Sprint to Launch Palm Pre on June 6

The Palm Pre will be available in the U.S. on June 6 for $199.99 with a two-year service agreement and after a $100 mail-in rebate, Sprint announced on Tuesday.

The QWERTY smartphone, which is based on Palm's new operating system webOS, comes with a touch interface and a 3.1-inch display. It has support for EV-DO Rev A, 802.11 b and g, GPS (Global Positioning System), Bluetooth with stereo support, a 3-megapixel camera with LED flash and 8GB of built-in storage, but no memory card slot.

The phone software can combine personal and professional calendar, contacts and e-mail into one centralized view, according to the operator. Users can, for example, group together Outlook, Google, and Facebook calendars or collect e-mail from multiple accounts in one inbox. All conversations with the same person over instant messaging or text messaging are grouped together in one chat-style view.

The phone organizes multiple active applications using "activity cards," large icons that line up on the display. Using the touch interface, users can flip through them, move them around, or throw them off screen by dragging a finger from the bottom to the top of the screen.

The phone can be picked up in Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, select Wal-Mart stores and online at Sprint.com, Sprint said.