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Now while Europe, and UK especially have been getting a bunch of juicy handsets, the one smartphone they didn’t have yet was the Palm Pre. All that is about to change as O2 and Movistar have been announced as the exclusive carriers of the Palm Pre in Europe, to be available in the UK, Ireland, Germany and Spain before the year is through, and that’s about all we know. Pricing details for the markets is unknown. If any of you folks on the other side of the Atlantic want to import a GSM Pre take note — the specific UMTS/HSDPA bands that it will be packing have not yet been listed so keep those fingers crossed.

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As they say in business, if you can’t beat em, join ‘em, which is what then leads to mergers and acquisitions. Vodafone and Telefónica, after many years of trying to get the upes hand in the global telecommunications and wireless market, have finally decided to shake hands. The two carrier giants will aim at providing better services in select European markets. The new deal involves sharing mobile network assets, providing transmission services and building new sites. The main focus behind this new collaboration, in addition to providing customers better service, is to reduce costs. Both companies will be able to save millions of pounds by helping each other out, a very good way to weather the recession. Customers can look forward to better signal quality and mobile broadband across a wider coverage area at lower network operating costs. So far, the countries that will benefit are Germany, Ireland, Spain and UK. Hang tight rest of Europe, your turn will come too.

So while Sprint will be the exclusive carrier of the Palm Pre in the United States, what about the rest of the world? According to the Spanish newspaper, Expansion, palm Pre will be exclusively offered by Telefonica’s Movistar in Spain and many Latin American countries. As for the rest of Europe, O2 will be the exclusive carrier. O2 is also a subsidy of Telefonica. Needless to say O2 and Telefonica desperately needed a smartphone of this standing since Vodafone is cleaning shelves with the future Android-powered  HTC Magic.

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A day or so ago we told you that Europe was getting dibbs on the G2 known to them as the HTC Magic. Well now the news all official; Vodafone is going to be the exclusive carrier for UK, Spain, France and Germany. As for Italy, enthusiasts there will be able to purchase the world’s first touchscreen-only Android phone as no-exclusive buyers. Though a definite release date isn’t out yet, Vodafone’s website says the Magic will be “Arriving in April.” As for the United States, let’s just hope we get some Magic sooner than later.

Now the HTC Magic is a definite improvement on the tub of plastic that was the G1, especially on the appearance side. Here are the specs;

1.      Android OS

2.      Quad-band EDGE / dual-band 7.2Mbps HSDPA (900/2100 MHz)

3.      512MHz Qualcomm® MSM7201a

4.      512MB ROM / 192MB RAM

5.      3.2″ HVGA touchscreen display (though the press and Vodafone say QVGA, but we all know Android does not play nice with QVGA displays)

6.      Virtual QWERTY keypad, trackball

7.      3.2 megapixel camear w/ AF (no flash)

8.      WiFi 802.11 b/g

9.      GPS

10.  Bluetooth 2.0

11.  microSD

12.  1340 mAh battery

13.  Talktime: 400 min 3G / 450 min GSM

14.  Standby: 660 hours 3G / 420 hours GSM

15.  113mm x 55mm x 13.65mm, 118.5g

16.  Available in black and/or white depending on market

Yes, you noticed right, no 3.5mm audio jack or LED flash. Major bummer.  And here’s the full press release if you want to gobble up more details.