Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Palm Pre Christmas?

As has been widely reported around the mobile and technical blog world today, it appears the Palm Pre is coming to the UK in time for Christmas. I got my details from the very fine PDA247, where Shaun as always is on the ball.

It seems the Pre will be offered on O2, which is good and bad.

For me it's good, because as an existing O2 customer, if I decide to "upgrade" to a Pre when the time comes to renew my contract (May 2010) it saves messing about porting numbers. Incidentally, don't start suggested the Pre is a downgrade compared to the iPhone!

The bad side is, that for many people having a device tied to a specific carrier puts them off - either because they don't want to use that carrier, or as is the case with some carriers - although I don't think O2 is one of them - having the carrier branding slapped on an otherwise aesthetically pleasing device.

I'm not as convinced about the problems of being tied to carriers as some. The more phones like this (i.e. smartphones) come into general use - rather than being the domain of the businessman or gadget lovers, the less of an issue it is. Do you get people worrying overly about whether a particualr feature phone is unlocked or tied to a carrier? Not so sure.

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