009. They prepare support teams … Palm Pre dupes iTunes into thinking it's an iPod TechSpot Sprint Pre-Sales Party for the Palm Pre on June 5th, We Will Bring … MobileTechReview.com Palm Pre Reviewed Gotta Be Mobile International Business Times Australia - Gadget Review all 9 news articles

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