Palm Pre Smartphone Now Available in UK on O2 Network

The Palm Pre is now available in the U.K., exclusively from wireless carrier O2.
U.K. customers have the option of picking up the well-reviewed device for just the price of a two-year contract at 34.26 British pounds, or approximately $56, a month.
The plan comes with unlimited data and WiFi, 600 minutes of talk time, 500 texts and of course the Pre’s other perks: its webOS operating system, which can shuffle through several open applications at once; a Universal Search feature, which includes the phone but can be extended to applications such as Twitter and online sources like Google. There’s 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 that nice, big 3.1-inch touch screen.
Eighteen-month contracts are also available, but then the details change. To pay $56 a month for 18 months, for example, the device comes at price of approximately $157.
On June 6 the Pre arrived in the United States on the Sprint network for $199 with a monthly plan starting at $69.99. In September, Palm cut $50 off the Pre’s price tag, making it available for $149.99 – after an instant $150 rebate and a mail-in $100 rebate – with a two-year contract.
While the Pre’s U.S. 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, which was down $366.9 million from the same period a year earlier – though it did get it moving in the right direction. On Sept. 19, 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 U.S. 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.