The Churchill Club, which describes itself as "Silicon Valley’s premier business and technology forum," is presenting a panel, "Wireless is the Biggest Tech Platform in History, Now What?" this evening at 7:00 pm Pacific time. The two speakers are Paul Jacobs, Chairman & CEO of Qualcomm, and HP/Palm’s own Jon Rubinstein, and the event is moderated by AllThingsD.com’s co-executive editor Kara Swisher.

While tickets to the event, held at the San Jose Fairmont, are limited, you can watch from the comfort of your own screen via FORA.tv. Whether or not we get any juicy new revelations (we’re not counting on any), it should be an enjoyable chat.

Source: Qualcomm on Twitter

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When did smartphones become superphones?  To be precise, the term superphone was unofficially coined only this year with the launch of Google’s Nexus One back in January of 2010.  While one can argue whether or not a term like superphone vs. smartphone is warranted, what isn’t up for debate is that 2010 saw the release of a succession of groundbreaking devices sporting amazing hardware.  While the term began with the Nexus One it continued into the year with other well known “superphones” like the EVO 4G, iPhone 4, Galaxy S line and Droid X, to name only a few.  Palm and HP webOS devices, as we know all too well, were not only left behind but were literally left totally out of the mix during the year of the superphone.  Though various form factors and features made for a less than definitive case for what exactly constituted a superphone, one thing all of these devices had in common was this, a 1GHz CPU.

By this standard alone did Palm finally enter into the superphone arena with the late 2010 release of the Pre 2?  Obviously yes, as the Pre 2 does in fact feature a 1GHz processor in the Texas Instruments OMAP 3630. So should it have a shot to be considered in the same class as those other phones? Read on.

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As they say with patent lawsuits, you throw everything you’ve got at all the defendants you can find and see what sticks. Today we’ve got defunct chip maker MicroUnity (stopped making chips more than a decade ago) leveling a patent lawsuit against twenty-two companies [pdf] involved in the mobile tech industry. MicroUnity is targeting Acer, Apple, AT&T, Cellco, Exedea, Google, HTC, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Palm, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sprint, and Texas Instruments in the suit. The allegation is that all of these companies (and some of their subsidiaries) are involved in the production, sale, and/or marketing of MicroUnity patent-infringing Qualcomm’s Snapdragon or Texas Instruments’ OMAP-3 and OMAP-4 processors.

In our case, the Palm Pre and Pre Plus use the TI OMAP 3430 processor and is sold and marketed by Sprint (as well as Verizon, Bell, O2, and Telcel, but they apparently don’t matter). We would say that there’s likely little to worry about as far as Palm and Sprint are concerned – Texas Instruments is the one infringing on patents here, Palm only bought the chips.

Even though MicroUnity stopped making chips more than ten years ago, they still have a hefty patent portfolio that they’ve leveraged in the past. In 2005 Intel settled a patent-infringement lawsuit brought by MicroUnity to the tune of $300 million. At the time, MicroUnity had a grand total of eight employees. We won’t call them patent trolls, but we will at least point out that MicroUnity also has pending lawsuits against a number of other tech companies, including Intel (again), AMD, Sony, and Dell.

[via: EETimes]

Thanks to Lemstil for the tip!

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Longtime Palm fans will remember Ebag333’s investigations into the drama of true standalone, autonomous GPS on Windows Mobile Treos. He’s back at it for the Palm Pre, looking into whether or not the GPS module on the Pre can work without a data connect. Turns out it can, but it takes some doing. Ebag in the forums have been tinkering with the Qualcomm GPS equipment and its associated drivers in the CDMA version of the Pre. They’ve been able to gain access to additional GPS modes that’ll work without that active data connection, including Autonomous, Assisted, and Cached. Read: true, standalone GPS.

The hack isn’t terribly useful at this point outside of an area without data coverage, as webOS currently doesn’t have much in the way of standalone software written for it to take advantage of such a scenario, such as TomTom for the iPhone. Where the hack does come in handy, however, are acquisition times and overall accuracy: currently it can take 30 seconds to 2 minutes to get a lock using aGPS, and the accuracy of the lock can be hit or miss.   The changes this hack makes can vastly improve both of those items.

These modifications are certainly not for the faint of heart, as the steps here are rather involved (think proprietary Qualcomm programs, MSL numbers, and Palm SDK’s). Honestly, unless you are a hardcore GPS chip nerd, we suggest you observe rather than act – flashing GPS chips can be risky business.

Thanks Ebag for the tip!

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Now that Palm has announced the impending release of the Pixi, a webOS-based handset and little brother to the Pre, it’s time to look under the hood and see how it measures up to big brother. The Pixi uses the Qualcomm MSM7626 chipset for it’s processing power, which should give the Pixi better browsing capabilities [...]

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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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In many ways, the Pixi is to the Pre what the Centro was to the Treo. In some ways it’s the same phone, in others it’s a different beast. And a svelte beast this one is. Like the Pre, the Pixi features EVDO Rev. A, the touch sensitive gesture area, a full QWERTY keyboard, GPS, 3.5 mm headset jack, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 8 GB of storage space (~7 GB user available), a MicroUSB port, proximity sensor, light sensor, accelerometer, ringer switch, the same 1150 mAh battery, and the same complement of Sprint services (NFL Mobile Live, NASCAR Sprint Cup, Sprint TV, Sprint Navigation, etc).

Where the Pixi most obviously differs is in layout. The phone is a slate-style device, featuring an exposed keyboard up front with an 18-bit color 320×400 pixel capacitive multi-touch display measuring 2.63 inches across. For comparison, the Pre’s screen is a 3.1 inch 320×480 screen, while the iPhone’s is 3.5 inches. The below-screen gesture area from the Pre carries over to the Pixi (we can likely expect it on all future webOS phones), though the card view button is not present – you now tap in the gesture area to pop up to the card view. Finally, the Pixi has a 2 megapixel camera with flash, compared to the Pre’s 3 megapixel camera with flash. The Pixi also lacked the Pre’s "extended depth of field" camera functionality.

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