Well, just one moment.  Wanted to remind everyone that we will be doing more contests/giveaways in the future for active site participants (that is, those who make blog comments, forum posts, and @palmpresage replies on Twitter).  Thanks so much to everybody for entering!  Hope you enjoy the site!

So without further ado….

The winner of a free Palm Pre + 1 month service is:

AdamFG

from our PalmPreSage.com forum!

Congrats Adam! Everyone else, thanks again! Keep on the lookout for more giveaways!

It’s official. Finally. The Palm Pre will be released June 6, 2009. Check the details in the official press release below.

Overland Park, Kan., May 19, 2009 – Sprint (NYSE: S) today announced pricing and nationwide availability for the highly anticipated Palm®Pre™ phone, offered exclusively from Sprint. Palm Pre will be available nationwide on June 6 in Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, selectWal-Mart stores and online at sprint.com for $199.99 with a two-year service agreement and $100 mail-in rebate. Running the new Palm webOS™mobile platform, Pre brings together your important information from where it resides – on your phone, at your work or on the web – into one logical view.(1)

For those who juggle life circa 2009 –bouncing from conference call to car pool schedule, from doctors’ numbers to doctoral thesis data, from social calendars to social networking – Pre marks a new wireless crossover standard. Before Pre,you had to compromise when selecting a wireless phone. To get the business features you needed, you had to sacrifice the personal entertainment features you wanted. Pre consolidates your important information – professional, social and personal – into one revolutionary device using an operating system that redefines the experience of living and working wirelessly.

“The argument that you need one phone for work and another phone for play, or that you have to make compromises between business and lifestyle productivity is over,” said Dan Hesse, president and CEO of Sprint.“With Pre, compromises of the past are history.”

Palm Pre will run on America’s most dependable 3G network and come with Sprint’s industry-leading value-oriented Everything Data plans that offer savings of up to $1,430 over two years versus comparable AT&T and Verizon plans for smartphones and PDAs.(2)

“The Palm Pre takes full advantage of Sprint’s Everything Data plans,” said Avi Greengart,Research Director for Consumer Devices at Current Analysis. “The Pre has been expressly designed for multitasking among multiple web pages and applications. It also builds on Palm’s heritage in PDAs by managing your digital information – whether that’s on a corporate server or on the web.”

“The Pre’s dynamic ‘deck of cards’ approach to handling and navigating multiple applications is a great advance, but the core breakthrough is the integration of contact and content details across multiple applications,” said Andy Castonguay, Director of Mobile& Access Devices Research, Yankee Group. “With social networking and messaging being so important to US consumers, the Pre’s ability to automatically pull friends’ contact details, messaging addresses andpersonal websites from different applications on the phone will greatly simplify people’s ability to communicate with their friends and colleagues in any way they want.”

Pre: A New Kind of Phone
The new webOS platform introduces Palm Synergy™, a key feature that brings together your personal and professional calendar, contacts and email into one centralized view, making transitions between work and personal life smooth and easy to manage.

With Palm Synergy, users get:

•Linked contacts – With Synergy, you have a single view that links your contacts from a variety of sources, so accessing them is easier thanever. For example, if you have the same contact listed in your Outlook(3), Google and Facebook accounts, Synergy recognizes that they’re the same person and links the information, presenting it to you as one listing.
• Layered calendars – Your calendars can be seen on their own or layered together in a single view, combining work, family,friends, sports teams, or other interests. You can toggle to look atone calendar at a time, or see them all at a glance.
• Combined messaging – Synergy lets you see all your conversations with the same person in a chat-style view, even if it started in IM and you want to reply with text messaging. You can also see who’s active in a buddylist right from contacts or email, and start a new conversation with just one touch.

Palm webOS lets you keep multiple activities open and move easily between them like flipping through a deck of cards. You can move back and forth between text messaging and email, or search the web while you listen to music. You can rearrange items simply by dragging them, and when you are done with something,just throw it away by flicking it off the top of the screen.

Finding what you need is also easy with universal search – as you type what you’re looking for, webOS narrows your search and offers results from both your device and the web.(4) webOS crushes the barriers to true mobile computing.

“Pre is truly a new phone for a new web-centric age,” said Ed Colligan, Palm president and chief executive officer. “We’re a mobile society, and we want our people, calendars and information to move with us. With Pre’s exquisite design and the unique webOS software, running on Sprint’s fast broadband network, we’re changing the perception of what a wireless phone can be.”

Pre comes with a charger in the box, but for anyone tired of plugging acord into their wireless phone, Palm introduces the Touchstone™charging dock, the first inductive charging solution for phones,available exclusively for Pre. Simply set Pre down on top of the dock without worrying about connection, orientation or fit. Pre is active while charging, so you can access the touch screen, watch movies or video, or use the speakerphone. Set Pre on the charging dock when you’re on a call, and the speakerphone automatically turns on; when you take a ringing Pre off the dock, Pre automatically answers the call.Other mobile operating systems allow multitasking, but Palm has developed an intuitive method of switching between “cards,” which resemble clicking different tabs on a Web browser. New applications can be launched easily using the “Launcher” software button at the bottom of the home screen, and users navigate between different applications.

With nearly every wireless device today you have to exit one application completely before you can use another. That’s not what people are accustomed to. Think of your PC and all the applications you can have open at one time.

Pre: The latest NOW Network milestone for Sprint
Pre also lets you access feature-rich Sprint content on the Sprint Now Network, including exclusive applications such as:

o Sprint Navigation(5)
o Sprint TV
o NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile Live

“Sprint’s Now Network brings you America’s most dependable 3G network, thelargest push-to-talk community, and in selected markets, Sprint is the only national carrier bringing 4G to life in 2009,”(6) Hesse said. “The Now Network is more than just a physical network – it’s also data plans that are all-inclusive, eliminating fear of data overages and a perfect fit for Palm Pre users.”

Sprint’s networks are now performing at best-ever levels, and Sprint’s high-value Everything data plans consistently beat AT&T and Verizon’s comparable plans in savings by hundreds, even thousands, of dollars over two years. With the revolutionary launch of Ready Now, which Sprint pioneered, customers leave the store educated, comfortable and confident about the phones they’re about to take home. As a result of these measures and more,Sprint customer satisfaction indices – from first call resolution to billing satisfaction, from customer care response time to service and repair – have all significantly improved over the past year.

Pricing and Availability
The Palm Pre phone will be available from Sprint on June 6 for $199.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with new two year agreement on an Everything Plan with data or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plan. An array of compelling accessories also will be available for Pre, including the Palm Touchstone charging dock. The Touchstone ™Charging Kit, which includes the Touchstone charging doc and Touchstone back cover for Pre, will be available June 6 for $69.99. The Touchstone charging dock and Touchstone back cover also are available separately from for $49.99 and $19.99, respectively.

More information is available at www.sprint.com/palmpre

ABOUT SPRINT NEXTEL
SprintNextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers,businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies,including two wireless networks serving more than 49 million customers at the end of the first quarter of 2009; industry-leading mobile dataservices; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities;and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. For more information, visit www.sprint.com.

(1)Use of this device requires providing a valid email address, mobile phone number, and related information for account setup and activation.Unlimited usage data plan strongly recommended; additional data charges may apply. Within wireless coverage area only. Number of applications and actual performance will vary depending on applications used and actions performed.
(2)Comparisons based on unlimited minutes options for Verizon PDA/Smartphone Nationwide Email & Messaging plus VZNavigator and AT&T Nation plus PDA Personal Bundle and AT&T Navigator. Based on publicly available information as of publication date. Excludes taxes, Sprint surcharges, fees and premium content.
(3)Within wireless coverage area only. Requires data services at additional cost.Microsoft Direct Push Technology requires Microsoft Exchange Server2003 with SP2 or Exchange Server 2007. Additional fees may apply.
(4)Searches web and user’s applications, contacts, and dialing information. Websearch within wireless coverage area only, requires data services at additional cost.
(5)GPS requires data services at additional cost. Coverage not available in all areas at all times.
(6)“Dependable”based on independent, third-party drive tests for 3G data connection success, session reliability and signal strength for the top 50 most populous markets from Jan. ‘08 to Feb. ‘09. Not all services available on 3G and coverage may default to separate network when 3G unavailable.

Palm, webOS, Pre, Synergy and Touchstone are among the trademarks or registered trademarks owned by or licensed to Palm, Inc.

The New York times has apparently released an article about the upcoming smartphone releases, and claims that the Palm Pre will launch the first week of June. New York Times states their source as “people briefed on the company’s plans”. Check out the article on NYTimes.com.

Multiple reports have now been confirmed, and at least a certain number of Palm Pre units have arrived in Sprint stores. These phones apparently are specifically for the store’s “Pre pros”, who will be your local fountain of knowledge of all things Pre. The handsets are everything you’ve hoped and dreamed, according to BGR, with small size, responsive screen, and great keyboard.

We seem to be experiencing the calm before the storm: not a lot of new news, but the excitement and anticipation for Pre are reaching a boiling point. We’ll keep you posted!

Via Gizmodo. The Palm Pre has been spotted where just about everybody wants to see it: in a Sprint store. Who this guy is, or why he’s so brazen about posting images of himself, in a Sprint store, with a Pre, on the internet, remains a mystery (Gizmodo blurred out his face for him).

The photo seems to be legitimate, with little evidence of editing. Assuming we haven’t missed something, this means one thing: the Palm Pre launch is going to be soon. Real soon. What do you make of this?

Check out this quick Palm Pre podcast to see how email will work with the Pre. Synergy is looking more and more awesome.

The latest in a series of Palm Pre sightings from Sprint ads: The Palm Pre is shown in a Pandora ad with the caption “downloads from the digital lounge.” We’ve heard before that Pandora will be one of the apps available at launch, so this isn’t too much of a surprise.

Like we’ve said in the past, Pre + Pandora is going to be awesome because of its ability to multitask.  Screenshot below!

The mystery Sprint employee over at Inside Sprint Now has leaked a “FAQ” list regarding a few of Palm Pre’s features.

Among the notable revelations: Google Talk and AIM supported at launch, USB mode available (but all calls are routed to voicemail), music as ringtones supported, no video at launch (but coming).

Nothing too new there, besides the USB mode. It’s a little disappointing to know that while the USB mode will allow you to drag/drop files from or to a PC, that’s all you’ll be able to do with the phone until you exit USB mode. It is true however that USB transfers aren’t likely to take up a signifcant portion of your daily activities.

Is this news legit/noteworthy? What do you think?

Rumors surfaced yesterday that Palm is planning another webOS device for AT&T, and it actually seems somewhat likely. Engadget has uncovered a photo (seen above), spec list, and other juicy details.

The question is, does this take away from the Pre hype? If this is true, is Palm cannibalizing itself a bit here? Let us know what you think in the comments.

An internal AT&T document comparing Pre to the iPhone 3G has been leaked, and, much to nobody’s surprise, AT&T doesn’t seem to really like the Pre.

The comparison chart isn’t what you’d call “objective”, and you’ll find plenty of negative adjectives like “limited”, “only”, “unproven”, “can’t”, and, wait for it… “very limited”. The iPhone side, however, sports “thinner”, “lighter”, “bigger”, “Global”, “fast”, “responsive” and myriad other feel-good phrases touting the iPhone’s superiority.

We can’t help but wonder, wouldn’t it do AT&T good to look at this with a little more, well… objectivity? Maybe some of the iPhone’s major flaws could be addressed by making a “comparison chart” sans narcissism. Better yet, ask Sprint to fill in the blanks on the right side, and AT&T could fill in the blanks on the left side. Everyone leaves with a bruised ego, but we all end up with better phones!

In fairness, the document does bring up a few real issues: the Pre’s lack of GSM capability is a big deal will certainly hurt sales domestically for frequent travelers.

Like we keep saying, though, May 17th (please!) will be the real moment of truth.