If $100 at Sprint was a deal, and $30 at Walmart a deal, what’s $25? Wirefly, that’s what it is. Online phone retailer Wirefly is launching the Palm Pixi at a price lower than you’ll find anywhere else: $24.95 for new contract customers. Current Sprint customers won’t left out in the cold either – they’ll be able to pick up the Pixi from Wirefly for a mere $99.99 with a renewed contract. Both new customers and current Sprint subscribers will be treated to a rebate-free experience.

It seems that Sprint is really the only place you’ll have to deal with mail-in-rebates, which is a shame as that’s still where most customers will get their phones. But with deals around like this from reputable dealers, there’s little reason to deal with the hassle and cost of buying from Sprint. A new contract customer getting a Pixi from a Sprint store will have to fork over $199.99 out the door and wait weeks to get the $100 rebate back. Getting a Pixi from Wirefly will save you $175 at purchase over Sprint, and at this pricing the Pixi is becoming a dangerous contender in the smartphone sales volume fight.

Note: The Wirefly website will not show the Pixi’s pricing until midnight.

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If you’re one of those unlucky few who haven’t been near a Sprint store, RadioShack, or Best Buy in the past six weeks, then we have good news for you. With Palm Pre supply and demand stabilizing, Sprint has decided the reopen web and telesales for the Pre. Same price, same silly mail-in-rebate, same plans, no driving.

The Pre was originally kept from telesales and the web due to stock issues, then briefly added to telesales before being pulled. From what we’ve heard, though, Sprint employees are still being told that they cannot buy the Pre just yet. 

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So today I finally got tired of my Pre crashing more and more often when I closed the slider too hard or looked at it the wrong way, so I stopped by the local Sprint store to get a phone swap. By some miracle they had just received their day’s shipment and were more than happy to perform the exchange once I demonstrated the pathetic screen fading death. I had no problem with deciding to do the exchange, I had taken the time to manually perform a backup beforehand using the Backup app on the Pre. So when it came time to get started with the new device, I knew I was going to have to port back over my pictures and music, but my Palm Profile would have all of my applications and settings stored for easy retrieval. For all the times I’d completely restored my Treo from a backup, I was left disappointed by the present implementation of Palm Backup.

As you may recall, when you activate a Pre you have to create a Palm Profile for backups and remote wipe management, among other services. Backup is advertised as being able the remotely restore your applications and settings. But that’s not entirely the case. It will restore your Synergy settings (and subsequently sync everything back down from Google and Facebook’s servers) and your applications, but your application settings? You can kiss those goodbye.

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Fully expecting to sell out of the Palm Pre on a daily basis, we’ve now heard from multiple sources that Sprint Stores will be receiving daily shipments (Sundays excluded) of the hot new phone. This stands in contrast to the launch of the BlackBerry Storm on Verizon, where many stores sold out on day one and didn’t get in shipments for several days. So, if you show up on Saturday and they’ve sold out by the time you get to the door, call or stop back in on Monday, they may very well have more in stock by then. Or Tuesday.

Thanks to all the tipsters that sent this in!

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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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According to a PalmGoon source, there are “minor rumblings going around that the company might do away with the mail-in-rebate for the Palm Pre in favor of an instant rebate.” Sprint, it seems, is feeling customer pressure from partners Best Buy and RadioShack, who will be offering the Pre with the $100 instant rebate instead of the mail-in nonsense that Sprint has perpetuated for all these years.

Sprint obviously doesn’t want to lose sales to their partners (despite the fact that they’ve partnered), and converting the mail-in-rebate to the instant variety also will give potential Pre customers an extra $100 in the store to buy other things, like a car charger or Touchstone dock. Those accessories are where the Sprint stores make their money, not phone sales.

Then again, 1Reaper in our forums has just heard that the mail-in-rebate is here to stay at Sprint Locations:

I just spoke with a friend, Sprint is keeping the mail in rebate, they received all the info and paperwork on it today during their staff meeting.

Not a big surprise.  It looks like our June 6th options are as follows: line up at a Sprint store and deal with the mail-in-rebate but have a better chance at Pre stock or line up at a Best Buy for the instant rebate but risk what we expect will be smaller in-stock numbers.

Thanks to Slingblade in our forums for the tip!

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Clearly, this is going to be a big launch for Sprint. This is their iPhone, their Storm. And so, they’re pulling out all the stops, including the one that holds back the special hours. Heck, they’re even launching on a Saturday instead of the typical Sunday. As noted by Boy Genius Report, Sprint stores nationwide will be closing at 4 PM on Friday, June 5th to set up the store for the Palm Pre launch the next day. They’ll reopen on Saturday, June 6th at 8 AM, all prepped and ready to take your money and give you a Pre. With this kind of preparation, clearly Sprint is expecting the launch to be a very big thing – so it’s good that they’re taking a page out of Apple’s playbook from the iPhone launch.

Thanks to everyone that sent this in!

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Palm has said from day one that they were driving for the “fat middle” in their bid to expand the smartphone market with webOS and the Pre. So, where do you go to target the fat middle? Wal-Mart, of course. As the largest retail chain of any variety anywhere, Wal-Mart attracts 100 million Americans every week – that’s one third of the US population. According to the Wall Street Journal [subscription required] and Reuters, Wal-Mart is stepping up its electronics game, with store sub-sections for Nintendo and Apple on the way. Also on the way, say Wal-Mart executives, is the Palm Pre, which seems to put the kibosh on rumors of it being a Best Buy exclusive outside of Sprint stores. When Wal-Mart will actually be getting the Pre (along with the rest of us) was not mentioned, as expected.

Thanks to Technologic and also to prefab in our forums for the tip!

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