April 30th – Palm Pre?

Various websites are reporting that Beta testers have been told April 30th is the release date for the most anticipated Palm Pre. Check out the two news blogs that follow.

Nothing official here, but according to JKontheRun, a guy named Jim Van is beta testing the Palm Pre and has been tweeting about it recently. He has indicated that April 30th is the release date for the Pre on Sprint. We shall see…

Here is some info that he tweeted recently regarding the Pre. You can’t verify this since it seems that Jim has since protected his updates.

• Got Pre to work on Twitter, but it’s a tad cludgy…#Palm Pre
• Sprint claims that 4/30 is a line in the sand, according to my acct mgr there…he’s usually right on #Palm Pre
• UI is VERY clean, well thought out, made for fingers. Somebody used their brains on the design. Palm’s always been cool like that
• Just used browser to remote in and play on our doc server..almost like computing w/out kbd…loaded word doc quickly..nice #Palm Pre

There is also a little story over at Gizmodo:

Take this with about a silo of salt: Jim Van, a Palm Pre beta tester, has Twittered that April 30th is the date of the highly-anticipated Pre’s release.

Reasons why this should be believed: It’s reasonable that a beta tester would have more info than the rest of us on details like the release date, and April 30th is both a feasible date and one that’s soon enough for all of us waiting anxiously.

Reasons why this shouldn’t be believed:Palm would certainly have an NDA, or non-disclosure agreement, with every beta tester, which is a legally binding contract. Mr. Van has absolutely no proof to support his claim, and in fact no evidence that he’s even a beta tester.

We wouldn’t count out this information— the date does make sense, after all, since Palm can’t wait too much longer— but we also can’t put too much credence in it until we see some more proof. Jim Van claims he’s taken a couple shots of the device with its firmware info on display, so we’ll be sure to update this post as (if) they come in. [JK On the Run]

Story [PreThinking via Mobility Site and Gizmodo]