Anyone close to me or that even reads this blog (a lot) knows that I have a love hate relationship with the iPhone and I’ve been patiently waiting for a true “iPhone killer” to be released.  The next great hope was/is the Palm Pre.  For once, this looks like the handset that will work for me.  However, since January all Palm and/or sprint has told anyone is that the handset will be out “by Q3” (i.e. on or before June 30).  No pricing, dicey specs (telling us it had tethering, then taking that back… telling us it had a removable media slot, then taking that back…) and general misinformation have everyone in a tizzy.  Add to that new Sprint commercials that close with the slide-close of their new flagship phone and several cell-phone public place shots of people who are apparently beta-testers carrying the phone around (and one guy on twitter claiming – most certainely falsely – that he was a tester) and you get regular Joe like me pretty pissed.  When is this F’ing thing coming?  How much?  HELLOOOO?!   Not only is Palm giving its competition time to prepare something and undercut both price and features (which by the way, Samsung already has), but it is frustrating those who may have been interested. 

I happened to walk by a Sprint store last Sunday (I was looking for algae eating snails at the pet store next door – they didn’t have any) and decided to just point blank ask the worker bee.  He said “there are rumors it’ll be released next week, but we’re taking pre-orders now.”  I struggled to hold back my “You’re full of shit” response and simply said “oh?… how much?”   “$399.”

I walked out miffed at him and miffed at Sprint/Palm.  We have enough misinformation floating around, now we have actual employees taking phoney “pre-orders” (phoney in the sense that they are real orders, but the dollar amounts and dates are all subject to change).  First of all, if it was coming NEXT WEEK, surely sprint would already be training their employees.  A savvy rep wouldn’t say it is a rumor, they’d lean over the table and say “look, it is out next week, I’ll put you on the list if you want.”  ….unless of course they had no idea and just wanted to pick up some potential bucks from a customer whenever it comes out.

I might as well walk into a Microsoft store and ask them to sign me up for the Zune phone.

 and yes, I will be able to do that soon.

oh, and PS – if it does cost me $399, forget it!  Doesn’t the OLD iPhone only cost $199?