Finally Palm announced the u.s. release date for the Palm Pre which is set at june 6th. Check out the official Palm blog.
The price tag is at $199.99 (after rebate and service agreement) on sprint only. Without any contract/sim lock the price is rumored to be about $500, which is pretty up to par with the windows mobile competition.
Getting an official unlocked IPhone (available in countries, where carrier exclusivity is illegal) is still a very pricey thing, so the palm pre will definitely be cheaper without a carrier contract.
But the new windows mobile devices like Touch Diamond 2 are at the same price level, so it will be interesting to see how palm pre’s sales will work out. Especially because the windows mobile devices from htc became very sophisticated over the past years. There is not only a huge app market, but also the hardware of the new devices with wvga resolution and quite big RAM sizes is nothing to underestimate.
I’m curious to see how the 3rd party development for the palm pre will be, and hopefully we will get a palm device with external storage card support soon.