Confirming last week's rumor, AT&T has broken their prolonged silence concerning the Palm Pre's release date via a Facebook posting. Ma Bell has updated their wall today with the official word that the Palm Pre will be available on Sunday, May 16th.

The AT&T version of the Palm Pre Plus will sell for $149.99 after a two year contract commitment and a mail-in rebate. For a limited time, corporate AT&T retail stores will be handing out free touchstone charging docks with each order. No word as of yet on the launch status of its sibling the Pixi Plus.

Following the rapid fire pace of price drops on the Palm Pre at Verizon, the Pixi Plus takes a turn this week. Shortly after the $29 offer on the Pre+, the Pixi Plus is now free with a two year contract commitment and a data plan direct from vzw.com.

The move is yet another good one for bargain hunters who can now save an entire penny over the going contractual rate at most other online locations.

Bloomberg is reporting on a new law suit filled this week again Palm Inc. The suit comes from investor named Steve Ubaney who claims the HP buyout deal cheats common stock holders while unfairly favoring holders of preferred shares such as the ones held by Elevation Partners.

Mr. Ubaney alleges that Palm directors breached their fiduciary duties and that common stockholders "will not receive their fair portion of the value of Palm's assets and will be prevented from benefitting from a value-maximizing transaction." He is seeking a court order to block the deal plus damages and is looking to represent other investors.

Following up from yesterday's report of the first hands-on impressions of the new AT&T Pre Plus, the device's release date has been reported courtesy of an anonymous tipster to Engadget. GSM WebOS fans will finally get the opportunity to officially purchase a Pre Plus starting May 16th.

In addition to the release date, a few additional details have been confirmed. First of all, the free mobile hotspot feature currently being offered by Verizon Wireless is nowhere to be found on the AT&T Pre Plus. As a small concession, however, the devices will let users hop onto AT&T's nationwide wi-fi hotspot locations at no additional charge.

Growth of the worldwide converged mobile device market (commonly referred to as smartphones) more than doubled that of the overall mobile phone market in the first quarter, a sign the segment is in high-growth mode again. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped a total of 54.7 million units in the first quarter of 2010 (1Q10), up 56.7% from the same quarter a year ago. In contrast, the overall mobile phone market grew 21.7%. Converged mobile devices accounted for 18.8% of all mobile phones shipped in 1Q10, up slightly from 14.4% in 1Q09.

The smartphone market's growth is impressive too when contrasted to the 38% growth in the fourth quarter, which is typically the strongest of the year. This demonstrates the tremendous potential of the market and the depths to which it plunged in the first quarter of last year.

After a lengthy wait, reports are finally starting to surface about actual hands-on time with AT&T-branded Pre Plus units. Previous to today's story, only drab unboxings and photos of in-store dummy units were available to placate fans awaiting the arrival of webOS on the third domestic wireless network.

PreCentral is running a piece from an anonymous tipster which includes a few screenshots and some brief initial impressions of the AT&T Pre Plus. The Pre Plus in question is running WebOS 1.4.2 and the AT&T Pre Plus is reportedly subjectively faster than the similar Verizon Pre Plus. It's still unknown if Palm has made any definite under the hood software or hardware changes to the devices but in our news item from CTIA in March, a new WebOS build code-named "Arak" definite performance improvements were noticed.

The Technologizer blog has published an interesting pictorial gallery of a number of Palm ideas that made their way through the USPTO. Looking though Palm's patent archives following the big sellout, the site has put together a quick look at 11 different Palm product concepts that apparently never made it off the drawing board.

A browse through shows off some intriguing Palm handheld product concepts, some dating from as far back at this smartphone design from 1998 which half resembles the old PDQ. A number of other unique concepts can be found such as a horizontally sliding PDA with a keyboard and a removable PDA that links up with a thumb keyboard sled from 2004 (pictured at right).

Verizon is continuing the trend of rapid fire discounts on Palm products. Big red shoppers can now walk away with a Palm Pre Plus for $29.99. The deal can now be found both online and at retail locations and still includes the free mobile hotspot service. No rebates required, just $30 worth of federal reserve notes and a two year contract commitment.

If you're still looking to save some coin, Amazon's one cent deal is also still in effect for the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on Verizon.

Palm today announced that the Palm Pixi Plus will be available in Spain with Vodafone on May 10.

"This agreement with Palm is a great opportunity for Vodafone Spain. Our customers will now have a wider range of smartphone models that provide mobility solutions for their professional needs but also allow them to leverage the advantages of the phone's leisure features," said Ignacio Román, Mobiles Business director, Vodafone Iberia.

"The next version of webOS is coming soon". So says the latest email sent out by Palm's Developer Relations team, which goes on to detail that developers will be alerted to a release candidate of the SDK in "early May", with a one-week window for bug reports, to be followed by a further 2-3 week wait while it passes though the carriers on its way to consumers.

The email also helpfully states in a very stern-looking bold print: "It is especially important to test PDK apps against this release candidate." A rather obvious sign, your correspondent thinks, that PDK-developed apps are en route - and not a moment too soon for an App Catalog that is still struggling to gain traction against its well-entrenched rivals.

Rumour: It's not proof-positive, but the latest HP-related rumour certainly makes for a big hint that the computing giant plans on releasing webOS-powered tablets sooner rather than later: TechCrunch reports (via "a source who's been briefed on the matter") that the HP Slate, an impressive-looking Windows 7-based tablet PC introduced by Microsoft head honcho Steve Ballmer at CES in January, has been canned.

The reason? According to TC, Win 7's performance as a tablet OS just isn't up to snuff - whether this is due to speed issues, battery life problems or a combination of both isn't delved into, although it's mentioned that HP may also be abandoning Intel-based internals for its Slate lineup entirely. Given that this news comes right on the tail of the Palm acquisition - not to mention the hints dropped by executives - the idea that HP will forge ahead exclusively with an in-house, mobile-optimized webOS tablet is definitely within the realm of possibility. The company remains tight-lipped, giving Engadget the standard line: "We don't comment on rumours or speculation."