Palm Pre Finally Launches in UK

The Palm Pre has finally arrived on UK shores and is now available exclusively from O2, the same mobile operator that secured the rights to the iPhone when it was launched back in 2007.

A two year contract for the well received Palm Pre will cost British customers £34.26 per month, and includes unlimited data and Wi-Fi, 600 minutes of talk time, 500 texts, and of course the Pre’s other perks, namely its webOS operating system that can shuffle through several open applications at once; and a Universal Search feature, which includes the phone but can be extended to applications such as Twitter and online sources like Google.

There is also Palm Synergy, which ties together all of a user’s correspondence with each contact, and also syncs contact and calendar information from disparate sources such as Outlook and Facebook.

The Pre also comes with push email, a full HTML browser, GPS, Bluetooth, a 3-megapixel camera, 8GB of internal storage and a big 3.1-inch touch screen.

Eighteen-month contracts are also available, but then the details change. To pay £34 a month for 18 months, for example, the device will cost £96.

The Pre was launched in the United States back in June on the Sprint network for $199 (£122) with a monthly plan starting at $69.99 (£42.85). In September, Palm cut $50 (£30) off the Pre’s price tag, making it available for $149.99 (£92) – after an instant $150 rebate and a mail-in $100 rebate – with a two-year contract.

While the Pre’s American launch was considered a success, it wasn’t quite enough to get the ailing phone-maker out of the woods. For the first quarter of fiscal year 2010, it reported revenue of $68 million (£42 million), which was down $366.9 million (£225 million) from the same period a year earlier.

Back in September Palm announced it would stop using Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system and focus solely on its webOS. It’s expected to release a second webOS-running device, the Pixi, in the US in time for the holidays.

The lower-priced Pixi will also feature a physical keyboard – a feature that particularly sets the Pre apart from its intended competition, Apple’s iPhone – though instead of sliding out, as on the Pre, it’s directly under its more modest screen.

O2 now has the Palm Pre in stock, in black, and it’s available to business customers as well as to consumers signing up for monthly plans.