Bell Launches Free Palm Pre Contest, We Dig for Pricing and Release Date Details

Bell Canada has launched a new contest for, you guessed it, a free Palm Pre!  The full contest rules can be found here (and yes, they did erroneously use the Treo Pro as shown above).  Essentially all you need to do is fill out a quick registration on the contest page between July 7th and August 31st.  Oh, and you need to be Canadian and of legal age.

A few interesting things can be seen in this contest rules.  First off, it would appear this contest is open to all Canadians, even to those in provinces Bell doesn't sell phones to.  A bit strange, though the rules do note that the winner will use the Pre on a Bell Canada plan, which just raises up more questions and confusion.

As happened with Sprint's contest, a read through the rules gives some hints at pricing.  Section 5.1 of the rules state:

The Prize consists of one (1) 3G Palm® Pre™. Approximate retail value $650 Cdn.

That's a pretty good indication Bell will be selling off-contract Palm Pre smartphones at about $650 CAD.  Not too bad considering Sprint's full retail price of the Pre is $549.99 USD (about $640 CAD). Hopefully Bell Canada contract deals will keep it in the affordable range for most.

Lastly, while the contest itself ends on August 31st at 11:59pm, the rules say the drawing is on September 7th, which seems to reveal the release date is sometime between then.  Seems to make the most sense that Bell is going for a September 1st release, which could be beneficial in marketing.  Bell could pose this as a great back to school device, which could sell especially well to college and university students.

Hopefully Bell will make some pricing and release date details official soon, so we don't have to keep making educated guesses.

Thanks, blueadept!