Unlocked Pre 2 drops to £370 in the UK, frustrating to find elsewhere 20
While we haven’t had a peak at any sales figures, as we said on last night’s PalmCast, the fact that the majority of the Palm Pre 2’s existence has been as an unlocked GSM phone, and people just don’t buy those anymore. After nearly six months on the market, HP has seen fit to cut the price of the unlocked Pre 2 in the United Kingdom from £399.00 to £370.00. To be honest, we’re having great difficulty telling if the price cut has taken hold across the Palm Eurostore, as we can’t seem to find the Pre 2 available unlocked anywhere in Europe but through the UK storefront. For comparison’s sake, that £370.00 translates to €422.00 (still less than before), or a whopping $594.00 American, where you can currently get the same phone for nearly $150 less.
Source: Palm Eurostore; Via: webOS Blog.de
20 Comments
By the time the off-contract price drops in the U.S. to levels where people will actually buy the devices, the Pre 3 will be out.
HP/Palm screwed the pooch on this one.
exactly. I'm holding off on buying a Pre2 to FrankenPre a Sprint Pre- because I figure the price will drop like a rock when Pre3 arrives in 3-6 months. Why not aggressively price it now to $200 off contract or so, and make it available for all carriers, to build some marketshare for WebOS prior to the TouchPad and Pre3 launches?
I'm on Bell in Canada, and was still using teh Pre minus until a few days ago. I was going to wait for the Pre 3, but didn't know:
- when it was coming out
- if it was coming out on Bell.
I got impatient and bought a new Pre 2 off Craigslist and unlocked it (using berrycodes bought for $30 on Ebay -- finding a way to unlock it was a nightmare, but berrycodes worked!).
As much as people say the Pre 2 is just a spec bump on the Pre, I find it amazing:
- the feel of the screen is great (gorilla glass)
- the keyboard is way better
- the responsiveness is way better
- it doesn't hang regularly
Just wanted people to know that getting a Pre 2 is a HUGE upgrade from a Pre minus, and yes, I was overclocking my Pre minus, and I have lots of patches on it.
Thanks for your info howardbw,,, Always nice to hear what others are doing. My Pre- is stuck together with bailing wire and gum... none of the buttons work anymore, but am waiting on the PRE3....
I did get an LG Opt.5, as Sprint offered me a 3rd phone, and cut my monthly from $189 for two phones to $149 for 3 phones so took the deal.
I have to say that I like the android overall except for MultiTasking... really miss that and will wait to upgrade my pre- to a 3 someday?
Let us know if you experience any issue with your new Pre2... and kudos to you for taking the step to do something...
Here is my experience with the Pre 2:
-USB port on the side is way better without the plastic cover on the older models
-Screen looks great, even on the lowest brightness
-VPN support in webOS 2.0 is just what I was waiting for
-They seemed to fix the Canadian App Catalog since apps like Angry birds wasn't in there before (or perhaps since I'm using an unlocked pre 2, I see US apps)
-I love the ability to create new launcher pages with custom names, and re-order them
-Much faster than the old pre models, and my old iPhone 3G
The only thing missing is the Terminal app for webOS 2.x. xterm is ok, but no tab, up/down keys, or scrolling
I've got no problem buying off contract (no-one in the UK sells them on-contract anyway) but that is still a rip-off price (as usual for the UK).
I'm still hoping there might be some sort of offer available at tonight's London developer meetup...
You can buy them at least £30 cheaper in the UK if you do a simple Google search of Palm Pre2. That would be less of a rip off. And given that you always pay sales tax here and often not so in the US, there is in fact good price parity.
You can also buy them on contract for free from resellers like Expansys. And the contracts are not too bad.
BUT THEY DO NOT TELL YOU THAT YOU HAVE TO USE O2 TO ACTIVATE THE PHONE OR YOU WILL LOSE ACCESS TO PAID CATALOGUE (sorry about shouting, I am hoping HP will hear this). Also @Derek Kessler. Please can you get HP to notice?!!
I think it is scandalous that HP is not letting consumers know what they can get themselves into when buying the Pre2 with intention of not using the O2.
HP should just give the pre2 away and let us frankenpre them so they at least get webos 2.x out there. I honestly don't think they are making any serious money on them and I would imagine they don't want them in inventory when the pre3 finally comes out.
Still too much.
I can't even get my developer Pre2 from HP. They said they are backordered. Been waiting for over a month.
I seriously think they didn't want anyone but developers and hardcore fans to buy these because they knew that the software was still half-baked.
I'd love to buy a Pre 2 for the time between my currrent Pre- and a Pre 3. Pre- falling apart and failing often, Pre 2 would be a very nice device for the waiting time. But... it is by no way worth 400+ € for me. Never! Roughly 200, I would buy, but that price is just over the top.
Oh, by the way: You can still check for the € price at the eurostore. Just chose UK as your country, put the Pre 2 in your shopping basket, and change your language at the bottom to German. Now look at your cart again, and the price tag will be € 470.00! *yuk* Same price goes for France and Spain.
Over here the hp store's been selling the unlocked Pre 2 for $450 since its November, 2010, debut. I'm waiting for the price to drop before I buy the last Palm-branded phone. I'm also thinking that by the Pre3's release this summer the price will drop. That Pre 2 will tide me over at least until that Death Star known as LTE becomes fully operational.
Here we go (and example).
http://www.expansys.com/palm-pre-2-205345/
Cheaper to buy from a reseller (and HP does not want really to compete with resellers, they are its life and blood), so they always have a high official retail price, but resellers then sell at discounts to the retail price.
Can also get on contract via resellers (these guys only on Vodafone, other e-tailers also have offers on other networks too)
BUT HP DO NOT TELL YOU THAT YOU HAVE TO USE O2 TO ACTIVATE THE PHONE OR YOU WILL LOSE ACCESS TO PAID APP CATALOGUE (sorry about shouting, I am hoping HP will hear this). Also @Derek Kessler. Please can you get HP to notice?!!
I think it is scandalous that HP is not letting consumers know what they can get themselves into when buying the Pre2 with intention of not using O2.
Should've been £299 out the gate. Besides who the heck is gonna buy this now when the Pre 3 and Veer are on the way. Too little too late.
Hey howardbw
or anyone else. Any ideas about using your pre elsewhere? howardbw, so now that you've unlocked it can you find a way to put a sim in it? Or can you use it with other carriers like Wind? or use a pay as you go sim card on it form the US or use it on US carriers that carry the Pre? I also wanna travel with my pre to asia and stuff and like to see what my options are. I'm with bell currently and quite stuck with them because I love the pre.
Any other ideas about saving some money while still using the pre?
maybe buy an unlocked one in the UK?
I suspect that the delay in getting the Pre 2 to market was related to WebOS 2.0/2.1 development, rather than in getting the hardware to market. Even the Touchpad is probably delayed by WebOS 3 not being ready just yet.
This is where Apple has an advantage, iOS is a more mature OS at this point, and the number of changes to it are fairly minor in the grand scheme of things. Throw some new hardware at it, and you have a new device.
HP/Palm on the other hand, is working hard to add new features that go beyond anything Apple could just copy in a short amount of time. The OS is getting some pretty serious updates and changes for WebOS 2 and 3, Tap to Share for the Pre 3 to Touchpad, and looking at better and really innovative ways to do the old tasks is what HP/Palm seems to be looking for.
Anyone can come up with a "me too" for some things, but making all the different features come together and feel like a cohesive part of the whole, rather than just some feature thrown in is what most of us want to see. Do we want a standalone app for Facebook chat, or do we want Facebook chat to just use the normal messaging in the phone?
Hey ener,
If you look closer at my posting, you will see I'm on Bell too. I had multiple issues getting it to work, but overcame them. Here are the highlights:
- found a "locked to Rogers" phone. (look on kijiji.com or craigslist). I was lucky as someone had won a sales contest and got this free, but was an Iphone user. Got it for $275 including a brand new touchstone (and the phone was new in box as well)
- unlocking the phone (seems there are tons of scams out there. Found berrycodes ebay listing (http://bit.ly/hPwHoU if you're interested -- $30). I found I had to doctor to WebOS 2.1 before this unlock program worked.
- here's the tricky part. You need to activate it using a Rogers SIM otherwise you don't get the paid app catalog. I assume you would be able to borrow someone's SIM who has a data plan on Rogers. I'm told that if the first activation is not with Rogers, it doesn't matter if you doctor it later. You are essentially screwed, certainly for paid apps, not sure about free apps
- also, beware that if you activate a Pre using your current Palm Profile, it warns you (kind of feebly I'd say) then it takes over the Profile and the original phone resets without having any of the "live" data -- the USB partition is not erased.
- now, you can shutdown the phone and put in an activated Bell SIM and when you startup the phone the phone part will work, but the web stuff will not. You need to go into phone preferences.
- near the bottom turn on "Manual Settings"
- press "Edit Network Settings"
- enter "pda2.bell.ca" without the quotes into the "INTERNET APN" field, then click on "Change Settings"
- from that point on, you have web access.
- that's the way to do it for Bell. I suspect you can look up the APN for any other carrier on the Internet. That's how I found the Bell one.
Hope that's enough information for you to go on. If something's not clear, let me know and I'll try to answer.
Regards,
Howard
Hey howardbw:
thanks for your insights.
I too am on Bell in Ontario.
I signed on where Bell knocked $15 a month off of the $50 plan .
i was wondering if you were able to keep that $15 rebate after switching to the Pre 2.
any thoughts from anyone else would be appreciated.
thanks