HP Pre 3 silently shuffles on sale in Europe

HP Pre 3 silently shuffles on sale in Europe

It looks like HP has inherited Palm’s penchant for extremely modest product promotion, with the new HP Pre 3 silently turning up in their European store with not even a parp, let alone a fanfare of publicity.

HP Pre 3 silently shuffles on sale in Europe

The online store is now offering the SIM-free handset for a competitive £299, which isn’t a bad price point for such a decently spec’d handset.

Unglamourously billed as ‘Model Number: FB437AA#ABU,’ the Pre 3 comes with 512MB RAM and 8GB of onboard storage, a 3.58″ WVGA display, vertical QWERTY slide-out keyboard and a 1.4GHz CPU.

Running the truly wonderful webOS, the handset packs a 5MP camera with LED flash, GPS and A-GPS, accelerometer, ambient light, proximity and compass sensors, Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n 5GHz) with WPA, WPA2, WEP, 802.1X authentication and Bluetooth.

Where’s the publicity?

Just like with the original Palm Pre, we’re baffled why this handset is getting such an extemely subdued launch – with Android and iOS making all the headway in Europe, HP has already got its work cut out trying to shift this lesser known OS.

That said, we suspect that this may be a rather enjoyable handset – the pricing is sharp and we’ve been fans of the webOS for so long we can almost forgive the serious shortcomings in the heavily US-centric app store.

We’ll write to HP and ask for a review model, but we won’t be holding our breath on a reply.

HP Pre 3 specs:

Colour Black
Operating system HP webOS
Display 3.58-inch diagonal multitouch screen with a vibrant 24-bit color, 480×800 resolution WVGA display
Keyboard Slide-out physical QWERTY keyboard
Processor Qualcomm MSM 8×55 (1.4 GHz)
Email Microsoft® Exchange email with Microsoft
Direct Push Technology
POP3/IMAP (Yahoo!® Mail, Gmail, AOL, Hotmail®, etc.)
Messaging Integrated IM & SMS
GPS4 Built-in GPS
Digital camera 5-megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash, HD (up to 720p) video recording, front VGA
Sensors Accelerometer, ambient light, proximity, and compass
Media formats supported Audio formats: DRM-free MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR, QCELP, WAV
Video formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264
Wireless connectivity Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n 5GHz) with WPA, WPA2, WEP, 802.1X authentication; Bluetooth wireless technology 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support; A-GPS; Wi-Fi router functionality for up to five devices using HP mobile hotspot
Memory 512MB RAM; 8GB internal storage
USB mass storage support
Battery Rechargeable 1230mAh (typical battery)
Connector Charger/microUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
Headphone jack 3.5mm stereo
HP Touchstone Compatible
Dimensions Width: 64mm (2.52 inches)
Height: 111mm (4.37 inches)
Thickness: 16mm (0.63 inches)
Weight 156 grams (5.5 ounces)

[HP Eurostore] – [Via]

About mike s

Editor, wirefresh.com

View all posts by mike s