HP Pre 2 For Verizon Wireless Now Available For Purchase, Will Ship February 17th

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The Palm Pre 2 was first announced back in October of last year and promised to arrive within the “coming months.” And while things have certainly changed for Palm and HP since that announcement, the Pre 2 for Verizon Wireless is officially available for pre-order.

Yup, as of today HP has added the Pre 2 into the available for purchase category and the device is expected to begin shipping on February 17th, which means that those last rumors were indeed accurate. But that aside, the Pre 2 is priced at $99.99 on a two-year agreement.

In terms of specs, we have seen these all before, but considering its been a while we should mention them again. The HP Pre 2 will arrive sporting webOS 2 along with a 3.1 inch (320 x 480) touchscreen display, hardware QWERTY keyboard, 1GHz processor, 16GB internal storage, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

All things considered, a $100 Pre 2 may not be enough to convince current Pre Plus users with Verizon to upgrade, especially those not willing to part with the free Mobile Hotspot they currently have. One perk of the Pre 2 as compared to the Pre Plus is that it will ship with webOS 2, something the Pre Plus is not expected to see at this point. Anyway, then you have to consider the customers who may be eligible for an upgrade or new to Verizon. In this case, the Pre 2 for $100 seems fair, well, that is until you remember the Pre 3 was announced yesterday. Of course, to be fair to Verizon and HP, so far nothing has been confirmed as far as the Pre 3 coming to Verizon.

Bottom line, while it is nice to see the Pre 2 come available as was promised, we cannot help but feel this comes sort of dead on arrival. Otherwise, the pre-order is being handled direct with HP and we expect Verizon will add the product listing on the 17th when the handset is officially available and ready to ship.