Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

Palm has announced at CES this weekend gone that it is upgrading it’s Pre/Pixi range of smartphones (by adding a “Plus” at the end). Although the Palm Pre seemed to have come out in America a lifetime ago, it has only just arrived in the UK so I’m pretty sure those who waited and waited to get one, will be a little disappointed to hear this news.

Aesthetically speaking the phones wont be changing too much and will just be losing the navigation button on the front, but it’s inside where they’re ringing the changes. On board memory will be doubled to 16GB(but still no expansion slot). Palm have also said they will be giving a conductor for the Touchstone wireless charger in with every purchase. Palm also announced that the webOS will soon be able to pump out some 3d gaming action to which EA Mobile and Gameloft will be developing for.

The Palm Pixi Plus on the other hand(the original Pixi is still not available here in Blighty) will now be sporting WiFi which is an obvious must have on today’s smartphones.

Palm announced the follow up to the massively popular Palm Pre last week, named the Palm Pixi we previously blogged about it when it was codenamed Eos.

Not much has changed since then it is still a full qwerty candybar running Web Os but now we have some more specific details on it.

It should arrive in the states for Christmas and will not include Wi-Fi, it is EV-DO Rev. A 9(won’t work in the UK) with 8GB of storage onboard, 2 megapixel camera (with flash), and 2.63-inch, 320 x 400 capacitive display.

In terms of the processor etc it will include 2 Arm cores on 1 chips with one being a 600MHz applications processor, and a separate 400MHz modem processor to offload some of the heavy lifting.

The gaming capabilities will be handled by a 200MHz, OpenGL 2.0-supporting GPU and then a 320MHz application DSP to handle multimedia on the device.

So some quite impressive specifications for a smallish phone.

Somebody somewhere was claiming that the Palm Pre was out in the UK tomorrow. LIES!! It appears Palm are having a journo event tomorrow so there may have been some crossed wires.

Palm are still keeping their cards close to their chest and staying put with the “pre-christmas” release. However a source in the Daily Telegraph with a friend in the Palm camp and O2 has also said it will be on our shores for the 30th October.

T3 have got news from websites HandTec and mPhone are offering them Sim-Free for a reasonable £399 and £449 respectively. This is obviously better value than the £499 N97 or the £600 ish sim free 3GS.

Palm have officially announced that the Palm Pre will be exclusively on O2 in the UK, Ireland, and Germany, and Movistarin Spain (all Telefonica companies).

Unfortunately they were not quite as open about specific release dates, only saying that it would be "in time for the holidays". That Christmas and not summer holidays unfortunately.

A nice long press release after the jump.

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Great news for people living in the US. It has been officially announced that the Palm Pre will be available on June 6th and will cost $199.99 after $100 mail-rebate and 2-year contract.

The phone will go on sale nationwide (US) at Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, and select Wal-Mart stores. The Pre will be available under Sprint's Everything Data or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plans.

Accessories include the optional $69.99 Touchstone charging dock kit that includes the $49.99 dock and $19.99 Pre back cover.

Quite a clever move by Palm as just 2 days later is the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference!

Now the question is when will us Brits get the Pre? I’m guessing it could be several more months as the US version is EVDO only so they need to release a separate GSM version!

Just because we love the feeling of disappointment when a rumour turns out to be false we have some more Palm Pre rumours.

The Boy Genius Report is claiming that Palm and Sprint will "make a big announcement in the Wall Street Journal on May 19th."

Unless they are declaring themselves bankrupt I can only imagine the big announcement will be Pre related.

There have been rumours of Palms 2nd webOS phone for a little while now but it seems it has finally been leaked. Dubbed the Palm Eos, it will be the company's followup from the Centro -- a quadband GSM / HSDPA phone.

Apparantly it will be a lower-cost alternative to an iPhone with a $99 price point when discounted. It would also cost $349 without a contract, or well under the iPhone’s $599.

The Eos will have a smaller 2.6” 320x400 multi-touch display screen than the iPhone, it will also be extremely thin at just 0.42 inches thick and it will also have a fixed QWERTY keyboard.

The phone would drop Wi-Fi and scale back to 4GB of storage along with a 2-megapixel camera. However, it would keep 3G and offer assisted GPS while still preserving Bluetooth.

• 4GB storage
• Price: $349 (pre-rebate)
• Camera: 2 megapixel fixed focus digital camera and flash / video capture
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.1 w/ A2DP and EDR, USB 2.0 via micro USB
• Removable 1150 mAh battery (4 hours 3G talk time)
• Messaging: SMS, MMS (picture and video only), integrated IM client
• Contact sync with AT&T Address Book
• MediaNet
• Cellular Video
• Email: POP3, IMAP4, and EAS support
• A-GPS
• Audio: WAV, MP3, AAC, AAC+ ringtones
• Video Playback: MPEG4, H.264, H.263

We have just blogged over at our Palm Pre Blog about some new screenshots of the WebOS

This time we have some nice new screenshots of WebOS. This batch of screens leaked by a PalmPre developer didn’t actually originate on a real Pre - they were screen grabbed from the emulator that developers use to test their code (hence the OSX bar at the top)

The pictures show off what the Palm Pre looks like during a call, a one-touch panel for controlling wifi, toggling Airplane Mode, a setup page for Facebook, Google Mail and Microsoft Exchange (Synergy integration).the native Palm Pre Google Maps app and also some general setting pages.

More images after the Jump

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