According to Forbes, Sprint’s first WiMax handset – the first 4G handset from any US carrier – is expected to be available in the first half of 2010. While most logically expect that the phone will be the Android-powered HTC Supersonic (fitting name for a 4G phone), we have to wonder – could it be the C40?

Well, maybe. Frankly, we have no clue. In fact, the lack of info about the C40 has been driving us batty. But a summer launch would coincide with the Pre having been out for a year on Sprint – just in time for a full refresh. At the very least our no-evidence-except-for-intuition expectation is that Palm will release something that will amount to the Pre 2 on Sprint in the summer (or at least that what those of us on Sprint are hoping for), and there’s no reason that the C40 couldn’t be this device.

But why would we want a WiMax phone? For one, the interwebs would be ridiculously fast. Like mind-blowing fast for a phone. In theory, it could be faster than most Wi-Fi connections (Wi-Fi download speeds are limited by the slower ISP they’re hooked up to). With all that bandwidth – again, this is just speculation here – there’s no reason that a WiMax phone on Sprint couldn’t do voice and data at the same time – just run the voice over VOIP (technically EVDO already supports this). But a WiMax radio would only further amplify one of the biggest hurdles Palm is trying to overcome with just EVDO and HSDPA: battery life. Unless they’ve got a ridiculously efficient WiMax radio, a Palm phone with a stock 1150 mAh battery would last, oh, an hour. Maybe.

All that said, chances are that you don’t have WiMax service where you live, at least not yet. Sprint currently has WiMax coverage in a handful of cities across the United States, but in partnership with their quasi-subsidiary Clearwire are rapidly expanding coverage. Sprint expects to add New York City and San Francisco to their WiMax roadmap soon, a move that is sure to tempt many a frustrated iPhone user in those AT&T bottleneck metropolises. Additionally, despite the acceptance of LTE by carriers worldwide, global WiMax deployments are accelerating. eWeek notes that by the end of 2010 combined global WiMax coverage in 147 countries is expected to surpass 800 million people, and one billion a year later. Currently WiMax deployments cover around 620 million.

[via: Engadget, Android Central]

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Even in these days of instant communications through text messages, instant messaging, and Twitter, there’s something to be said for the robustness (and openness) of email. Thus, when email goes wonky you can be assured that there will be noise made of it. While this blogger’s Gmail-not-pushing issue managed to magically resolve itself, other users have noticed a different problem with their email: push simply doesn’t work over WiFi, and for some in that group their email pushes very late (10-15 minutes) over EVDO. And of course, there are those who simply can’t get push email to work at all.

We feel your pain, and even though signs point to the issue not being a widespread one, we would be remiss if we didn’t ask around. So here we are, asking, with the preferred mass data gathering method of politicians and the media alike: the poll. And as an added bonus, you can also comment on this article (like any other). In particular, if you’ve had this sort of issue and figured out how to resolve it, we’re all ears.

Are you having troubles with email?(polls)

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We’ve been anxiously anticipating an update to Sprint’s signal-boosting Airave femtocel for some time now – one that will not only provide a mini-cell-tower in your house for calls, but will also provide genuine EVDO 3G instead of the paltry 1xRTT that the current model offers. Sprint has hinted it would come in 2010.

Well perhaps it has come now. Impulsebuyer in our forums just received a replacement unit that’s significantly different that the original. You can see the new unit on the left. It’s bigger, yep, but another wrinkle is that it tucks the GPS unit away under a door on the top of the device (you can still remove it to place by a window). That should make travel with the unit a bit easier. (That GPS unit, by the way, ensures better E911 location). It’s positively Verizon Network Extender-shaped, if you ask us.

The 64 thousand dollar question, though: does it provide 3G EVDO for data? The fact that this looks pretty much identical to the Verizon Network Extender makes us think we’re just looking at a new form factor. Forum member elder_shawn backs this up. So before you go out and Impulse Buy a new Airave (ahem), we recommend head on into the forums to see more photos and get the final word.

Thanks Impulsebuyer!

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The other day we brought you word of how Palm Profiles were disappearing across the nation after users reset or replaced their phones. While Palm stated that they are aware of the issue and are working on correcting it, Sprint has started giving instructions to users replacing their phones on how to avoid the issue. Apparently it all stems from Palm’s servers getting confused by a new phone having a different version number than the new phone, usually an older version because the new one’s been sitting in a box for a while. Big ups to everybody who sent this in, and to bpdamas for putting it up in the forums

Instructions for users:

1. Confirm that your replacement webOS phone has been activated.
2. Power on the phone and when prompted to enter your old Palm Profile data, instead choose “Create New Profile.”
3. Create a fake/dummy Palm Profile using a different (doesn’t even have to be real) email address.
4. Once the phone finishes set-up, do not enter any of your cloud accounts (Yahoo, Gmail, etc) into contacts or calendar or email. Just go straight to Updates and check that you are running the latest version of webOS, currently webOS 1.3.1. If you’re not, immediately download the webOS update (if you have a Pre, remember that WiFi will be significantly faster than trying to go over EVDO). If you are running the latest version of webOS, skip to step six.
5. Install the update. Let the phone reset and do all it needs to do.
6. Open Device Info and confirm that you’re running the latest version of webOS. If not, go back to 4.
7. In Device Info, drop to Reset Options at the bottom and select Full Erase. This will wipe the device clean and reset it.
8. After the phone has powered back on, you will be prompted to reenter your Palm Profile. This time, enter your original login username and password. Since you’re on the same version as your last backup, this should restore all your data with no issue.

Instructions for Palm

1. Fix this.

…More specifically, one would like to see a way to keep Palm Profile information from newer webOS devices from busting up on older versions. When you think about, though, it makes sense that Palm may need to change some of the backup structures on the Profile.

Here’s a better idea: make it so that a Pre is able to do stuff like update itself before you enter your Palm Profile credentials. That’s the most user-friendly solution – there will eventually be plenty of Pre phones out there that aren’t hooked up to active service but would still be perfectly good WiFi/PDA type devices for some folks. Plus, you know, people won’t experience having their Palm Profiles janking up on new phones in the future.

Thanks to everybody that sent this in!

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As we suspected, many new Palm Pixi phones came out of the box with webOS 1.2.9 installed. That’s all well and good, since webOS checks for updates on a regular basis and downloads them in the background while you carry on with your daily business. Problem is, the Update app will only download over EVDO and WiFi, which in a way makes sense. EVDO and WiFi are nice and fast in comparison to the other wireless alternative on Sprint: 1xRTT.

So what is 1xRTT? Essentially, it’s Sprint’s 2.5G network, runs at a blistering 60 kbps to 80 kbps. Yes, kilobits per second, a speed that roughly translates to 10 kilobytes per second, in which case downloading the 126 MB webOS 1.3.1 update would take nearly 36 hours, and that’s assuming you managed to maintain peak rate for that whole day and a half. There’s a reason that you don’t see 1xRTT advertised much: it’s really slow.

read more

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The teasing and leaking can officially end, with Palm webOS 1.3.1 scheduled to land for the Palm Pixi on Sunday, November 15 (i.e. Pixi release day) and on the Pre "shortly thereafter." In actuality, we have heard a few reports of Pixi phones out in the wild already and they’re showing the update available now.

Most Pixi phones will ship with webOS 1.2.9 out-of-the-box and will pull down the 1.3.1 update soon after activation. Between downloading the update and all the Synergy account information over exclusively EVDO, well, it’ll be slow going for the first hour or so. For a full list of the updates in webOS 1.3.1, click here.

webOS 1.3.1 will also be required for the new Facebook app to work, apparently there are some underpinnings not in older version of webOS that are needed. And on that note, the Facebook app will not ship in 1.3.1, instead it will appear in the App Catalog for users to download if they so desire (and have space). As always, you should remove any and all patches and themes before updating webOS.

Now, about that “shortly thereafter” for Pre users. We know you don’t like it. Neither do we. Palm has assured us that they are doing everything that they can to get webOS 1.3.1 out to Pre owners as soon as possible, but there are still some things that must receive a final stamp of approval from the powers that be before all is deemed a-okay There’s no getting around carrier approval, and that approval comes on a per-device basis.

Oh, and we should note that the above only applies to Sprint phones. We don’t know when Pre owners on Bell, O2, or Movistar will be able to update to 1.3.1, but we hope it won’t be much longer after the folks on Sprint get it.

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This may not be something you find yourself having to use often, but like the Palm OS phones of yore, the Palm Pre has a number of “hash codes” that you can use to access otherwise hidden data and statistics about your phone. The hash codes are entered by ‘dialing’ the code through the phone app. Here are some of the more useful ones:

##DATA# (3237): Displays your network log-in information.

##DEBUG# (33284): Displays technical data of your current cellular connection, including signal strength (lower numbers are better)

##EVDO# (3836): Displays your current cellular data settings with options for 1xRTT only, EVDO Rev 0 only, Hybrid Rev 0, EVDO only, and Hybrid Rev A. Hybrid modes will select the best available connection.

##GPS# (477): Displays your longitude and latitude, elevation, speed, and GPS accuracy.

##RTN# (786): Displays the Phone Information page, which includes your ESN, software and revision numbers, refurbished status, and more.

As always, if your phone is working fine, you should just look and not touch. These settings control how your phone connects to the rest of the world; changing something without knowing what you’re doing could end badly. For more Palm Pre hash codes of the advanced variety, check out WebOS Internals.org.

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As the rest of the world, Verizon included, dedicates itself to LTE, an eye has turned to lone WiMax supporters Sprint and quasi-subsidiary Clearwire (Sprint owns 51% of the company). Unbeknownst to most, however, WiMax and LTE are actually quite similar, so much so that Clearwire CEO Bill Morrow recently told the Wall Street Journal that if they were to switch to LTE, it’d be a matter of a mere software upgrade.

While Clearwire’s Clear service is only available in more than 40 markets in 16 US states, not a single mobile phone has been released to take advantage of the high-speed mobile service (up to 10 Mbps down/5 Mbps up), mostly due to the power draw requirements. Meanwhile, Sprint has been promoting their co-developed 4G network (formerly known as Xohm) at every turn, leading to speculation that the Pre may end up with a 4G radio.

Switching to LTE would pose significant challenges for Clearwire. Firstly, they’d need to have Sprint onboard, and thus far Sprint seems satisfied with their own 4G deployments in a handful of markets. Clearwire’s deal with Sprint allows for infrastructure and spectrum sharing, along with a roaming agreement between the two. Additionally, Clearwire and Sprint would have to deal with the already deployed WiMax devices in the hands of customers, either by running a legacy WiMax network for several years, pushing out a software upgrade for those devices (likely not as easy as upgrading the towers), or by taking the expensive step of replacing all customer-owned WiMax cards with LTE cards. Of all options, running a legacy WiMax network for a few years seems to be the most likely option, giving Sprint and Clearwire the time to let those contracts expire and pull the plug.

read more

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The Palm Pixi will be the first smartphone to ship with Qualcomm’s new MSM7627 chipset, so there are understandably a lot of questions about what the lower-cost processor will be capable of. While we’ve seen in action that the Pixi isn’t quite as snappy as the Pre, and Palm has said that it won’t support as many open cards (which would seem to be more of a RAM limitation than the processor), the MSM7627 has remained cloaked in mystery.

Over at PalmInfocenter they’ve gotten their hands on the full spec sheet for the MSM7627, which you’ll find below:

• Two ARM cores integrated into a single chip – a dedicated CPU core and a dedicated modem processor – for an unparalleled level of integration:
  • 1. 600MHz applications processor with floating point unit and L2 cache
  • 2. 400MHz modem processor
• Supports both CDMA2000® 1xEV-DO Rev. A and UMTS HSDPA 7.2Mbps/HSUPA 5.76Mbps, and GSM
• In addition to the two ARM cores, features 320MHz application DSP for multimedia supporting full 30 fps WVGA encode/decode, 200MHz hardware-accelerated 3D graphics core supporting OPEN GL 2.0, high-resolution camera, integrated GPS
• 12mm x 12mm footprint
• Optimized power consumption

Yup, you read that right: the modem chip will easily support both EVDO (on the currently announced Pixi) and HSDPA (for the GSM Pixi we all know has to eventually come) – so at least we can be pretty sure that when Palm slaps a GSM radio in this thing, we won’t have to guess about the chip again (Update, to clarify – the processor can play nice with both CDMA and GSM, but again, the Pixi is CDMA only). Also, the 320 MHz DSP (digital signal processor) and 200 MHz 3D graphics core should provide adequate oomph for gaming, once Palm gets around to whipping up an SDK to take advantage of the chip.

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Dave writes in with an excellent question!

Since pre is a web device, what will the Pre do when its accessing the
internet and a call comes?

i can think of (3) answers…, but i’m not sure.

a) close the app(s) accessing the internet
b) save the app(s), as is, until the call is completed
c) direct incoming calls straight to voicemail, follewed by an alert,
just like my sprint treo 650.

Before we get to the answer, there’s some context to help understand this issue.  Sprint runs on a CDMA network, specifically data and calls now go through EVDO (or EVDO Rev A).  The issue here is that before EVDO, simultaneous voice and data couldn’t happen on these networks — it was only possible on GSM technology like HSDPA.  In fact, as Dave notes, back in the 1xRTT days if you had an active data session going (as in, downloading a file), your calls would get routed straight to voicemail.

So, as Dave asks, what’s going to happen on the Sprint Palm Pre?  We don’t know for sure, but we have some good educated guesses.  Read on!

<!–break–>

Here’s a handy chart:

The Pre and most modern Sprint smartphones all run on Rev A.  EVDO Rev A theoretically can do voice and data at the same time.  In practice, though, Sprint has not made that happen for reasons that are mysterious to us — best guess is that it’s harder than it looks and Sprint prefers the tradeoff of less functionality instead of more bugs.    That’s #1 from the chart above.

There was hope that the Pre would allow simultaneous Voice and Data, hope that was mercilessly quashed mid-February.  Instead we’re guessing the Pre will handle voice and data in the same way other Sprint EVDO Rev A smartphones do, which leads us to #2 from the chart.

Let’s work with the Sprint Touch Diamond.  By default, when a call comes in it interrupts your data session so you can hear it ring and answer the call if you like.  If you wouldn’t like, you can ignore the call and when it stops ringing, your data session starts up again fairly quickly.  Since it multitasks, your browser window (or whatever app you’re using) stays open.

The situation, by default, will likely be the exact same on the Pre, with the added benefit of the Pre’s excellent notification system.  Which is to say that except for the data interruption, the incoming call won’t immediately toss you out of what you’re currently doing, as seen below:

In other words, we fully expect the answer to your question is option B.  When a call comes in and you ignore it, your activity will only be interrupted by a brief cessation of your data connection.  If you take the call, that will just pop up in another card and when it’s done, you can go back to your browsing card.

There’s one more option: Palm may give you the chance to customize this via something called "DDTM Mode."  DDTM stands for "Data Dedicated Transmission Mode" and "Mode’ usually gets appended to it in the same way most people say "ATM Machine"  (sigh).  Here’s a screenshot of the DDTM setting on the Sprint Touch Diamond (found under Settings – > Phone -> Services -> DDTM Mode.  Sometimes it’s just called "Data Settings" too — thanks Mal!).  

As you can see, it’s pretty self explanatory.  If data is more important to you than some silly person actually trying to speak to you, you can switch the phone over to behave in the old school way: if data’s a rockin, callers can’t come a knockin.  These settings appear on most Sprint EVDO phones (even the Instinct) someplace, so it’s not a crazy bet to say that they will on the Palm Pre as well.

….phew!  There you go, chances are that incoming calls will temporarily kill data, but won’t close out what you’re doing.  A slightly smaller chance is you can set the phone to send everything to voicemail if you have an active data session.

One last thing: When the GSM Palm Pre hits, it will sport HSDPA and, well, handle simultaneous Voice and Data with nary a problem (unless it’s stuck in an EDGE area, in which case you’re looking at another ball-o-wax.)

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