If you were in the market for a Verizon Pre Plus, you might want to start a desperate search, because it seems that the device has all but fell down the online retail memory hole. Both it and the Verizon Pixi Plus no longer show up in the HP Wireless Central store. The Verizon Pre Plus is also no longer available from Amazon.com, and has disappeared from Verizon’s own online store (the Pixi Plus is still available at both). This follows the recent EOL’ing of the Sprint Pre.

We wouldn’t fret, however, as we know there’s a replacement coming. It’s called the Palm Pre 2, and it’s due out sometime in “the coming months” - though, really, shouldn’t it have appeared by now? 

If Verizon’s managed to run down their Pre Plus inventory to the point that it’s no longer available, perhaps its glass-screened gigahertz processor brother isn’t far behind to take the Verizon webOS throne (assuming it hasn’t gotten lost).

Source: HP Wireless Central, Amazon, Verizon; Thanks to kepaloa and Brian for the tips!

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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.

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It’s a happy headline, and a sad headline, all wrapped into six delightful and painful words that boild down like so: Skype support is finally coming to webOS, but it’s only coming if you’re on Verizon. Thanks to an exclusive deal between VoIP giant Skype and American cellular behemoth Verizon, only phones on Big Red get to have access to the sweet Skypes. Blessedly, at least current Verizon webOS devices should also get access to Skype, as soon as the webOS 2.0 update is pushed down to the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on that network.

Read the Press Release

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Inspired by the stories of the webOS community, Palm is stepping up to the plate of good causes with a whole ton of phones. The folks in Sunnyvale have decided to offer up 500 Verizon Palm Pre Plus phones with $150,000 of service to support community efforts and charities across the United States. The program is called Palm Connections, as we noted a few weeks back, and it’s now running at full tilt.

Each Pre Plus will come with $300 of Verizon service to aid in the cause. Palm says that they’re hoping to support a variety of “good causes,” including charities, sustainability advocates, and eco-entrepreneurs (those pioneering eco-friendly businesses). Palm is posting the stories of these good causes on their new Palm Connections Facebook page, with videos and links for more information on the charities and eco-pioneers.

Several groups have already signed on, including the Niemann-Pick Children’s Fund and One World Futbol Project, among others.

Said Palm Connections’ Ryan Chamberlain, Palm was inspired by the grassroots advocacy power of the webOS community. They decided to harness that kind of energy and social media interactions to “help out a bunch of good causes [and] broadcast their efforts and achievements.” And honestly, that’s something we’re 100% behind. Interested parties can apply to take part in Palm Connections, and make the world a better place with Palm.

Source: Palm Connections, Facebook

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It’s apparently a day of price cuts. It happened with little fanfare, but now interested customers can grab a Palm Pre Plus for free from Verizon proper. It’s little surprise, what with Big Red set to phase out their current webOS devices by the end of next month. The freeness of the Pre Plus also handily undercuts Sprint’s just-leaked reduced pricing for the lesser original Pre by $50. All these price drops are obviously happening to help clear out stagnant inventory, but we can’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, they might be working to clear out inventory to make room for something new and exciting.

Source: Verizon; Thanks to unseenme for the heads up!

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It really wasn’t all that long ago (i.e. yesterday) that we were talking about the possibility of Verizon offering prepaid plans for the Pre Plus, Pixi Plus, and other smartphones. Instead of spinning off a new sub-brand (ala Sprint and Boost Mobile), Verizon’s leveraging their own brand name and phones to offer prepaid contract-free wares, and now they’re adding smartphones to the mix.

The list of phones is by no means exhaustive, but it is comprehensive. In addition to Verizon’s webOS offerings, customers can also pick up their entire Android line-up and a whole slew of BlackBerry smartphones and several multimedia feature phones. All of these phones are eligible for a $30-a-month unlimited data pack (multimedia phones can opt for a $10 for 25MB (really) data pack) to be added onto one of Verizon’s already-existing pre-paid options.

If you’re mostly using your phone for web access and run with limited calls and texts, then this might be the option for you, as Verizon’s prepaid voice plans work on a day-by-day system where if you don’t use the service for a day, your pre-paid allotment isn’t charged for that day. In fact, if your peeps are on Verizon you could get away with paying $40 a month for unlimited Verizon-to-Verizon calls and texts ($10) and unlimited data ($30). Not a bad call, eh?

Source: Verizon; Via: PhoneScoop

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These are the kind of posts we love to read: an iPhone developer with zero Palm experience successfully porting his app to webOS in two and a half days. Developer Phil Hassey’s popular Galcon fleet maneuvers game has been on the iPhone for two years now and received multiple updates to bring expanded gameplay. With the advent of the PDK, porting it to webOS wouldn’t be an overly difficult affair, and Hassey was able to pull it off in less than 24 hours worth of work, and that includes unboxing and activating his Verizon Pre Plus and getting acquainted with webOS, getting into the phone with the PDK, and other first-time development tasks.

With a few tweaks here and there to make Galcon work properly on webOS, Hassey deemed it ready to go, packaged it up, and submitted to Palm’s Developer Relations Team for sale in the App Catalog. After just a few days in the review/approval queue, Galcon is now available for $2.99 for webOS users ….who have webOS version 1.4.5. Sorry Americans, the future of webOS gaming is not quite here for you yet.

Anyway, there you have it – PDK porting at its finest.

Source: PhilHassey.com; thanks to simossoft for the tip!

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If you’re the contract signing type, HP has the deal for you. Through their newly-launched HP Wireless Central store you can snag a Palm Pixi Plus or Pre Plus on AT&T or Verizon for the upfront sum of free, with free shipping via FedEx. Of course, you are still locking yourself into a two-year contract to save those bucks, but saved bucks are saved bucks, right? And if you spring for the Pre Plus (it’s just as free as the Pixi Plus, so why wouldn’t you?), HP will also throw in a free Renegade Bluetooth headset (valued at $49.99), an Axiom leather case ($29.99), and a car charger ($19.99).

Strangely, Sprint is still stubborn as usual on their pricing, with the more-than-a-year-old Pre still retailing for $99.99 and the Wi-Fi-less Pixi at $19.99. With all this cash you’re saving, we’re going to point you towards the PreCentral accessory store where you can pick up some more sweet gear, like a Touchstone charger or a better Bluetooth headset.

Source: HP Wireless Central, thanks to sepherous for the tip!

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If you were thinking that the Buy One Get One Free deal still running at Verizon was a good deal, but not good enough for you, we’ll happily direct you towards the fine digital folks at Amazon. The online mega retailer is now selling both the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus for, get this, one cent. Of course, that’s with a new two-year contract, but upfront it’s always fun to know that you can pay more in shipping than for the device itself. Except that the two-year contract also comes with free two-day shipping (you can pay more for faster times, if you’re into that sort of thing). So you’re looking at a grand total of $0.01 upfront.

And if a new contract isn’t your thing (you still need one to activate the phone, unless you want to go all MetaDoctor on it), you can grab an off-contract Pre Plus for $619.99 or a Pixi Plus for $379.99 – or you can even upgrade your phone on contract through Amazon now. Sweet deals abound. As you may expect, this deal is more thank likely for a limited (and publicly undefined) time, so if you want to jump on the webOS bandwagon for super-cheap, now’s the time.

[via: webOSroundup]

Thanks to Complex Pants for the tip!

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You are a Verizon customer using a something other than a 3G smartphone and you’re not eligible for any upgrade discounts. If this describes you, Verizon has a deal for you. Effective April 6, Big Red will be running a nationwide promotion to push the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus into the hands of Verizon dumbphone users (and those that have been hanging on to that Treo 650 for way too long) at the two-year discount price. Most of you, our fantastic readers, probably aren’t in that boat, but chances are you have a friend or family member that is. Here’s what they need to know:

• The early upgrade is only to a Palm Pre Plus or Palm Pixi Plus (shucks, I know).
• You cannot currently be using a 3G smartphone.
• This will reset your upgrade eligibility – i.e. you won’t get another upgrade for a year.
• Your contract end date will be extended to two years past the upgrade date.
• The line must be at least six months old, and you can’t have used an upgrade in the past year.

As always, there’s plenty more fine print, but this promotion should be enough to spurn your living-in-the-past associates into the 21st century with a brand-spankin’ new Palm webOS smartphone on Verizon.

And yes, we have no doubt that this is in response to the lack-luster sales of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on Verizon. How this is going to be promoted we aren’t too sure about, but we wouldn’t count on seeing any on-air advertisements for such a targeted promotion.

Thanks, anonymous tipster!

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