14 DAY TRIAL // Palm's Pre is one of the most anticipated mobile phones of the year. Ever since its maker showed it at CES in January, the device caught all the eyes of the media, and end users are also looking at it with a lot of interest. The carrier that is to launch Pre on the US market is Sprint, which hasn't said specifically when it plans to do that, but the day of the release might approach us quite fast, as the operator has invited journalists to a webcast to be held on March 12.
Said meeting might, in a way, signal that the launch of Pre is imminent. We all know by now that Sprint and Palm plan to release the handset to users sometime in the first half of the year, although the exact date is still uncertain. While most news reports point towards a June launch, there are also a great deal of rumors that would have Pre launched with the carrier in mid or late March, and the webcast announced by Sprint verifies them in a certain manner.
At the same time, the briefing at which the operator plans to demonstrate the device working on its network and to speak about some of its features might also show that we'll have to wait a little longer before seeing the handset and that the two companies are just trying to keep our interest alive. Sprint describes the webcast as “the first in a series,” which sustains this theory, although this kind of meetings usually happen shortly before the product gets launched on the market.
Back in February, a document showing that the device will reach Sprint's warehouses on March 15 was leaked to the Web, and everybody was somehow convinced that the handset would be released the same day or shortly after. Since Sprint will have Pre exclusively until the end of the year, it is natural that everyone is looking at the carrier for the launch. For what it's worth, the device might not be ready to go into the wild yet, as we reported before, but both Sprint and Palm are working hard to make it available as soon as possible.