Attention Canada: you might be getting a Palm Pre 2 on Rogers sometime soonish, but if you’re looking for an original Palm Pre, Bell Mobility has a deal coming on December 10th that just can’t be beat: $149.95 for an off-contract. Of course, it is a CDMA phone and can only be used on Bell in Canada (unless you’re willing to engage in some serious hacking), but if that’s your carrier of choice, you aren’t going to find a better deal than this.

Bell has over the past year had significant difficulty getting users to pick up the Pre, repeatedly slashing prices and offering deals to get customers on board. We suspect they were counting on the Pre being a smash hit on Sprint in the United States and riding the wave of consumer enthusiasm like competitor Rogers did with the Apple iPhone 3G. This final price drop appears to be Bell’s last ditch effort to get their remaining original Pre inventory out before Rogers starts selling the Pre 2, which hopefully won’t be too long from now.

Source: All Things Mobile

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So, with the disclosure of FCC documents on the upcoming Palm P102UEU, it’s becoming clear that the next Palm device is going to be a spec-bumped Pre. The phone even uses the exact same Touchstone back as the current Pre phones and is confirmed to be a slider device, so it can’t be that different physically than what we already have. The only specs we’ve been able to confirm are a quad-band GSM radio (this one of the European variety, not AT&T), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a 1150 mAh battery (again, same as the current phones), and a 1 GHz processor that may or may not be the TI OMAP 3630. Apart from that, there’s not a whole lot we can deduce about the device, except to assume that it may come with increased storage space. We wouldn’t count on a bump in RAM, as the 512MB in the Pre Plus has been proven more than capable.

With the same form factor there’s only so much that can be shoehorned into a Pre-shaped package. The camera may receive a bump in megapixels, but we wouldn’t count on auto-focus or zoom or any fanciness like that. Additionally, we wouldn’t expect to see any significant additions that wouldn’t be plug-and-play with the current hardware (e.g. the software- and pinset-compatible OMAP 3630 processor), so forget about front-facing cameras, compasses, gyroscopes, 4G radios, a larger and/or higher-resolution screen (320×480 is still fairly dense for the size), or anything like that.

So the question stands asking: with only so much upgrade available to be packed into the P102-series (Pre 2?), how much incentive is there for you to make the jump with (hopefully) more impressive hardware down the road? It’s a question that’s going to be especially of interest to Sprint (plus Bell and Telcel) subscribers, who are stuck with the original Palm Pre with no option to upgrade to a more capable Pre Plus without any hardware hackery. So, here’s the question: do you want a spec-bumped P102UEU now, a tricked-out webOS super phone later, or both? 

Do you want a spec-bumped P102UEU now (Q4 2010) or a webOS super phone later (Q1 2011)?online surveys

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Tell us, what colors does the Palm Pre come in? If you answered “black,” then you’re today’s lucky winner of a pat on the back. But perhaps the new honchos at HP will see fit to note the joy on actress Agam Darshi’s face when she pulls a pink-cased Palm Pre out of the box. Presumably it’s an original CDMA Palm Pre on Bell, as that’s where the show Dan for Mayor is based, so we know she’s getting a good deal as far as her service plan is concerned.

There is the matter of the phone apparently coming with features we hadn’t been told about, namely a digital compass, haptic feedback, and Street View in an unnamed mapping application. Of course, the digital compass can’t be faked if you don’t have the hardware, but if you want it, you can get haptic feedback on your Pre through patching, and Street View is available in the work-in-progress BFG Maps app. Oh, and the pinkness? We’ve got cases for that. Video of the whole deal after the break (thank goodness for region agnostic YouTube).

Have you recently spotted the Pre, Pixi, or other Palm device on your favorite show? Drop us a note at pretips@precentral.net with the show and a few relevant details like air date, time in the episode, and an online video link if you’ve got one!

Source: CTV

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Engadget reports that Palm’s (now former) Senior Vice President of Product Development, Mike Bell, has left the company to pursue the same role at Intel. Bell was responsible for "the company’s product realisation group," and formerly worked at Apple for 16 years.

Intel announced today that we have hired Mike Bell-a veteran of both Palm and Apple-as vice president and director of Smartphone Product Development in the company’s Ultra Mobility Group (UMG).

Bell is now part of a fairly large cohort of top Palm executives and creative leaders to have left the company in the wake of the HP buyout. Speaking of that team, Palm has removed their executive team page from their corporate site.

Source: Engadget; Thanks to everybody who sent this in!

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Bell’s history with the Palm Pre hasn’t exactly been a perfect one, but it looks like their new Palm Pre promotion may be a winner. There’s been low sales, very little promotion, and much higher profile launches, especially on their new HSPA network. However, it seems the Pre is back on the front page of Bell’s smartphone section, with this very nice new promotion.

Under the promotion, and a 3-year contract agreement, you get a Palm Pre for $0 (like before), and better yet, there’s now $15 off your monthly bill! That’s a total savings of $180 yearly, plus $300 for the device itself. Oh, and they’re tossing in $75 worth of accessories too.

If that sounds intriguing with you, and the 3-year contract isn’t deterring, then you’ll want to look at the different smartphone plans Bell offers. The lowest is the Smartphone 50 plan, which offers the very basics (with only 500MB allowed monthly), usually for $50/month, but under the promotion, ends up at $35/month.  And don’t forget, Bell allows tethering. Awesome, eh. Prices increase from there, up to the Smartphone 100 plan, so there’s flexibility is what you want out of your device.

Whether this is an attempt at Bell to get rid of lingering inventory, or a renewed interest in Palm now that HP came to the rescue, will remain a mystery. But at these kinds of savings, it doesn’t really matter too much. No details on how long the promotion will last, so if this is what you’ve been waiting for, you may want to act fast.

via MobileSyrup & webOS Roundup, thanks for the tip AdmiralRaptor

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Carriers are dropping the price of the Palm Pre and Pixi like its hot, with Verizon recently dropping the prices of the Plus version of the Pre $29.99 and Pixi to $0 on a new 2 year contract. This trend continues north of the border, with Bell eliminating 1 and 2 year contracts for the Pre, selling it for the sweet price of 299.95 Canadian Dollars sans contract.  If you northeners want the handset for free, you’ll have to sign up for one of those "lovely" 3-year contracts to get that pricing.

[via EverythingPre]

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Bell Mobility wants you to take a Palm Pre off their hands, and they want you to take it real bad. Why do we say that? As our maple leaf friends at MobileSyrup have noted, the Canadian carrier has dropped their pricing for the Pre considerably. You can now get a Pre for free on a two-year contract (previously you had to sign up for three years for a free Pre), or you can buy a Pre off-contract (CDMA, mind you), for just $299.95. Canada: the time is now.

Thanks to everybody that sent this in!

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With the sad news that we are going to be looking at several different versions of webOS out there for the near future, we had started to give up hope that Canada would join Europe in getting paid apps in a timely fashion, as previously rumored.

Likely we’ll have to wait until this evening to find out for sure, but Cocolabaloune points us to Palm’s Knowledge Base article for webOS updates for Bell Canada. New since yesterday: they list webOS 1.4.1 and they have the release date down as 1 April 2010. If it pans out, Palm is just one day late – but we figure Canadian users will be happy to be a dollar short. Because they’ll be buying apps. See what we did there?

Thanks, Cocolabaloune!

Update: webOS 1.4.1 has landed for Palm Pre users in Canada on the Bell network, as Tyler tells us. Go get it, Canadians! As a reminder, here’s what’s new in webOS 1.4.1. There’s plenty to discuss with 1.4.1.x, so we’ve set up a few forum threads:

• Use the Anticipation Thread until webOS 1.4.1 is released for your carrier
• webOS 1.4.1 Discussion - for general "I got it!" and other discussion
• webOS 1.4.1 New Features & Changes 
• webOS 1.4.1 Issues 
• webOS 1.4.1 Patch Discussion

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Canadian brothers and sisters, now is your chance for real savings. As reported by MobileSyrup, if you’re willing to sign on the dotted line for three years, not only will Bell give you a Palm Pre for free, they’ll also chop $10 off per month for the entire term of your contract. Total savings: $360. It’s not uncommon to see a carrier cut the initial purchase price for a phone (they make the majority of their money off the service plan), but seeing any carrier cut the monthly service charge for just one phone’s promotion is a surprising maneuver. Our guess: Bell is (still) having trouble selling the Pre, or is clearing inventory for something new. Or both.

The $10 off every month promotion is good until the end of March (discounts continue for the life of the contract, you just have to sign up by the end of the month) and on any of Bell’s Smartphone Combo plans, ranging from $50 a month to $100 a month. All Smartphone Combo plans come with 3 GB of data service and free tethering.

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Tethering has always been a bit of a touchy subject both officially from carriers and even in our forums. The legalities are sketchy for most. Thankfully, for Canadian Pre users, things got a bit easier.

Recently, we’re not sure of the specific date, all of Bell Mobility’s smartphone plans changed. Now, every smartphone data plan has tethering added. For example, the $50 plan now says,

"500 MB of data for personal email, Internet browsing, instant messaging, and tethering"

Pricing goes up from there, with the largest plan at $100 offering a 3GB monthly allotment.  However, as it says, the data amount is shared, so tethering Canadians will need to be aware of bandwith used.

With that in mind, it’s worth reminding fellow Canadians that the homebrew app Netstat is amazing for keeping track of bandwidth used. As for tethering apps, the most convenient one is the paid app MyTether, and lately we’ve been hearing successful stories of Bell users using the free Mobile Hotspot.

Since legality is becoming less of an issue for tethering, it’s not surprising there are rumblings others may be creating competing tethering apps as well.

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