Now, you might be thinking, huh, it was Verizon that purchased Alltel, and Alltel was a CDMA network… Well, a little reported part of the Verizon purchase was that the FCC required Verizon to divest (give up) 105 of the markets it acquired from Alltel in order to maintain a level playing field. AT&T picked up 79 of those markets. Yes, you’re thinking CDMA and GSM are like oil and water, and you’re correct.

So AT&T is in the process of transitioning their acquired Alltel customers to their GSM network, and that means they’re going to need new phones. So AT&T is offering them a deal: get one of our phones for cheap (or free) before we shut off your service. The deals by-and-large aren’t much better than what you can get as an AT&T customer, but it’s at least nice to see the Palm Pre Plus touted as available for pickup – and for free at that. One benefit: switchers will be allowed to drop their new AT&T contract after thirty days without facing an ETF.

Source: Engadget Mobile

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Right on cue the Palm Pre 2 has passed through the testing labs of the FCC, sporting fresh “this won’t boil your brains” certifications. The newly certified phones don’t come with any further surprises from what we already knew about the Pre 2 from all of the leaks and the announcements that came this morning, but it’s at least nice to see them making a courtesy stop for certification, opening the door to sales. Let’s just hope that this means the phones will become available sooner rather than later in the undefined “coming months” ahead.

For the record, the phones certified are the P102UNA (UMTS GSM, sporting AT&T-compatible 3G bands) and the P102EWW (EVDO CDMA for Verizon and Sprint). The GSM version will initially be available as the unlocked developer phone, while the CDMA phones will be available on Verizon. Unknown is whether or not the CDMA or GSM version will launch on the unspecified Canadian carrier, though if we had to guess we’d put our money on GSM (Bell and Telus are busy transitioning from CDMA to GSM, the last thing they want to do is launch a phone they’re working to be incompatible with).

Source: FCC (P102EWW, P102UNA); Via: Engadget; Thanks to Arthur on Twitter for the heads up!

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The tall portrait touchscreen has become a mainstay of the modern smartphone. When manufacturers wanted to add a keyboard, they made it a slider, either vertical like the Palm Pre and BlackBerry Torch or horizontal like the Motorola Droid 2, T-Mobile G2, and all manner of Android devices. But mixing the keyboard in without a slider was a recipe for a smaller/shorter screen, like the Palm Pixi, all manner of BlackBerry devices, and a smattering of Android phones.

That changes now, with the introduction of the Motorola Droid Pro. As you can guess from the Droid branding, this new phone resides on Verizon. There’s nothing particularly special about that (except for Verizon’s special and somewhat corrupted love for Android), what’s different is the form factor: tall portrait screen with attached non-slider keyboard. This sucker comes with a 3.1-inch screen (same size as the Pre) overtop a keyboard that looks like it was lifted off of a BlackBerry.

Stuffed inside is a 1GHz processor, 2GB storage (really, that’s it?), a 2GB microSD card, and a 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash. Otherwise it’s a fairly typical Android 2.2 phone, if you can get your head (and hands) around the shape – it’s right around 4 ½ inches tall. There’s one spot where we are jealous: this sucker’s a world phone. If you’re not familiar with what that means, we won’t fault you, as it’s not something we’ve heard a lot of in webOS land: a phone with both CDMA and GSM radios. The idea is that you can use it on your CDMA network in the US of A, and then when you head out to places where CDMA roaming doesn’t happen (i.e. the world outside of the United States) you can slap in a SIM card for some international calling and internets.

If that’s not to your fancy, Motorola’s got another phone in line for you, so long as you (1) like Android and (2) live in Brazil. The GSM-powered Pre-sized vertical slider smartphone is called the Motorola Spice, and was designed and built in Brazil, with that country as the target market for the phone. It runs Android 2.1 with MOTOBLUR (yay.) and is packed with fairly ho-hum hardware: a 528 MHz processor, 512MB storage plus whatever you can fit via microSD, a 3 megapixel camera, and a 3-inch 240×320 screen.

So, two new portrait keyboard-toting Android phones, one with hardware outclassed by the aging Pre, the other with hardware that handily outclasses the Pre, plus some goodies we don’t yet have on our webOS devices. Anybody tempted, or is the promise of new webOS phones enough to keep you in the Palm camp

Source: Android Central [Droid Pro, Spice]

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It’s the curse of the modern smartphone: a zillion chips and sensors and a bright powerful screen and umpteen radios all sucking power from battery tech that hasn’t seen drastic improvement in the last decade. And it’s also one of the biggest Achilles’ heels of the Palm Pre and Pre Plus. It’s been a while since we last visited this area, with the Pre and Pixi having now launched onto several new networks across the world, it’s high time we revisit the land of electricity. After the break, we break it down…

read more

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It’s been rumored and rumbled for some time now, but we finally have official word from on high. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, in the news conference following their mostly positive quarterly and fiscal year report, China Telecom Chairman and CEO Wang Xiaochu announced that his network will be picking up BlackBerry devices in May and the Palm Pre in July.

Presumably at this point they will be Pre Plus phones (no word on the Pixi headed to China), but what restrictions China’s government will place on the phones remains to be seen. China Telecom is the country’s third largest provider, and the largest CDMA in China. Looking back at the iPhone launch, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Wi-Fi disabled on or missing from the Pre when it reaches China’s shores. Adding devices from Palm and Research in Motion is part of China Telecom’s strategy to compete with China Unicom, which recently launched the iPhone in China. The smartphone launches are also behind a drive to make China Unicom’s mobile division profitable, currently the business is sustained by landline phone and broadband communications.

China Telecom has been reported to be in talks with Palm since August of 2009, so it’s nice to finally get some official word on the Chinese launch of webOS.

Thanks to mikeh20 for the tip!

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It has been a long while (August 2009) since we saw the Model/SKU # P100UNA from Palm, which we reckon at the time it was the GSM Palm Pre for North America. Apparently we were right, Scaredy over at Howard Forums has been digging on Industry Canada’s Certification and Engineering pages, and check what [...]

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Happy New Year 2010! Another year is gone, and we find ourselves with new goals, more tech, and many more things to come. Here at MyPre.com, we are focused on anything that has to do with the first webOS device, but you already knew that, so let us begin with this year in review. Palm [...]

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While the Palm Pre may be launching on Friday on Telcel (Mexico’s largest cellular network), other networks in the nation are snapping up the Pre as well. In fact, if you go to Iusacell’s website you’ll see the Pre displayed front and center with a “cómpralo aquí” (buy here) link that opens a pop-up where you can sign up for more information and to be contacted by a Iusacell representative.

Unlike GSM carrier Telcel and #2 Telefonica, Iusacell is a CDMA network. Regardless of the network, it’s good to see Palm still making headway in expanding the footprint of webOS outside the US. As for when we’ll actually see the Pre on Iusacell is anyone’s guess…

Thanks to Akitayo for the tip!

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The chaps over at PalmInfocenter have heard from O2 that webOS 1.3 (we assume that O2 meant 1.3.1) will be coming to GSM Palm Pre phones by the end of November, presumably alongside the same update for the CDMA Pre you can get on Sprint and Bell. Currently the CDMA version of the phone sports a 1.2.1 operating system. 

We don’t have any confirmation, but it’s also been rumored/wished that the App Catalog will be rolled out in force to the whole world instead of having paid apps limited to just the United States. But if wishes were horse then we’d, well, we’d have a lot of horses. So take heart, our European friends languishing in the strange and unfamiliar land of webOS 1.1.3, soon your troubles will be ended and some of those horses will be taken off of your hands. Three cheers for parity!

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Ubiquitous open standards software/patch/theme installer Preware, which is developed and maintained by the enterprising developers over at webos-internals, has received support for multiple OS versions in its latest update to 0.9.5. The new version of Preware automatically selects the webOS-patches feed to match the running version of webOS (the GSM variant of the Pre currently runs 1.1.3, as opposed to 1.2.1 on the CDMA version), which ensures that any patches you install are compatible with the version of webOS that’s running on your device.

 Thanks to everyone that sent this in!

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