Earlier this month Sprint finally got with the price drop program for the Palm Pre ($50) and Pixi (free), but they still resided in the land of $100 mail-in rebates. 

No more for the Pixi, which now sports an instat web rebate in lieu of the Mail-in rebate. It’s featured in an email with three feature-phones, which is a little sad from a positioning standpoint – but given that the Sprint Pixi lacks WiFi, we suppose we can understand. In any case, it’s a phone that some of us guys would be caught dead with, so good to see it’s free.

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

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True to the details we dropped Friday before last, Sprint has finally gotten with the price drop program and lowered the prices for the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi on their network. The Pre now comes in at $49.99 after mail-in rebate while the Pixi is free after mail-in rebate.

Of course, these prices still don’t compare all that favorably to the prices for the better devices on AT&T and Verzion. Verizon has both the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus for free with free mobile hotspot and AT&T also has them both available for free as well. Of course, it’s arguable that over the life of a plan that Sprint is still the better deal by dint of their lower plan prices – but we’re still feeling like the network with the most Palm users could had managed to try to do right by them a little sooner.

Source: Sprint; Thanks to kentuckywildcats for the heads-up!

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 Ok, we’re totally not taking credit for this one – but a matter of days after we held a Sprint Palm Pricing Intervention, the Sprint flavors of the Palm Pre and Pixi have dropped down to their proper price over at HP Wireless Central: Free with activation.

Of course, the deals for other carriers are still slightly better – with deals like free activation, free touchstones, or a $30 credit tossed in. Yes, Sprint themselves are still selling the Pre for $149.99 after 2 year contract and a $100 mail-in rebate and the Pixi at $49.99 on the same terms.

Still, nice to see a little sanity come to these prices in their home base.

Source: HP Wireless Central; Thanks to everybody who sent this in!

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Listen, Sprint, you know we love you. You have great pricing on your data and voice plans and, we strongly suspect, you still have the largest contingent of Palm users on any carrier. We’re brought you here because we care about you so much and want to see you happy and doing well. We know that you are being pulled in lots of directions right now and we understand that.

But this is an intervention. We really wish we’d had this talk a long time ago. We would have told you that it was time to switch up the Palm Pre for the Palm Pre Plus. While we can’t understand why some of your most loyal users have been made to use older hardware, at this point we have to hope that you’ll be leapfrogging to a upcoming Palm Pre phone in the near future so the issue will become moot.

We brought you here to talk about something else. The original Palm Pre. You’re still selling it for $149.99. You’re still selling the Palm Pixi – the one without WiFi – for $49.99. That’s after $100 mail-in rebates

No, don’t go. We need you to hear this. Did you know that the Palm Pre Plus on AT&T goes for $99.99 and the Pixi is free? The Pixi is free on Verizon too and the Pre Plus is $29.99 – and Verizon offers free mobile hotspot to their users. No mail-in rebates, either.

Listen, it’s worse than you might realize – if you go to HP wireless central, you can get all of the above for free right now, and sometimes with a $50 gift card to boot. However it doesn’t look like you’re giving them that deal. For Sprint, they have the Pre at $99.99 and the Pixi for $19.99. Heck, even Amazon seems to have to sell the original Pre for $79.99.

It’s time to lower the price for the Palm Pre and the Palm Pixi. We know you can do this, we know you have the strength. The first step is admitting you have a problem. The next step is to boot up your systems and drop your prices.

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In a move surprising precisely no one, Sprint has made the Palm Pixi free after a 2 year contract and ‘instant savings,’ which is to say there is no mail-in rebate. This was inevitable after Verizon did the same for the Wi-Fi-enabled Pixi Plus.

Sprint is still selling the original Palm Pre for $149.99, however, while Verizon has it back ‘up’ to $49.99 after briefly selling it for only $29.99. While Sprint’s overall plan prices are definitely cheaper than Verizon’s, Verizon still arguably offers the better deal as they are also still including Mobile Hotspot for free.

Sprint website, thank to jhoove09 for the tip!

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Thought that a Palm Pre Plus for $49.99 with free Mobile Hotspot (and a Buy-one-get-one option) was a killer deal? How about $29.99? That’s what Philly8081 in our forums noticed on Verizon’s site and we called a couple brick-and-mortars to confirm: the Palm Pre Plus is now just $29.99 after a two year contract, no mail-in rebate in sight. Unfortunately, the Palm Pixi Plus didn’t see a similar price drop, so it too is (still) priced at $29.99 after contract. 

We don’t know if there are still too many webOS devices in the channel and Verizon and Palm need to keep moving them at the expense of profit margin or if this is simply a reaction to the launch of the Droid Incredible last week. We do know that a $30 Pre with free Mobile Hotspot is a great deal.

Thanks for the tip, Palmwebos!

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Buckle up, it’s rumor time again.

We’ve received several tips that Palm Europe will be announcing the release dates and pricing for the GSM version of the Palm Pre very soon, quite possibly tomorrow. Unfortunately, since Telefonica operates differently in different countries, pinning down exact pricing and availability for each region has been difficult.

As always, things in the rumormill are to be taken with a grain of salt, but a previously reliable tipster has laid down some details. For O2 Germany, the release date looks to be October 13th. The Pre should be available fully unlocked for around 480€ straight up (That’s just over $700 US), less of course on contract.

The UK, Spain, and Ireland details are still up in the air as of this writing, but it’s no guarantee that they will be available unlocked given Palm’s nastygrams to websites claiming to offer preorders. If they’re not available unlocked, we’ll likely see a race to figure out how to do that since the unlocked German version will come with a QWERTZ keyboard.

We shouldn’t have long to wait and see whether this pans out or not, but we hope it does while at the same time are hoping a previous rumor won’t.

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Well now, things are getting interesting. While Sprint-affiliate IPCS is offering the Palm Pre for $150 after rebate, Sprint itself will be offering a $100 credit to all new customers who sign up and buy the Pre before October 31st Octbober 10th, according to Reuters.

Sprint said on its website that the offer, which does not apply to existing customers, would be available for new Sprint customers who sign up before Oct. 31 [update: the actual date is Oct 10] and commit to a 2-year service contract. The service credit would be added to customer invoices over a 3-month period, the company said.

Although the initial purchase price will remain $299 with a $100 mail-in rebate, the extra $100 dollars over the first three months would could go a long way towards helping Sprint grab more customers. We just called Sprint to confirm (the announcement is also up on Sprint’s site, thanks Anonymous Commenter!) and they’re saying that the new promotion only applies to customers who port their number in from another carrier, so Sprint is clearly trying to grab some marketshare while they still have exclusivity on the Pre.

There has been rumblings recently that the Pre isn’t living up to sales expectations, number-wise, time will tell if this promotion can help turn that around.

Thanks to jpquezada for the tip!

Update: Roger lets us know that the credit also applies to activations for phones purchased from "The Shack" (do we really have to call it that from now on?).  Presumably it will apply to any new customer who ports a number, regardless of where they purchase it.  Thanks, Roger!

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We received some juicy information about an imminent release date and pricing. Initially, we had info that the Pre is looking to launch during the late April to May period but now it seems that it will launch in May. That’s quite a time line in getting the platform optimized and tweaking out any bugs [...]

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According to WebOSArena, retail giant Best Buy will be the exclusive carrier of the Palm Pre for up to two months – at the moment, this is purely rumor, with WebOS Arena adding that a “credible source” revealed this to them.
However, the partnership does make some sense as this would not be the first time Sprint [...]

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