The Palm Pre was the first webOS smartphone, it will also be offered in UK via O2 this week (October 16th) according to the pricing list below.

[via engadgetmobile]

Palm Pre is free to O2 customers taking out a 24-month contract and to customers taking an 18-month contract at £44.05 or £73.41 per month. All customers will receive unlimited UK data browsing over O2’s HSDPA network and unlimited access to 7,500 Wi-Fi hotspots through both The Cloud and now BT Openzone.

[via mypre]

Bell smartphone clients can choose from a wide variety of voice and data plans, including Smartphone Combos that offer unlimited Internet browsing, personal email, text messaging and Windows Live Messenger.

“We’re very excited to bring the revolutionary Palm Pre and the Palm webOS mobile platform to Canadians exclusively on Bell’s national wireless network – the largest high-speed 3G network in Canada,” said Wade Oosterman, President of Bell Mobility and Chief Brand Officer for Bell. “Considering the highly successful US introduction of the Palm Pre by Sprint in June and fast-growing Palm Pre buzz among Canadian mobile users, Bell and our retail partners are preparing for high demand for this breakthrough phone.”

Version information

* Version: webOS 1.1.0
* Release date: 23 July 2009
* Configuration: Sprint 1.7

New applications
NFL Mobile Live from Sprint

* Watch or listen to live NFL games right on your phone.

Feature changes to existing applications
Calendar

* For Calendar accounts you create on your phone, the default reminder intervals are 15 minutes for timed events and one day for all-day events. A few notes:
o This change applies only if software version 1.1 was on your phone when you bought it, or if you did a partial or full erase on your phone and signed in to your Palm profile again after updating to version 1.1. If you simply update your phone to software version 1.1, the default reminder intervals in Calendar do not change.
o This change applies only to Calendar events you create on your phone, not to events that are synchronized to your phone from an online account.

Camera

* The Photos application opens more quickly when launched from the camera.

Clock

* Enhanced support for time zones in Clock.
* When you set an alarm in Clock, an alarm icon appears in the notification area at the bottom of the screen. Tap the icon to display alarm details. Alarm details include the following:
o If the alarm is set for the current day, the alarm time appears.
o If the alarm is set for tomorrow, the alarm time and “Tomorrow” appear.
o If the alarm is set for any day other than today or tomorrow, the day of the alarm appears.

Contacts

* Friends added and deleted in Facebook on the web are now correctly added and deleted in the Facebook account in Contacts on the phone.
* As soon as you create or makes changes to a Google contact on the phone, the phone begins a sync to reflect those changes in Google on the web.

Email

* When you set up an Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) email account, you can enter the mail server name as an IP address.
* Support for self-signed certificates with multiple common names has been added.
* When you reply to an email in HTML format using an EAS account, the formatting of the sender’s original message is now retained in the reply.
* Palm’s EAS implementation now supports several Exchange ActiveSync Policies, including the following:
o PIN/Password Required. IT administrators can ensure a password is assigned to the phone. Administrators can also specify the minimum length of the password.
o Inactivity timeout. IT administrators can ensure that an inactive phone goes into a locked state after a certain time period. You cannot set a higher timeout interval for your phone, but you can set a shorter interval.
o Remote Wipe. IT Administrators can remotely erase all data on a phone from their Exchange console. IT administrators can also have the device wipe itself if an incorrect password is entered more than a specified number of times.

Messaging

* You can enter emoticons in new text, multimedia, and instant messages. Emoticons also display in incoming messages.
* If you set the phone to use a 24-hour time format, the message times shown in a conversation appear in 24-hour time.
* If you go into an IM account’s preferences, all the options are available even if you are signed in to the account. You can tap Remove Account to delete the account, enter a new password to update the password, or tap Sign In to sign in with your updated password. Previously, you needed to sign out of the account before you could use these preferences.
* When you delete an IM account, a message now appears asking you to confirm that you want to delete the account.

Phone

* When multiple missed call notifications are displayed on the dashboard, the time of the most recent missed call is shown.
* When you slide the ringer switch off, a bell icon with a slash is displayed. Previously, the icon was a speaker with a slash.
* In Phone Preferences, the Show Contact Matches preference is now turned on by default. When typing on the keyboard in the phone app, the phone automatically displays both the numbers being entered and any contact matches for the characters entered.

System

* Improved functionality of person reminders. A person reminder is a notification that you create in a contact entry. The notification appears when you have a call or exchange an email, text, multimedia, or IM message with a contact.
* Resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with latest version of iTunes (8.2.1).
* When you enter a search term in Card view or the Launcher to perform a universal search, if you select the Wikipedia web search option, results are shown in the Wikipedia Mobile site instead of the Desktop site.

Web

* You can now use symbols from the symbols table (Sym Sym key icon + key) when you enter text into a web page dialog box.
* If you have a page open at a certain zoom level, leave the page, and use the onscreen Back Web Back button button or the back gesture to return to the page, the zoom level is restored right away.
* A new gesture is now available that works the same as the onscreen Forward Web Forward button button. To move forward through open web pages, make a short swipe left to right in the gesture area.
* When using the Wikipedia drop-down search feature in the address bar, results are shown in the Wikipedia Mobile site instead of the Desktop site.
* When you tap a link, the link appears highlighted to indicate it has been activated, even if it takes a moment for the linked page to open.

YouTube

* After you enter search text, you can tap the Search Search icon icon to perform a search. You still have the option of pressing Enter Enter key to perform the search.

According to Apple,

“iTunes 8.2.1 is a free software update that provides a number of important bug fixes.  It also disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre. As we’ve said before, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with unsupported digital media players” Natalie Kerris, spokesperson, Apple

 Palm did not have a solution for this at the moment, it advise user to stay with iTunes 8.2 if iTunes sync is needed. Otherwise, the music transfer could be done through USB connection or other third party softwares like Missing Sync and DoubleTwist.

[via precentral/slashgear]

Palm Pre Specifications

• HSDPA/UMTS with EDGE/GSM
• Integrated GPS
• Large 3.1-inch touch screen with a vibrant 24-bit color 320×480 resolution HVGA display
• Gesture area, which enables simple, intuitive gestures for navigation
• Slide-out keyboard (QWERTY in UK, Ireland and Spain, QWERTZ in Germany)
• Email
• 3-megapixel camera with LED flash 
• 3.5mm headset jack
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support
• 8GB internal memory (~7GB user available)
• USB mass storage mode
• MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
• Proximity sensor, which automatically disables the touch screen and turns off the display whenever you put the phone up to your ear
• Light sensor, which dims the display if the ambient light is dark, such as at night or in a movie theater, to reduce power usage
• Accelerometer, which automatically orients web pages and photos to your perspective
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
• Ringer switch, which easily silences the device with one touch
• Removable, rechargeable battery
• Dimensions: 59.57mm (W) x 100.53mm (L, closed) x 16.95mm (D)
• Weight: ~135 grams

[via My Pre]

Earlier this week, Palm Pre GSM has been spotted in a Vietnam website, if you are considering a Palm Pre in the near future, check out this review on My Pre.

[via My Pre]