Palm Pre Coming To Canada Via Bell Mobility
According to Bell Mobility, the anticipated Palm Pre, the first Palm device that will feature the new webOS operating system, will be exclusive on Bell Mobility's 3G network when it launches in Canada later this year.
"We're excited to bring Pre to Canada with Bell Mobility," said Brodie Keast, senior vice president of marketing for Palm, in a statement. "We've seen enormous interest from mobile operators worldwide and fully expect to continue to expand distribution for Pre, putting it within reach of more and more customers."
The Pre was unveiled in January at CES in Las Vegas. Palm has promised to launch the touch-screen smartphone in the U.S. in the first half of the year exclusively on Sprint's network. The exact release date and pricing have not yet been revealed, though Sprint and Palm have detailed service plans for the smartphone.
Palm is turning to the Pre and webOS for salvation, hoping the smartphone can pull it out of slumping device sales and mounting revenue losses.
Bell Mobility is the second carrier in the world to get the nod to offer the 3G Pre. Neither Palm nor Bell Mobility released the pricing or the precise release date for the Pre in Canada.
The 3G Pre offers a large 3.1-inch touch-screen with a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The webOS operating system uses a new technology dubbed Palm Synergy, which converges contacts into a single address book from various sources such as Google Gmail, Microsoft Outlook and Facebook. In addition, with webOS, the Palm Pre can run several applications at once without requiring users to log out of one to work in another.
Other features of the Palm Pre smartphone include Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, 8 GB of memory and a 3.0-megapixel camera with an LED flash.
"Bell is excited to be only the second carrier in the world to announce the 3G Pre," said Adel Bazerghi, senior vice president of products for Bell Mobility, in a statement. "With the unique user experience of the world's first webOS phone, running on the country's largest 3G network, we're confident that Canadians will embrace Pre as the phone for their lives today."