Though Thursday Webcast, jointly hosted by partners Palm and Sprint, increased the hope of more revelations about the forthcoming launch of Palm Pre, not much – other than what is already known – was revealed.

Despite the fact that the much-awaited details about the Pre, like its cost and its launch schedule, were left wanting, there was a confirmation from Palm and Sprint about the availability of Sprint’s “Everything” individual and family plans for the Pre. In addition, at the end of the slide presentation, the companies obligingly provided two “key takeaways” - the Sprint marketing slogans “Simply Everything” and “Ready Now.”

With Palm’s continued reiteration about the projected launch of the Pre within the next few months, it appears more than likely that Pre’s launch will be scheduled somewhere close to that of Apple’s iPhone 3.0 software, the preview of which is scheduled next week.

The implicit fact that Palm and Sprint are unquestionably assessing themselves against the iPhone became obvious when Palm and Sprint executives - Matt Crowley and David Owens respectively – took a few somewhat-subtle digs at Apple, like saying that the Pre comes with a user-replaceable battery!

Other than that, for the large part of the Webcast, the Palm and Sprint executives used an understandable boost - talking of their mutual excitement about working with each other!