Attention developers and consumers with money to burn: Palm has expanded its online store to include the sale of phones without contract. As expected, the phones are still locked to their respective carriers, but it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to envision Palm selling the GSM variants of its phones through their online store after they finally launch on AT&T. As far as price is concerned, expect to pay the same amount to Palm as you would to the respective carriers for the phone without contract – $599 and $549 for the Pre on Verizon and on Sprint, and $399 on both carriers for the Pixi.
And back to that bit about developers: while we wait for an unlocked GSM developer phone to be announced by Palm (MWC, anyone?), remember that the folks over at webos-internals have developed a tool called MetaDoctor that allows any webOS phone to run without having been activated on a cell network – even CDMA phones bought directly from Palm. Sure, you’ll be relegated to using WiFi and WiFi only, but it’s still an actual device you get to hack and develop on. Hey Palm – helping developers skip this MetaDoctor step would be nice, you know?
Thanks to @webos_school for the tip!