There were numerous reports on the Intertubes that Best Buy listed the Pre at a mere $99, and allegedly there are some lucky folks that picked up a Pre at that price before Best Buy corrected their mistake. Best Buy marketing manager John Bernier quickly issued a statement via Twitter to correct the blunder and that the mistake would be corrected shortly, but the $100 dollar question is whether or not there are still some lucky souls that can get a $99 Pre before the correction is made? Let us know if you are one of the lucky few!

Source: engadget

Options – they are nice to have. Up until now, the only ways to charge your Pre was either with the supplied USB cable or the rather expensive Touchstone charging station. Over at the Palm Infocenter store, you can pick up an inexpensive charging cradle ($24.95), from Mobi Products, that charges via your computer’s USB port or A/C power adapter and even has space to charge an extra battery. If you decide to pick one up, let us know what you think, either in comments or in the forum.

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The photo on the left is courtesy of a PreThinking.com forum member, Royer, and is clearly an extreme example of a Pre out of control. Right on the heels of the previous post reporting possible exaggerated return rates (40%), we don’t wish to slam Palm or Sprint, but it is interesting to see some hardware do things it was never meant to do. We haven’t seen slider issues in the Pres we’ve had our hands on – just mainly dead pixels. But have you experienced any slider shenanigans or similar contortions? If so, let us know in comments!

Source: engadget mobile

There have been recent reports that Pre returns have hit as high as 40%, but according to Wired, these estimates may be grossly exaggerated. According to Interpret analyst Michael Gartenberg, “I would suspect that the Pre return rates would be in line or a little lower than the average smartphone. Most consumers who bought the Pre were early adopters who were waiting for the phone and knew what they are buying into at this point.”

Some of the reasons cited by those who returned their Pre include things like loosening of the slider mechanism, poor battery life, cracked screens, and dead or stuck pixels. In our experience, we haven’t seen a Pre yet that was without pixel issues. Fortunately, in spite of some of these issues, most Pre buyers stick with their phone. Have you had to return or exchange a Pre? If so, why?

Source: Wired

Does the breaking of the iTunes/Pre sync due to Apple’s latest iTunes update got you down? It’s unfortunate that Apple would sabotage this admittedly unholy reunion to begin with, but if new Pre owners wanted an iPhone, wouldn’t they have bought one in the first place? Given that Pre users would undoubtedly purchase music and other media from iTunes, thus putting more coin in Apple’s pockets, it seems counterproductive to disable the Pre’s ability to sync with iTunes, but where one door closes, a window opens, and through that window comes Dazzboard.

Dazzboard is a media management webtop application that’s free and enables syncing music to iTunes and syncing for photos and video as well. For those of you with a Pre and willing to give Dazzboard a spin, let us know about your experience in comments and the forum.

Source: mypre

Although we knew that games are in development for the Pre, it seems the webOS platform still has a long way to go until it is ready to support high-quality graphics and complex gameplay elements, such as the ones found in certain games for the iPhone (let alone the 3GS). The main reason for this, as iPhone dev Craig A. Hunter states, is the web-oriented environment provided by the current webOS SDK beta, which got available some days ago. Actually, the biggest problem is that as of now, developers do not have access to OpenGL, although the Pre supports it. In addition, the current 4 Hz sampling of raw accelerometer data seem to be pretty insufficient, compared to the required minimum of 20 Hz for accelerometer-controled apps.

Have no fear though, as PreCentral has got a Palm job listing unearthed, revealing that the company is seeking for a Game Frameworks Engineer that would help improve the platform’s gaming capabilities. With that said, we should also point out that Apple also didn’t have the breathtaking visual up and running right from the start.

source: here and here

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The Palm Pre ads certainly evoke a wide range of responses, anywhere from “holy smokes, that’s über-creepy!” to “hey, I’m liking the zen-like theme here. Whaddaya know? ‘Zen’ and ‘Pre’ are both three-letter words!”  Either way, they are accomplishing the purpose of a commercial campaign – consistency and memorable. The latest also features Tamara Hope with a Pre, discussing the many lives of reincarnation and how all her lives are easily organized right now on the Palm Pre. Yes, it’s metaphysical. Yes, it’s a wee bit strange. And yes again, it drives home a point that the Pre and webOS easily bring our many lives (email, messaging, calendars, contacts) – be it work, home, or otherwise – together in a seamless way into the palm of our hand and at our fingertips. Give the new Pre ad a look for yourself and then please weigh in on whether you think it hits the mark or falls short.

It looks like the Pre is about to go international with an imminent launch on Bell in Canada, as suggested by a leaked internal document. Bell employees have started training under a program called “What is Pre”, with training beginning in Calgary today, then moving to Vancouver on July 21st, Toronto on July 23rd, Montreal on July 27th, and then Moncton on July 29th.

It seems perfectly logical that this training will see a Pre launch to shortly follow, so perhaps our Canadian friends will have the Pre by months’ end or shortly thereafter. Hopefully this ushers in other promised international locations, like the UK, very soon!

Source: mobilesyrup

A user at the SprintUsers forums has posted some info about an upcoming Palm Pre software update, due to be released “on or near 7/22/09”. bigchico68 claims to have received the list of changes via e-mail, sent by Sprint. So, with that said, it seems the demo software found on the Pre will cease to exist upon updating the device. In addition, Facebook users will be able to keep their friends synchronized with a PC. SMS messages will become more colorful, thanks to the added support for emoticons. Another minor change will enable the enter key to start your YouTube search. However, whether Sprint is really to roll out this update, we will know sometime around Wednesday.

source: SprintUsers Forums

Palm does deserve credit for having an App Catalog open and available, with apps on the shelf, from the first day the Pre went on sale. But the Pre faithful have grown restless as the days and weeks go by with the same few dozen apps and only promises of more to come in the future. For all you restless app-lovers out there (we being among you), the day has finally come that Palm’s webOS Mojo SDK is available to the public so that developers can create apps, stock the store shelves, and take our cash in return for 3rd-party-app bliss.

Now, to temper that excitement a little – even though the SDK is out, Palm reports that they won’t be posting new submissions in the App Catalog until this fall, likely starting in September. Yes, that’s still quite a while to wait, but to pass the time, what apps do YOU want to see in the Catalog? What are some apps you can’t live without?

Source: ars technica