PreCentral reader Sean points us to this page on HP’s Canada site claiming that the Palm Pre 2 is "Now available from Rogers." That the Pre 2 is hitting Rogers is no surprise at all given that there are already dummy units (with dummy pricing) on display in stores.

A quick perusal of Rogers’ website doesn’t yield up the ability to purchase the webOS 2.0 wonder; ditto for Palm’s Canada site. Can we just announce and officially release this thing so we can get back to our other weird Pre 2 release question? To wit: figuring out why the Verizon Pre 2 was pulled from big V’s internal systems and dummy units pulled from stores. We still think the Pre 2 will hit Verizon in the "coming months," but have to admit it’s frustrating watching Palm, Rogers, and Verizon soft-pedal this launch.

Update: Kevin points us to the Pre 2 page on Rogers. It’s $99.99 Canadian with a 3-year contract, $349.99 at 2 years, $399.99 on 1-year or month-to-month. Thanks Kevin!

Source: HP Canada, Palm Canada, & Rogers; Thanks Sean!

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We’re still waiting for an official word from Palm that Rogers in fact will be the Canadian carrier of choice for the Palm Pre 2. In the meantime we’ll just take a moment and check out this display snapped by Howard Forums member panzival at a Rogers Wireless store in the Edmonton area. It’s just a dummy phone with a basic information about the phone (3G radio, webOS 2.0, etc.) and pricing info: $299.99 with a three-year contract, or $914.99 as a contract-free variety.

[insert record scratch here] Wait, what? Yeah, we’re almost entirely certain that’s wrong. Considering that essentially the same phone is available unlocked direct from HP for $449.99. Is Rogers really going to charge a 103% premium over the list price? No. They may be Canadian, but they’re not crazy. Our expectation is that Rogers will charge something much more reasonable, like $449.99 off contract and $99.99 with a three-year contract.

Source: Howard Forums; Thanks to B and Scott for the tips!

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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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Welcome to Round Table, which is in fact not a table at all. Round Table is a continuing series on PreCentral where we pose a question to the staff and they provide their thoughts and insights. The question could be something simple like “what’s your favorite webOS RSS reader?” or something a bit more complicated, like “where do you see Palm in a year?” Or maybe we’ll just end up chatting about how we miss the cartoons of our childhood. Today, however, we’re going to take a look at the latest hardware from Palm: the Pre 2.

read more

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We’d be shocked if it didn’t pass, but thankfully it did: Industry Canada’s Certification and Engineering Bureau (the Canuck equivalent of the USA’s FCC) has certified the Palm Pre 2 for sale in The Great White North. There’s nothing much we can glean from the certification of the P102UNA (Palm Pre 2, UMTS North American flavor) and how it relates to it’s all-but-assured sale on Rogers Wireless, except that it will in fact not boil your brains. To us, that’s a good thing.

In other news, the folks at MobileSyrup have caught wind of rumored (emphasis on rumored) release date and pricing for the Pre 2 on Rogers. Apparently, we might be looking at a November 9th launch with pricing at $99.99 for a three-year contract. If this pricing rumor (emphasis on rumor) pans out and takes hold outside of Canada, the Pre 2 might just have a chance for moderate success. All told, it’s a fairly modern phone inside (minus a few modern niceties), but making the value proposition case isn’t easy when the price is over a hundred smackers.

Source: Industry Canada, MobileSyrup; Thanks to KJB86 for the tip!

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Been wondering what Palm meant when they said the Palm Pre 2 was coming to "Verizon and Canada?" Not sure if you believed the earlier rumor that Rogers was the carrier of choice?

Put your questions to rest, Mobile Syrup has real photos of the Palm Pre 2 running on the Rogers network and in Rogers packaging. Launch date and pricing are, of course, still a mystery. However the fact that we have final packaging and tipsters sending photos thereof is probably a good sign that the promised "coming months"is thankfully code for a much shorter period of time than you might have feared.

(Original image removed by request from original tipster)

Source: Mobile Syrup; Thanks, Kyle!

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With all the commotion about Sprint and US carriers for the Palm Pre 2, it’s easy to forget that Canada was also mentioned as a country that the smartphone will launch in.  The big question for us Canadians: which carrier will it be?

Well now, we may have an answer, or at least a hint. Buried deep within the source code of the Pre 2 page on the Palm Canada website, is this commented-out line:

<!–p>The Palm Pre2 phone is available on the Rodger’s network.</p–>

Looks like a misprint of "Roger’s", as in Roger’s Wireless. An easy misprint to make, in what is clearly a line of code commented out for a reason.  Only reason that would come to mind, is that an official announcement hasn’t been made yet.

The choice of Roger’s Wireless marks a change from Palm previously choosing Bell to carry their webOS device. Certainly a change that many, such as myself, are welcoming with open arms. Given HP and Palm’s connections with the other Canadian carriers, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Palm Pre 2 comes to other carriers as well.

Of course this one line of commented-out code is hardly a definitive association. It does seems to be unique to the Canadian Pre 2 page though. Hopefully there will be something official soon, ending the mystery. In the meantime, it’s an exciting idea that we may see a Roger’s Wireless webOS device in the near future.

Perhaps just as interesting, Calvin also found a reference to AT&T in another piece of commented-out code:

<!–li><a class="clearfix"
rel="/us/assets/data/products/pre2_wtb.json" id="aux-wheretobuy" href="#wtb">
<h3 class="sifr-text"> Buy now <img
src="/assets/images/global/sidebar_link_arrow.gif"> </h3>
<p class="intro">Available on Verizon Wireless <br />
and AT&amp;T network</p>
</a></li–>

We know that Palm is going to be selling unlocked Pre 2 devices to developers, but perhaps this means non-developers will be able to get in as well?

Thanks Calvin and @SimonLR!

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Remember that Palm P100UNA that was certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance back in August? Yeah, that’s a GSM Palm Pre made for the United States. To break it down, P100 is the Pre (as seen by the P100 on Sprint), U is for UMTS (3G GSM), and NA for North America. While we haven’t heard anything on this front for over two months, the FCC database trawlers at wireless goodness noted that today a new Palm device passed the fed’s certification process: the P100UNA.

There’s not much too be gleaned from the FCC documents on the P100UNA that we couldn’t figure out from the name: it’s a Pre that will be compatible with US 3G GSM bands, e.g. AT&T and T-Mobile (and our friends up in Canada on Rogers, Telus, and Bell). When will the GSM Pre finally make its way to Palm’s home shores? We don’t know for sure, but if we had to guess we’d say sometime after Sprint’s US exclusive on the Pre expires at the end of 2009. Let’s just hope that an unlocked version is in the mix.

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Bell used to have some pretty sweet plans for you Canadian Pre owners, as in unlimited data. But with the launch of their new GSM network and the arrival of the iPhone, Bell has stopped offering unlimited data plans, like rival carriers Rogers and Telus. The new plans range from $45 for 500 MB of data a month (seriously) plus a few options of minutes vs. texts up to $100 a month for 2 GB (again with options for minutes and text). The available plans are more expensive than the options from Rogers and Telus, who both offer plans around $100 with 3 GB of data; users on Rogers can opt to pay $20 more for a total of 5 GB of data.

Existing Bell subscribers should be able to continue using their current plans until their contracts expire. What happens then we don’t anticipate being pretty.

Thanks to human-cannonball for the heads up!

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There is hopeful news for those pining for a Palm Pre but are not willing or able to run to Sprint to get it. The Wi-Fi Alliance has just certified a Palm Pre with part number P100UNA along with 850/1900 MHz and UMTS/HSPA. The new part number and certification could mean that the Pre is [...]

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