Sprint's Palm Pre plan is $384/year cheaper than AT&T's iPhone plan

The Palm Pre is better than the iPhone in many ways: it has a real keyboard, the OS supports multitasking beautifully, and it is significantly cheaper. Yes, with a contract the 8GB iPhone 3G is now only $99 compared to $199 for the Palm Pre, but the contract is where all the hidden costs are. Sprint's Palm Pre plan is $384/year cheaper than AT&T's iPhone plan with the same features. Here's the math:

Sprint Palm Pre base plan: $70/month. Features included:

• 450 anytime minutes
• unlimited data
• unlimited nights & weekend minutes starting at 7pm
• unlimited text
• voice guided GPS navigation by Telenav

(Source)

AT&T iPhone base plan: $70/month. Features included:

• 450 anytime minutes
• unlimited data
• 5000 nights & weekend minutes starting at 9pm
• ...and that's all. Pretty bare bones, but may be enough for some people.

Extra features you may want:

• $9 for Early Nights and Weekends (starting at 7pm)
• $5 for iPhone Text Messaging 200
• $20 for iPhone Text Messaging Unlimited

(Source)

An AT&T iPhone plan with almost all the features of the Sprint Palm Pre plan would therefore be $70 base + $9 early N&W + $20 unlimited sms = $99/month. That's $384/year more expensive than the Sprint Palm Pre plan. Note I said "almost": there is currently no iPhone app with voice guided GPS directions, and while tomtom did just announce an iPhone app that does exactly this, I suspect tomtom will use the new in-app iPhone payments system to charge a monthly fee to users of this app, so the price difference for true feature parity could be even higher.

For unlimited everything plans ("Simply Everything" is what Sprint calls it) the savings with Sprint become more pronounced: $100/month on Sprint vs. $150/month on AT&T, making the iPhone $600/year more expensive than the Pre.

Bottom line is that the Palm Pre is better than the iPhone and cheaper as well. The only problem is that it's sold out everywhere, so good luck finding one :)

Full disclosure: I've been a loyal Palm Treo user for 5 years, I have a friend that works at Palm, and I spent significant effort to get a Palm Pre the day it came out. The Palm Pre is better than the iPhone, and its story needs to be told.

Update: Appmodo has a very thorough comparison of the iPhone 3.0, the Palm Pre, the Android G2, and the Blackberry Storm. It's a lot of information, but it might help you decide which one you want if you're looking to get a new smartphone.